The River and the Hill [poem by Henry Kendall]

[Editor: This poem by Henry Kendall was published in Poems and Songs (1862).]

The River and the Hill.

And they shook their sweetness out in their sleep,
On the brink of that beautiful stream,
But it wandered along with a wearisome song
Like a lover that walks in a dream :
So the roses blew
When the winds went through,
In the moonlight so white and so still ;
But the river it beat
All night at the feet
Of a cold and flinty hill —
Of a hard and senseless hill !

I said, “We have often showered our loves
Upon something as dry as the dust ;
And the faith that is crost, and the hearts that are lost —
Oh ! how can we wittingly trust :
Like the stream which flows,
And wails as it goes,
Through the moonlight so white and so still,
To beat and to beat
All night at the feet
Of a cold and flinty hill —
Of a hard and senseless hill ?

“River, I stay where the sweet roses blow,
And drink of their pleasant perfumes !
Oh, why do you moan, in this wide world alone,
When so much affection here blooms ?
The winds wax faint,
And the Moon like a Saint
Glides over the waters so white and so still ;
But you hear me and beat
All night at the feet
Of that cold and flinty hill —
Of that hard and senseless hill !”

Source:
Henry Kendall, Poems and Songs, J. R. Clarke, Sydney, 1862, pages 105-106