Poem A Day

Hayeswater

by Matthew Arnold

A region desolate and wild.

Black, chafing water: and afloat,

And lonely as a truant child

In a waste wood, a single boat:

No mast, no sails are set thereon;

It moves, but never moveth on:

And welters like a human thing

Amid the wild waves weltering.

Behind, a buried vale doth sleep,

Far down the torrent cleaves its way:

In front the dumb rock rises steep,

A fretted wall of blue and grey;

Of shooting cliff and crumbled stone

With many a wild weed overgrown:

All else, black water: and afloat,

One rood from shore, that single boat.

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Poem A Day

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