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THE HAYSWATER BOAT, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: A region desolate and wild
Last Line: What living hand hath brought it here?
Variant Title(s): Hayswater
Subject(s): Boats


A REGION desolate and wild,
Black, chafing water: and afloat,
And lonely as a truant child
In a waste wood, a single boat:
No mast, no sails are set thereon;
It moves, but never moveth on:
And welters like a human thing
Amid the wild waves weltering.

Behind, a buried vale doth sleep,
Far down the torrent cleaves its way:
In front the dumb rock rises steep,
A fretted wall of blue and grey;
Of shooting cliff and crumbled stone
With many a wild weed overgrown:
All else, black water: and afloat,
One rood from shore, that single boat.

Last night the wind was up and strong;
The grey-streak'd waters labour still:
The strong blast brought a pigmy throng
From that mild hollow in the hill;
From those twin brooks, that beached strand
So featly strewn with drifted sand;
From those weird domes of mounded green
That spot the solitary scene.

This boat they found against the shore:
The glossy rushes nodded by.
One rood from land they push'd, no more;
Then rested, listening silently.
The loud rains lash'd the mountain's crown,
The grating shingle straggled down:
All night they sate; then stole away,
And left it rocking in the bay.

Last night?--I look'd, the sky was clear.
The boat was old, a batter'd boat.
In sooth, it seems a hundred year
Since that strange crew did ride afloat.
The boat hath drifted in the bay--
The oars have moulder'd as they lay--
The rudder swings--yet none doth steer.
What living hand hath brought it here?





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