A Song on the Water

Thomas Lovell Beddoes

                      I.
As mad sexton’s bell, tolling
For earth’s loveliest daughter,
Night’s dumbness breaks rolling
               Ghostily:
   So our boat breaks the water
   Witchingly.

                      II.
As her look the dream troubles
Of her tearful-eyed lover,
So our sails in the bubbles
   Ghostily
   Are mirrored, and hover
   Moonily.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on October 24, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

Thomas Lovell Beddoes was an English poet, playwright, and physician. His works include The Bride’s Tragedy (F. C. & J. Rivington, 1822), Death’s Jest Book (T. F. Kelsall, 1850), and Poems by the Late Thomas Lovell Beddoes (William Pickering, 1851). He died on January 26, 1849.

About Thomas Lovell Beddoes

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About this Poem

“A Song on the Water” appeared in Poems by the Late Thomas Lovell Beddoes (William Pickering, 1851).

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A Crocodile

Hard by the lilied Nile I saw
A duskish river-dragon stretched along,
The brown habergeon of his limbs enamelled
With sanguine almandines and rainy pearl:
And on his back there lay a young one sleeping,
No bigger than a mouse; with eyes like beads,
And a small fragment of its speckled egg
Remaining on its harmless, pulpy snout;
A thing to laugh at, as it gaped to catch
The baulking merry flies. In the iron jaws
Of the great devil-beast, like a pale soul
Fluttering in rocky hell, lightsomely flew
A snowy trochilus, with roseate beak
Tearing the hairy leeches from his throat.

Thomas Lovell Beddoes

1935

Dirge

We do lie beneath the grass  
    In the moonlight, in the shade  
  Of the yew-tree. They that pass  
    Hear us not. We are afraid  
      They would envy our delight,
      In our graves by glow-worm night.  
Come follow us, and smile as we;  
    We sail to the rock in the ancient waves,  
Where the snow falls by thousands into the sea,  
    And the drown'd and the shipwreck'd have happy graves.

Thomas Lovell Beddoes

1851

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A Song on the Water

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