Down through bare fields and by many a hedgerow the streams from the high country flow <br />Down to join and swell the big river that into a huge water-way grow <br />On it's long journey to the ocean it babbles along night and day <br />From it's birth-place in the high valley saltwater seems quite a long way, <br />It has outlived generations of people the Seasons they come and they go <br />How old is the very old river the answer anyone does not know <br />Perhaps it has been flowing forever millions of years before the first human was born <br />By the hedges and through the old fields forever it has babbled on since time's first morn, <br />The old poets have sung of the river the river that has not aged in time <br />Their bones long resting in Earth's bosom and the river will outlive their rhyme <br />It babbles on downland forever from the high Country to the vast sea <br />And when people talk of the river they do not talk of mortality, <br />The human life span it seems such a short span the Seasons they come and they go <br />But the river born in the high country forever to the ocean flow.<br /><br />Francis Duggan<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-river-16/
