When you have wearied of the valiant spires of this County Town,
Of its wide white streets and glistening museums, and black monastic
walls,
Of its red motors and lumbering trains, and self-sufficient people,
I will take you walking with me to a place you have not seen -
Half town and half country--the land of the Canal.
It is dearer to me than the antique town: I love it more than the
rounded hills:
Straightest, sublimest of rivers is the long Canal.
I have observed great storms and trembled: I have wept for fear of the
dark.
But nothing makes me so afraid as the clear water of this idle canal on a
summer s noon.
Do you see the great telegraph poles down in the water, how every wire is
distinct?
If a body fell into the canal it would rest entangled in those wires for
ever, between earth and air.
For the water is as deep as the stars are high.
One day I was thinking how if a man fell from that lofty pole
He would rush through the water toward me till his image was scattered by
his splash,
When suddenly a train rushed by: the brazen dome of the engine flashed:
the long white carriages roared;
The sun veiled himself for a moment, and the signals loomed in fog;
A savage woman screamed at me from a barge: little children began to
cry;
The untidy landscape rose to life: a sawmill started;
A cart rattled down to the wharf, and workmen clanged over the iron
footbridge;
A beautiful old man nodded from the first story window of a square red
house,
And a pretty girl came out to hang up clothes in a small delightful
garden.
O strange motion in the suburb of a county town: slow regular movement
of the dance of death!
Men and not phantoms are these that move in light.
Forgotten they live, and forgotten die.
This book is provided by FunNovel Novel Book | Fan Fiction Novel [Beautiful Free Novel Book]