Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE HOLY WELLS, by JOHN DE JEAN FRAZER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE HOLY WELLS, by                    
First Line: The holy wells - the living wells - the cool, the pure
Last Line: One blessing that no tyrant hand can taint or take away.
Subject(s): Wells


THE holy wells -- the living wells -- the cool, the fresh, the pure --
A thousand ages rolled away, and still those founts endure,
As full and sparkling as they flowed ere slave or tyrant trod
The Emerald garden, set apart for Irishmen by God.
And while their stainless chastity and lasting life have birth
Amid the oozy cells and caves of gross material earth,
The Scripture of creation holds no fairer type than they --
That an immortal spirit can be linked with human clay.

How sweet of old the bubbling gush -- no less to antlered race,
Than to the hunter and the hound that smote them in the chase!
In forest depths the water-fount beguiled the Druid's love,
From that adored high fount of fire which sparkled far above;
Inspired apostles took it for a centre to the ring,
When sprinkling round baptismal life -- salvation -- from the spring;
And in the sylvan solitude, or lonely mountain cave,
Beside it passed the hermit's life, as stainless as its wave.

The cottage hearth, the convent's wall, the battlemented tower,
Grew up around the crystal springs, as well as flag and flower;
The brooklime and the water-cress were evidence of health,
Abiding in those basins, free to poverty and wealth;
The city sent pale sufferers there the faded brow to dip,
And woo the water to depose some bloom upon the lip;
The wounded warrior dragged him towards the unforgotten tide,
And deemed the draught a heavenlier gift than triumph to his side.

The stag, the hunter, and the hound, the Druid and the saint,
And anchorite are gone, and even the lineaments grown faint,
Of those old ruins into which, for monuments, had sunk
The glorious homes that held, like shrines, the monarch and the monk.
So far into the heights of God the mind of man has ranged,
It learned a lore to change the earth -- its very self it changed
To some more bright intelligence; yet still the springs endure,
The same fresh fountains, but become more precious to the poor!

For knowledge has abused its powers, an empire to erect
For tyrants, on the rights the poor had given them to protect;
Till now the simple elements of nature are their all,
That from the cabin is not filched, and lavished in the hall --
And while night, noon, or morning meal no other plenty brings,
No beverage than the water-draught from old, spontaneous springs:
They, sure, may deem them holy wells, that yield from day to day,
One blessing that no tyrant hand can taint or take away.





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