Dull masses of dense green, The forests range their sombre platforms; Between them silently, like spirit, The river finds its own mysterious path. Loosely the river sways out, backward, forward, Always fretting the outer side; Shunning the invisible focus of each crescent, Seeking to spread into shining loops over fields. Like an enormous serpent, dilating, uncoiling, Displaying a broad scaly back of earth-smeared gold; Swaying out sinuously between the dull motionless forests, As molten metal might glide down the lip of a vase of dark bronze; It goes, while the steamboat drifting out upon it, Seems now to be floating not only outwards but upwards; In the flight of a petal detached and gradually moving skyward Above the pink explosion of the calyx of the dawn. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE WATER WHEEL by ABU ABD ALLAH THE HORSE THIEF by WILLIAM ROSE BENET FACE TO FACE by RICHARD EUGENE BURTON VERSES DESIGNED FOR A WATCH CASE by JOHN BYROM OLNEY HYMNS: 16. THE SOWER by WILLIAM COWPER ON A SPANIEL, CALLED BEAU, KILLING A YOUNG BIRD by WILLIAM COWPER |