by ROBERT P. TRISTRAM COFFIN
ALWAYS in music, nights and days and years,
Will this small church by the river be,
Where the green water curves over the cliffs
And goes down white and steep into the sea.
Never, to sing the old Creator’s praise,
Will this house be without young congregations,
For, all the Aprils, teeming alewives come
Climbing these singing falls in their white nations.
So lucky the people are who worship here
Beside the running children old as dawn,
Waters going to sea and fish to land,
Children the years can put no weariness on.
Men and women in this happy house
Can look out from good faces and good words
And see good winds and waters going by,
Blue herons and white seagulls, the clean birds.
It should be easy to believe between
Organs of falling waters and the sea,
Here feet and fins and wings are cousinly,
Time is the small brother to eternity.