by Harry Kemp
I thought my garden finished. I beheld
Each bush bee-visited; a green charm quelled
The louder winds to music; soft boughs made
Patches of silver dusk and purple shade—
And yet I felt a lack of something still.
There was a little, sleepy-footed rill
That lapsed among sun-burnished stones, where slept
Fish, rainbow-scaled, while dragon-flies, adept,
Balanced on bending grass.
All perfect? No.
My garden lacked a fountain's upward flow.
I coaxed the brook's young Naiad to resign
Her meadow wildness, building her a shrine
Of worship, where each ravished waif of air
Might wanton in the brightness of her hair.
So here my fountain flows, loved of the wind,
To every vagrant, aimless gust inclined,
Yet constant ever to its source. It greets
The face of morning, wavering windy sheets
Of woven silver; sheer it climbs the noon,
A shaft of bronze; and underneath the moon
It sleeps in pearl and opal. In the storm
It streams far out, a wild, gray, blowing form;
While on calm days it heaps above the lake,—
Pelting the dreaming lilies half awake,
And pattering jewels on each wide, green frond,—
Recurrent pyramids of diamond!