Refuge

To E. R. A.

Whichever way you turn, it lies
Just off the road.
You pass a house that scowls
Against a piebald hill athwart the sky,
Then a lane plunges down
With rootlaced banks, —
A row of apple trees, —
And that's the gate there
By the twin rocks in the field.
You never would suspect the stream
Had cut so deep, those tree tops
Might be bushes, but look out!

Between the twin rocks
Where the wicket stands,
That is the last place
You can see the upper world —
The dust still hangs along the road like smoke —
A sound of quarreling voices from the house —
And then, you push the wicket in.
It seems as if the hands of vines
That clutch the hidden gate
Let go reluctantly.
A little wind soughs down the rocky cleft,
Lifting the leaves,
Did someone pass?

Step down, step lower down,
It is not music here,
It is the thought of streams
Come through the trees,
The sigh of resting rivers
That are tired.
That pause to rest
Within the hidden vale
Amid the dappled granite
Old as time.
Yet it is melody,
Yes, it is music there
Beside the island's shore
That splits the river
In the mirror-pool.
It lies for all the world
An anchored ship
Rigged with white birches,
With a rocky prow.
See how the water parts
To either side!
Surely, if ever Peace
Has found a place
To hide herself
From noisy men away,
It must be here,
Deep in this cleft,
Where waters spread
To show a mountain
Its own lovely face,
Cool with the green of glaciers.
Who would guess
There is a hopeless village
On the heights,
Lost in the madness
Of the upper world?
But here, Oh, here!
Is refuge —
Come with me.

Slip off the body
Like a bather's clothes,
And plunge into the cooling stream —
Three strokes and you are there —
A little silver beach,
And shivering birches,
Where the ground
Is tiny-starred with blue forgetmenots;
She sits amid the shadow of the trees,
Hark to the liquid harp!
Only her death-taught hands
Could draw such music
From the shadow-wires;
Hers is the balm
And this the Gilead of souls.