THE SHINING POND
Against the sky’s pale rim
The cottage and the trees stood dim.
But in the glow,
More tense,
Of the little shining pond that lay below,
The darkened outlines were drawn clear,
Sharp to my sense.
And gazing there
My vision became
Empty and passive, no more than a frame
For the silver water that burned and burned ....
At last, when I turned,
My soul was a mirror, on whose surface lay
Without a flaw
Each momentary thing I saw,—
Then slipped away.
And I heard
Each faint noise,
Hardly listening.
I heard
The noise of the cockchafers around me,—
Not only the sound
As they boomed in their flight,
Above, in the dim light,
But as they busily stirred
Loosening
Heavy body and horny wing,
Blundering free
Out of the thicket of the may-tree.
I saw the flower look up pale-eyed
From the tangled grass,
And the pale moth climb up, half awake, with quivering wing,
And still to the side
Of the sedges cling,—
Then like a ghost through the brown air pass.
And nowhere,
Everywhere,
The fall,
Hollow and clear,
Of the cuckoo’s sounding call.
And yet so quiet ... every tree
(But most the poplar tree,
Shooting up
Confidently
To the sky’s white cup)
Appeared eternal.
Suddenly, out beyond
The dark, I heard a chime.
It told of eternity, not of time,
It told that the quiet hour was one
With the quiet ages gone,
With the quiet hours to be
Eternally.
Shadow crept over the shining pond.
I fell into a deep
Trance, an illumined sleep.