And now from hundreds of opened doors, With quiet paces And happy faces, In ones and twos and threes and fours, A crowd pressed out to the Market Square And stood in the storm and listened there.
And, oh, with what a solemn tender strain The long-drawn music eased their hearts of pain; And gave them visions of divine content; Green fields and happy valleys far away, And rippling streams and sunshine and the scent Of bursting buds and flowers that come in May. And one spoke in a rapt and gentle voice, And bade his friends rejoice, "For now," he said, "I see, I see once more My little lass upon a pleasant shore Standing, as long ago she used to stand, And beckoning to me with her dimpled hand. As in the vanished years, So I behold her and forget my tears." And each one had his private joy, his own, All the old happy things he once had known, Renewed and from the prisoning past set free, And mixed with hope and happy things to be.
So for a magic hour the music gushed, Then faded to a close, and all was hushed, And the tranced people woke and looked about, And fell to wondering what had brought them out On such a night of wind and piercing sleet, Exposed with hatless heads and thin-shod feet. Something, they knew, had chased their heavy sadness; And for the years to come they still may keep, As from a morning sleep, Some broken gleam of half-remembered gladness. But the wild fiddler on his feet of flame Vanished and went the secret way he came.
I heard--'twas on a morning, but when it was and where, Except that well I heard it, I neither know nor care-- I heard, and, oh, the sunlight was shining in the blue, A little water singing as little waters do.
At Lechlade and at Buscot, where Summer days are long, The tiny rills and ripples they tremble into song; And where the silver Windrush brings down her liquid gems, There's music in the wavelets she tosses to the Thames.
The eddies have an air too, and brave it is and blithe; I think I may have heard it that day at Bablockhythe; And where the Eynsham weir-fall breaks out in rainbow spray The Evenlode comes singing to join the pretty play.
But where I heard that music I cannot rightly tell; I only know I heard it, and that I know full well: I heard a little water, and, oh, the sky was blue, A little water singing as little waters do.