When autumn winds the river grieve,
And autumn mists about it creep,
The river maids all shivering leave
The stream, and singing, sink to sleep.
The keen-toothed wind, the bitter snow
Alike are impotent to break
The spell of sleep that laid them low—
The lovely ladies will not wake.
But when the spring with lavish grace
Strews blossom on the river's breast,
Flowers fall upon each sleeping face
And break the deep and dreamless rest.
Then with white arms that gleam afar
Through alders green and willows gray,
They rise where sedge and iris are,
And laugh beneath the blossomed May.
They lie beside the river's edge,
By fields with buttercups a-blaze;
They whisper in the whispering sedge,
They say the spell the cuckoo says.
And when they hear the nightingale
And see the blossomed hawthorn tree,
What time the orchard pink grows pale—
The river maidens beckon me.
Through all the city's smoke appear
White arms and golden hair a-gleam,
And through the noise of life I hear
"Come back—to the enchanted stream.
"Come back to water, wood and weir!
See what the summer has to show!
Come back, come back—we too are here."
I hear them calling, and I go.
But when once more my dripping oar
Makes music on the dreaming air,
I vainly look to stream and shore
For those white arms that lured me there.
I listen to the singing weir,
I hold my breath where thrushes are,
But I can never, never hear
The voice that called me from afar.
Only when spring grows fair next year,
Even where sin and cities be,
I know what voices I shall hear,
And what white arms will beckon me.