Softly the water ripples <br />Against the canoe's curving side, <br />Softly the birch trees rustle <br />Flinging over us branches wide. <br /> <br />Softly the moon glints and glistens <br />As the water takes and leaves, <br />Like golden ears of corn <br />Which fall from loose-bound sheaves, <br /> <br />Or like the snow-white petals <br />Which drop from an overblown rose, <br />When Summer ripens to Autumn <br />And the freighted year must close. <br /> <br />From the shore come the scents of a garden, <br />And between a gap in the trees <br />A proud white statue glimmers <br />In cold, disdainful ease. <br /> <br />The child of a southern people, <br />The thought of an alien race, <br />What does she in this pale, northern garden, <br />How reconcile it with her grace? <br /> <br />But the moon in her wayward beauty <br />Is ever and always the same, <br />As lovely as when upon Latmos <br />She watched till Endymion came. <br /> <br />Through the water the moon writes her legends <br />In light, on the smooth, wet sand; <br />They endure for a moment, and vanish, <br />And no one may understand. <br /> <br />All round us the secret of Nature <br />Is telling itself to our sight, <br />We may guess at her meaning but never <br />Can know the full mystery of night. <br /> <br />But her power of enchantment is on us, <br />We bow to the spell which she weaves, <br />Made up of the murmur of waves <br />And the manifold whisper of leaves.<br /><br />Amy Lowell<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/loon-point/
