OH ! build me a hut, where that blue-streaming river
Winds placidly through the green valleys of CRAY ;
Where high on its breezes the aspin-leaves shiver,
And deep in its dimples the fond willows play:
There, dead to the world, all its vanities shunning,
How sweetly would glide my remainder of life;
Serene, undisturb’d, like its calm water running,
Whose crystaline sluice was ne’er ruffl’d by strife.
Oh! build me a hut with the earth of its border,
And roof it with rushes from CRAY’S oozy bed,
Bestud it with pebbles, which glow in disorder,
Beneath its clear surface, brown, azure, and red:
Distant thus from the world, I would pray o’er its crimes,
And all I had seen of its mis’ries rehearse;
While to thee, lovely fount, tho’ imperfect my rhymes,
I would pour forth my feelings in Scriptural verse.
Oh! build me a hut where its blue baby-billows
Curl slow their soft heads to the stern winter blast;
Conceal it from sight by embowering willows,
Which kiss its bright tide where the current runs fast.
When the austral breeze sighs through its bed of dank reeds,
‘Neath the wan beam of heaven as its limpid waves roll,
I will think of those years till my aching heart bleeds,
When first its bland murmurs athwart my ear stole!
Oh! build me a hut where its silvery surges,
Propell’d by rude gales, lave the emerald banks;
Where in cones of green velvet the bulrush emerges,
Waving high o’er the surface in tall spiral ranks;
‘Twas there roll’d away. my beginning of years,–
‘Twas there in the time of set favour, Grace found me;
‘Twas there trickl’d slowly Conviction’s soft tears,
While Mercy and Love threw their arms all around me!!!
(Charlotte Eliza Dixon)
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Based on Topics: Love Poems, Life Poems, World Poems, Time Poems, Heaven Poems, Running Poems, Crime PoemsBased on Keywords: sluice, embowering, placidly, undisturb, remainder, austral, bulrush, scriptural, cray, bestud, ruffl