Classic Poem

Vast, watery fields of slender waving grass;
Near by, a green and matted mangrove swamp;
Huge live-oak limbs where verdant creepers romp,
And orchids hang red flowers in a mass;
A river in a bramble-tangled pass,
Where trumpet blossoms swing in scarlet pomp;
Great bamboo thickets, oozy, dark and damp,
And starry lilies in a green morass.

White cranes on yonder cypress boughs alight,
An old gray heron stalks demure and slow;
Then gliding through the gray-mossed forest's night,
A water-snake dives in the dim bayou.
I wonder, as the reptile sinks from sight,
What monster shapes are swimming down below.