KINGFISHER by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN

THE eastern God with natural blessing gleams
Upon our temple of another faith,
And wakes our world; our hills, our streams,
Farms, anvils all begin afresh. Each wraith
That even in this sweet glade
Clings with the bat and moth below night's covert shade
Is sent away; fast flit the shoal
Of water-ghosts, they end their white patrol
Of foam-flowered whirlpools; none deny
That ancient, sharp, and fearless Eye.

Yet here, as morning takes in her young hands
The lilies, and to gild her coloured bands
Desires those sunny flashes from the swim
Of naiad-ripples over the warm sands,
Or where the wave looks cherry-ripe or blue
In its fair answer to the flowery shore,
An eye peers through
The willow-lattice, capturing much more
My fancy; while on that green farther ledge
The gray mare bites the alder and cool sedge,
This eye across the wide clear river burns,
And in the rosy glass of bloom discerns.
Then sapphire lightning falls, the waters burst,
The lightning leaps reversed,
And with his eye's quick distant prize
The kingfisher returns.

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