DOWN-SLIPPING Time, sweet, swift, and shallow stream, Here, like a boulder, lies this afternoon Across your eager flow. So you shall stay, Deepened and dammed, to let me breathe and be. Your troubled fluency, your running gleam Shall pause, and circle idly, still and clear: The while I lie and search your glassy pool Where, gently coiling in their lazy round, Unseparable minutes drift and swim, Eddy and rise and brim. And I will see How many crystal bubbles of slack Time The mind can hold and cherish in one @3Now!@1 Now, for one conscious vacancy of sense, The stream is gathered in a deepening pond, Not a mere moving mirror. Through the sharp Correct reflection of the standing scene The mind can dip, and cleanse itself with rest, And see, slow spinning in the lucid gold, Your liquid motes, imperishable Time. It cannot be. The runnel slips away: The clear smooth downward sluice begins again, More brightly slanting for that trembling pause, Leaving the sense its conscious vague unease As when a sonnet flashes on the mind, Trembles and burns an instant, and is gone. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...COMMON DUST by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON SAPPHO AND PHAON: 2. THE TEMPLE OF CHASTITY by MARY DARBY ROBINSON THE DRUM: THE NARRATIVE OF THE DEMON OF TEDWORTH by EDITH SITWELL THE DESTINY OF GENIUS by MARIA ABDY THE STRAYED REVELLER by MATTHEW ARNOLD A TRINITY OF MOTHERHOOD by FRED CLARE BALDWIN |