Page:All quiet along the Potomac and other poems.djvu/62

So the King was proud, till he came to look
At the saucy face of a laughing brook,
Shining so merry,
Gay, as when the leaves through the summer days
Drifted to and fro, bearing errant fays
Across their ferry.

Then he frowned and stormedj as he bid her stay;
But she louder sang, as she kept her way,
Merry and sparkling,
Singing bars of sunshine and rests of shade,
Of the Northern brave nor the spear afraid,
Shining and darkling.

He worked all the night by the starry gleams;
He laid a raft, made of crystal beams,
Over rift and eddy;
And he planked it over with drifts of snow,
And he nailed it fast to the weeds below,
Staunch and steady.

But the rebel brook sang the same old tune,
And blinked, through a flaw in the midst, at the
moon,
Slyly once or twice:
"You may chain me under and keep me fast,
But you ll hear a song as I hurry past
Underneath the ice."

There are hidden lives in this world unseen;
You may never see through their polished sheen,
Nor their fetters know;