The Watts River (Fernshaw)
Published in Healesville Guardian, Friday 4th August 1899, page 4
By Marion Miller, Narbethong
- In the heart of the purple mountain-land,
- Where none but the fairies dwell,
- Softly singing, a river glides
- Through many a mossy dell.
- You may count the pebbles within its bed,
- For its waters are crystal-clear,
- But the secrets of its minstrelsy
- Few mortals ever hear!
- Idylls pure as a lily-bell,
- In the sun’s gold light it sings—
- Stories told by the wandering birds
- Resting their weary wings!
- Murmuring low o’er the grassy meads,
- It ripples in minor chords—
- But the stern gray bulwark of the rocks
- It leaps with clang of swords!
- Wild flower and fern beside it
- Wave to its rhythmic time,
- They hear but a blithesome melody—
- But the hills a chant sublime!
- For the fern and the flower have known not
- More than a brief sweet day,
- But the grand old mountain ranges
- Have looked to God for aye!
- So with the soul that hearkeneth,
- Hid in the mortal mould,
- For some is the mystic ecstasy,
- For some the ‘peace untold!’
- And the heart that can read the clearest
- The wind or the waters’ song,
- Like the knights of olden story
- Through the night-watch wrestled long.
- Before the shrine of the Beautiful—
- Afar from a worldly goal—
- With his eyes on the one bright Lamp that gleams
- Star-like on his lonely soul.
- In the ‘life’ he finds, as he loseth ‘life,’
- Angels, whispering, doth impart,
- Ev’ry secret they have hidden
- In the depths of Nature’s Heart!
