WHERE so dark and still Slept the water, never changing, From the glad sport in the meadows Oft I turned me. Fear would strike me chill On the clearest day in summer, Yet I loved to stand and ponder Hours together By the tarred bridge rail -- There the lockman's vine-clad window, Mirrored in the tomb-like water, Stared in silence Till, deformed and pale In the sunken cavern shadows, One by one imagined demons Scowled upon me. Barges passed me by, With their unknown surly masters And small cabins, whereon some rude Hand had painted Trees and castles high. Cheerly stepped the towing horses, And the women sung their children Into slumber. Barges, too, I saw Drowned in mud, drowned, drowned long ages, Their grey ribs but seen in summer, Their names never: In whose silted maw Swarmed great eels, the priests of darkness, Old as they, who came at midnight To destroy me. Like one blind and lame Who by some new sense has vision And strikes deadlier than the strongest Went this water. Many an angler came, Went his ways; and I would know them, Some would smile and give me greeting, Some kept silence -- Most, one old dragoon Who had never a morning hallo, But with stony eye strode onward Till the water, On a silent noon, That had watched him long, commanded: Whom he answered, leaping headlong To self-murder. "Fear and fly the spell," Thus my spirit sang beside me; Then once more I ranged the meadows, Yet still brooded, When the threefold knell Sounded through the haze of harvest -- Who had found the lame blind water Swift and seeing? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TO PFRIMMER (LINES ON READING 'DRIFTWOOD') by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR FUZZY-WUZZY' (SOUDAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE) by RUDYARD KIPLING ROUNDEL by FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS WATER WOMAN by JOSEPH AUSLANDER A STRANGER IN SEYTHOPOLIS by KATHARINE LEE BATES I THINK I KNOW NO FINER THINGS THAN DOGS by HALLY CARRINGTON BRENT IN DER FREMDE by ROBERT SEYMOUR BRIDGES |