Dull masses of dense green, The forests range their sombre platforms; Between them silently, like spirit, The river finds its own mysterious path. Loosely the river sways out, backward, forward, Always fretting the outer side; Shunning the invisible focus of each crescent, Seeking to spread into shining loops over fields. Like an enormous serpent, dilating, uncoiling, Displaying a broad scaly back of earth-smeared gold; Swaying out sinuously between the dull motionless forests, As molten metal might glide down the lip of a vase of dark bronze; It goes, while the steamboat drifting out upon it, Seems now to be floating not only outwards but upwards; In the flight of a petal detached and gradually moving skyward Above the pink explosion of the calyx of the dawn. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...RUINES OF ROME by JOACHIM DU BELLAY FOR THE INAUGURATION OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL, CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY by WALT WHITMAN THRENODY by THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES BLIND MAN'S BUFF by WILLIAM BLAKE THE CALL by FRANCIS WILLIAM BOURDILLON |