Green growths of mosses drip and bead
Around the granite brink;
And 'twixt the isles of water-weed
The wood-birds dip and drink;
Slow efts about the edges sleep;
Swift-darting water-flies
Shoot on the surface; down the deep
Dark fishes gloom and rise.
Who knows what lurks beneath the tide?
Who knows what tale? Belike
Those "antres vast" and shadows hide
Some patriarchal pike —
Some tough old tyrant, wrinkled-jawed,
For whom the sky, the earth,
Have but for aim to look on awed,
And watch him wax in girth —
Hard monarch there, by right of might,
An ageless autocrat,
Whose "good old rule" is "Appetite,
And subjects fresh and fat;"
While they — poor things —in wan despair
Still hope for years in him,
And, dying, hand from heir to heir
The day undawned and dim,
When the pond’s terror too must go;
Or, creeping in by stealth,
A bolder race, at one fell blow,
Shall found a commonwealth.
Who knows? Meanwhile the mosses bead
Around the granite brink,
And 'twixt the isles of water-weed
The wood-birds dip and drink.
