How beautiful the rain as it twinkles to the plain,
Like a million little jewels of the sun!
How it sparkles in the cup that the lily holdeth up,
Till the fairy people laugh again to see it overrun!
What a diamond is the dew, as it catches every hue
Of the leaflet and the petal where it lies!
And the grasses of the field and the quickened mosses yield,
In an odor as of thankfulness, their morning sacrifice.
Where the subtle spider twines all his geometric lines
Into nettings to confront the coming breeze,
How the curdled vapor beads every thread with jewel-seeds,
Irisdescent [sic] in the sunlight, like Aladdin’s magic trees!
How delightful is the rill, as it trickles from the hill,
With a glimmer through the nodding of the ferns,
Like the charity of men that, if hidden, shows again
In the fresher light that ever seems to hide it where it burns.
What a liquid twinkle drips from the mower’s mossy lips,
And the lips below, as mossy, of the well,
Where the father and the child, and the maiden undefiled,
From the oaken bucket fill their cup of crystal hydromel!
Oh! the water, everywhere, from the rock and from the air,
Is a beauty that is better than we know.
‘'Tis the Angel of the Lord to the reaper and the sward,
And the halo on her forehead is his glory-tinted bow!
Water Beauties