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Two streams I knew together - One rose among the heather Where a south moorland lies And one rose near the city, Full-breasted one, one pretty, Under the self-same skies. |
| You could see them both by climbing A height not meant for rhyming, So call it what you will The spots from which they started So slenderly were parted - It seemed a single rill. |
| And when you saw their severance, How one was grave, like Reverence, And one was wild, like Mirth, So likely lay their courses, You said: The natural forces Have mated them from birth. |
| You said: A kindred motion Will link them ere the ocean, Or marriage must be wrong; For all the stars intended That these two should be blended, So also said my song. |
| Still they kept strangely sundered Till everybody wondered Why nature disobeyed; But if they knew not, I did, Why one a bachelor bided, And one remained a maid. |
| Oh, sealed to common senses, The subtle influences That shape these lives of ours Oh, plain to their quick spirit, Who, when the grass grows, hear it, Who hark the springing flowers. |
| Then meet and flow together, Make summer in the heather, You wedded streams at last. I understood - the stars too - And wished away the bars to This joy that's flowing fast. |
| Oh meet, the stars will quiver More brightly on one river Than on two severed streams And I shall sing the better, When once there comes a letter Fulfilling all my dreams. |
| And from the height I'll often Gaze till the distance soften Around your wedded ways; Shall I name the place - I dare to - “The eyes a Poet's heir to,” Which has watched you many days? |
| Then meet, and flow, and murmur, It makes one's faith the firmer To see one's hope come true. To see you twain together Brings a blush above the heather, Though that is blushing through. |
August. 1877
| Robert Barbour does not say so much but one thinks of his seeing the Tummel and Garry coming together as metaphors for marriage, but the Romanticism of the natural world is his obvious metaphorical resource. There is a sense of the Mahabharata in my reading, and I also take the last two lines as sexual. |