"From shadows of rich oaks outpeer The moss-green bastions of the weir, Where the quick dipper forages In elver-peopled crevices, And a small runlet trickling down the sluice Gossamer music tires not to unloose.Else round the broad pool’s hush Nothing stirs, Unless sometimes a straggling heifer crush Through the thronged spinney whence the pheasant whirs;Or martins in a flash Come with wild mirth to dip their magical wings, While in the shallow some doomed bulrush swings At whose hid root the diver vole’s teeth gnash.And nigh this toppling reed, still as the dead The great pike lies, the murderous patriarch Watching the waterpit sheer-shelving dark, Where through the plash his lithe bright vassals thread.The rose-finned roach and bluish bream And staring ruffe steal up the stream Hard by their glutted tyrant, now Still as a sunken bough.He on the sandbank lies, Sunning himself long hours With stony gorgon eyes: Westward the hot sun lowers.Sudden the gray pike changes, and quivering poises for slaughter; Intense terror wakens around him, the shoals scud awry, but there chances A club unsuspecting; the prowling fins quicken, in fury he lances; And the miller that opens the hatch stands amazed at the whirl in the water."