A Song on the Water

                      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.

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