Explore "The Old Water Mill" by Madison Cawein on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ Wild ridge on ridge the wooded hills arise, / Between whose breezy vistas gulfs of skies / Pilot great clouds like towering argosies, / And hawk and buzzard breast the azure breeze. / With many a foaming fall and glimmering reach / Of placid murmur, under elm and beech, / The creek goes twinkling through long gleams and glooms / Of woodland quiet, summered with perfumes: / The creek, in whose clear shallows minnow-schools / Glitter or dart; and by whose deeper pools / The blue kingfishers and the herons haunt; / That, often startled from the freckled flaunt / Of blackberry-lilies -- where they feed or hide -- / Trail a lank flight along the forestside / With eery clangor. Here a sycamore / Smooth, wave-uprooted, builds from shore to shore / A headlong bridge; and there, a storm-hurled oak / Lays a long dam, where sand and gravel choke.
/ The water's lazy way. Here mistflower blurs / Its bit of heaven; there the ox-eye stirs / Its gloaming hues of pearl and gold; and here, / A gray, cool stain, like dawn's own atmosphere, / The dim wild carrot lifts its crumpled crest: / And over all, at slender flight or rest, / The dragonflies, like coruscating rays / Of lapis-lazuli and chrysoprase, / Drowsily sparkle through the summer days: / And, dewlap-deep, here from the noontide heat / The bell-hung cattle find a cool retreat; / And through the willows girdling the hill, / Now far, now near, borne as the soft winds will, / Comes the low rushing of the water-mill.