Skip to main content
Water is best, the golden poet sings:
Not song itself's a match for her, nor gold;
A glory and a riddle, million-fold
And one, the jewel of created things.

Of vap'rous worlds unwoven a crystal thread,
The savourless clean sum of human savours
(Dew of the flint, true born the flint she favours)
Quick as a wish she fills the fountain-head.
Wonder of day and wonder of the night
Close in her eye when sudden from the core
Of things to be and things to be no more
She comes, an angel of the infinite;
A disimprisoned vein of cheerfulness
To skid mercurial down the granite shelves:
And laughter, laughter! all her many selves
A single mind of laughter still confess.
The morning riot passing from her slows
To fuller rhythms touch'd with human sense
Of Whither doubted and forgotten Whence,
And then serenely riper as she goes
The flawless body of her flood conceives
By the huge bewild'ring sun and inly breeds
A spawn of dancing lights to thrid the weeds,
Mad eyes a-twinkle under the margin-eaves.
Rude storms her prone crystalline webs entangle;
She grinds her banks and spits above her brims
Rolling a battlefield of sappy limbs
Which bacchant winds in shrieking forests mangle.
By next day's noon to smooth oblivion woo'd
Mute in the dusk-in-daylight of her dreaming
She fills the ear, and dead to motion seeming
Moves down the meditative solitude.

And last — — . But oh! the human wit avails
But to corrupt with thinking overlong,
And surfeit cankers gold and poisons song.
Water, I dare to hail thee as he hails
At peace with God, with Nature hand-in-glove,
The little sister of a clearer-soul'd
Than ever walked, and walking blest the mould,
The humble saint who praises thee for love.
Rate this poem
No votes yet