The Two Streams
Behold the rocky wall
That down its sloping sides
Pours the swift rain-drops, blending, as they fall,
In rushing river-tides!
Yon stream, whose sources run
Turned by a pebble's edge,
Is Athabasca, rolling toward the sun
Through the cleft mountain-ledge.
The slender rill had strayed,
But for the slanting stone,
To evening's ocean, with the tangled braid
Of foam-flecked Oregon.
So from the heights of Will
Life's parting stream descends,
And, as a moment turns its slender rill,
Each widening torrent bends, —
From the same cradle's side,
From the same mother's knee, —
One to long darkness and the frozen tide,
One to the Peaceful Sea!
Composition date is unknown - the above date represents the first publication date.The lyrical form of this poem is abab.1. "[In his paper, My Hunt after the Captain, Dr. Holmes has a paragraph upon an alleged plagiarism in this poem. It will be found in the notes at the end of this volume.]" (pp. 99-100)"When a little poem called The Two Streamswas first printed, a writer in the New YorkEvening Post virtually accused the author of itof borrowing the thought from a baccalaureate sermon of President Hopkins of Williamstown,and printed a quotation from that discourse,which, as I thought, a thief or catchpoll mightwell consider as establishing a fair presumptionthat it was so borrowed. I was at the sametime wholly unconscious of having met withthe discourse or the sentence which the verseswere most like, nor do I believe I ever had seenor heard either. Some time after this,happening to meet my eloquent cousin, WendellPhillips, I mentioned the fact to him, and he told me that he had once used the special image said to be borrowed, in a discourse delivered at Williamstown. On relating this to my friendMr. Buchanan Read, he informed me that hetoo had used the image, -- perhaps referring to hispoem called The Twins. He thought Tennysonhad used it also. The parting of the streams on the Alps is poetically elaborated in a passageattributed to `M. Loisne,' printed in the Boston Evening Transcript for Oct. 23,1859. Captain, afterwards Sir Francis Head, speaks of the showers parting on the Cordilleras, one portion going to the Atlantic, one to the Pacific.I found the image running loose in my mind, without a halter. It suggested itself as an illustration of the will, and I worked the poem out by the aid of Mitchell's School Atlas. Thespores of a great many ideas are floating aboutin the atmosphere. We no more know where the lichenswhich eat the names off from the gravestones borrowed the germs that gave thembirth. The two match-boxes were just alike\;but neither was a plagiarism. -- My Hunt after`the Captain,' pp. 45, 46." (p. 340)7. Athabasca: a river running north from the eastern side of the Rocky mountains.12. Oregon: an old name for the south-running Columbia River, the source for which is north on the other side of these mountains from the Athabaska River.
