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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE WATERS, by PATRICK MACGILL Poet's Biography
First Line: Placid it lies as death and passionless as the grave
Last Line: Till their pent-up rage broke forth on the men who curbed their will.
Subject(s): Floods; Water
First Line: Placid it lies as death and passionless as the grave
Last Line: Till their pent-up rage broke forth on the men who curbed their will.
Subject(s): Floods; Water
PLACID it lies as death and passionless as the grave,
With the pallid moonbeams flung like corpse-lights o'er its wave,
Stuck in the hunch-backed hill, sluggish, silent, apart,
Brooding in durance vile, sad in its inmost heart,
Whimpering around the face, the sluice and the hard-fast wall,
The great dam slumbers alone, sore of its endless thrall —
Down at the slimy base men toil in the dreary pit,
Under the shadow of night, cowering under it.
Freed from their prison walls, glad from the pent-up place,
Down the trough of the hill streamlets on streamlets race
Mad with the joy they feel, full of a wild desire,
Springing from ledge to ledge in molten silvery fire.
One by one they rise, the makeshift, rough-cast huts,
Where the knoll across the run of the little waters juts,
Here by the hot-plate's glow the shivering, shabby tramp
Spells out the "Betting News" in the glare of the naphtha lamp,
One man handles his gold, another writes to his love,
In the reeking gloomy hut in the shade of the dam above,
A dozen crowd to the school, watching the gamblers play —
A crash on the face of the hill, and the maddened dam gives way!
A swirl, and the walls go down, the walls and the watchers both,
A screech as the girders jamb — a prayer that is half an oath;
The sluggish sand-hole spews, swallows and spews again,
The cesspool fills and chokes the throat of the sated drain.
The flood breaks over the wall, foaming in ecstasy,
The black mud scurries before as it shivers the sluices free,
The mountain shrubs uptorn, effortless share its path,
It madly whirls on the bend in all its riotous wrath.
"Winning! a running flush — Christ! has the dam gone loose!"
The tramp gets up with a curse, grasping his "Betting News,"
The gamblers gather their stakes, curious, undismayed,
The miser grabs at his wealth, the lover rises afraid,
The bulging wall breaks in, the roof falls through at a blow,
A moment to think of a prayer, and breathe it before they go —
A moment, and then the flood reels through the broken wall,
Caught like fleas in the fire, they splutter and choke and fall —
Down the face of the hill, the waters roar as they spread,
Bearing in braggart glee their freight of unshriven dead.
They builded a wall of stone with cunning, patience and skill,
And the waters sulked behind brooding on every ill,
Till their pent-up rage broke forth on the men who curbed their will.
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