At the Source of the Watts River
Published in The Australiasian, Saturday 23rd June 1888, page 15
By Alexander Sutherland
An Unexplored Magnificence
- Valley dark, and moist, and mossy!
- Stream, and trickling boulders glossy!
- Waters leaping, gliding, curling,
- With a soft, chromatic purling!
- Beechen forest far extended,
- Woven leaves and branches blended
- In a mighty-vaulted ceiling,
- Scarce the zenith-blue revealing!
- Here, oh here, my willing steps I stay,
- Take me, oh take me, to thyself for this one day.
- Oh the wealth of graces lavish,
- Scents that soothe, and sights that ravish,
- Scattered in these wildernesses!
- See the long, the emerald tresses
- Pendent from the trees ; the bosses,
- Softly round, of delicate mosses!
- Luscious tints of green and golden;
- Things of joy that, once beholden,
- Sink, yes sink, into the inmost being;
- In visions nestle there for the soul’s secret seeing.
- Mighty forest logs decaying,
- To the boom of waters swaying,
- Span the river, sometimes dipping,
- Sometimes splashed, but ever dripping.
- Each is wrapped in mossy cushion,
- Fernlets nod in sweet profusion;
- While upon the steep bank mounting
- Tree-ferns rise beyond all counting.
- Here, oh here, my willing steps I stay,
- Here let me rest beneath their softly-rustling sway.
- All thy vastness burst upon me,
- Unexpected glories won me.
- Never word by mankind spoken
- Hath thy silent ages broken.
- But the lyre-bird’s heavy winging,
- And the bell-bird’s silver ringing,
- And the whip-bird’s sudden note
- Ever through these glades did float;
- And cries of those four-footed things of fur
- That from their trees do peep when evening breezes stir.
- Now o’er the forest noon is creeping,
- And all is still, except the leaping,
- The rush, the bound of waters speeding
- While I loiter all unheeding,
- Drinking in at every sense
- Draughts of sweetest influence;
- And here, what poets see in dreaming.
- See in truth, beyond all seeming.
- And every thought is lulled with soothing pleasure
- Beneath the drooping fronds that wave in easy measure.
- Nature folds me round and round
- In this valley’s depth profound;
- Seated in this glorious minute,
- I am of it, more than in it.
- And my thoughts, all bounds transcending,
- Still extending and extending,
- Joy to feel their wings can carry
- Out into the regions starry.
- For he who looks on Nature’s mightiest mazes
- Can feel the vastness pass into the soul that gazes.
- Throbbing heart of mine, confess
- Words are folly to express
- Tumultuous joys that swell and roll
- Surging through the awestruck soul.
- Far as these mighty trees that bear
- Their leafy crests to thinner air,
- Far as their dizzy heights transcend
- This mortal frame, o’er which they bend,
- So far this awful sight of beauty doth excel
- The proudest thought that words of men could hope to tell.
