Where the Shining Way leads on,
Thro’ the garden, o’er the lawn,
Past the road and down the hill,
There’s a place so strange and still,
Nothing like the world we see
Every morning, you and me.
There we found a little pond
Edged with rushes, and beyond
Grow the marshes, green and high.
Wild rice climbing to the sky,
Fragrant flag and iris beds
Fringed with purple arrow-heads.
Little moving waves of air
Quiver o’er the grasses fair;
On the shining water blue
Broad round leaves are shining too;
Lilies, dreaming in the sun—
From the bank I peeped in one,
And the petals, wide apart,
Showed a sun within its heart.
And the rushes tall and free,
Like a forest seemed to me,
With the rice-trees waving ’round.
But the silence! Not a sound!
Very still the lilies lay
In the golden summer day.
Sudden, from the wide blue sky,
Whirred a monster Dragon-Fly.
Proudly, all alone he came,
Armor polished to a flame
On his body, and his wings,
Gauzy, wondrous, shining things,
Seemed to catch the water’s blue,
And the yellow sunbeams, too.
He’s a hermit, and the spot
We had found, it seems, was not
All our own, for here he lives
On the sweet the iris gives,
And each day he sallies forth,
East and west and south and north,
Tilting like a tourney knight,
Putting all his foes to flight.
Never dares a grasshopper
Or a cricket there to stir,
While the water-bugs at play,
When they see him, scud away.
And his duty is to keep
Sentry, while the lilies sleep.
So that every harmful thing,
Bats that bite, and gnats that sting,
Crawling worm and robber bee
From his shining lance must flee.