Under The Waterfall
by Thomas Hardy
'Whenever I plunge my arm, like this,
In a basin of water, I never miss
The sweet sharp sense of a fugitive day
Fetched back from its thickening shroud of gray.
Hence the only prime
And real love-rhyme
That I know by heart,
And that leaves no smart,
Is the purl of a little valley fall
About three spans wide and two spans tall
Over a table of solid rock,
And into a scoop of the self-same block;
The purl of a runlet that never ceases
In stir of kingdoms, in wars, in peaces;
With a hollow boiling voice it speaks
And has spoken since hills were turfless peaks.'
'And why gives this the only prime
Idea to you of a real love-rhyme?
And why does plunging your arm in a bowl
Full of spring water, bring throbs to your soul?'
'Well, under the fall, in a crease of the stone,
Though precisely where none ever has known,
Jammed darkly, nothing to show how prized,
And by now with its smoothness opalized,
Is a grinking glass:
For, down that pass
My lover and I
Walked under a sky
Of blue with a leaf-wove awning of green,
In the burn of August, to paint the scene,
And we placed our basket of fruit and wine
By the runlet's rim, where we sat to dine;
And when we had drunk from the glass together,
Arched by the oak-copse from the weather,
I held the vessel to rinse in the fall,
Where it slipped, and it sank, and was past recall,
Though we stooped and plumbed the little abyss
With long bared arms. There the glass still is.
And, as said, if I thrust my arm below
Cold water in a basin or bowl, a throe
From the past awakens a sense of that time,
And the glass we used, and the cascade's rhyme.
The basin seems the pool, and its edge
The hard smooth face of the brook-side ledge,
And the leafy pattern of china-ware
The hanging plants that were bathing there.
'By night, by day, when it shines or lours,
There lies intact that chalice of ours,
And its presence adds to the rhyme of love
Persistently sung by the fall above.
No lip has touched it since his and mine
In turns therefrom sipped lovers' wine.'
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with the title July 2011. You can bookmark this page URL http://tempepoetry.blogspot.com/2011/07/under-watter-by-thomas-hardy.html. Thanks!
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![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2MYr_EqSZ-2RDY-En-_mh7TRSRzLwcMH4XBy10ige5ucM5jp7-wJppYhnXlpLnLMcltvUZSMNUfk1uhuiXTnEse6dZ4Rcqh0b5JpAqdvLLSqCaGib0I86lsjffTo4Bl8XPuve_AFH-4U4/s1600/6b06fbad4725.jpg"height="600"width="550"><br /><br /><center><b><font size=4><font color=red>Bienvenida<br /><font color=white>Mario Benedetti<br /><br /><font color=orange>Se me ocurre que vas a llegar distinta <br />no exactamente más linda<br />ni más fuerte<br />ni más docil<br />ni más cauta<br />tan solo que vas a llegar distinta<br />como si esta temporada de no verme<br />te hubiera sorprendido a vos también<br />quizá porque sabes<br />cómo te pienso y te enumero<br /><br /><font color=aqua>después de todo la nostalgia existe<br />aunque no lloremos en los andenes fantasmales<br />ni sobre las almohadas de candor<br />ni bajo el cielo opaco<br /><br />yo nostalgio<br />tu nostalgias<br />y cómo me revienta que él nostalgie<br /><br /><font color=aquamarine>tu rostro es la vanguardia<br />tal vez llega primero<br />porque lo pinto en las paredes<br />con trazos invisibles y seguros<br /><br />no olvides que tu rostro<br />me mira como pueblo<br />sonríe y rabia y canta<br />como pueblo<br />y eso te da una lumbre<br />inapagable<br />ahora no tengo dudas<br />vas a llegar distinta y con señales<br />con nuevas<br />con hondura<br />con franqueza<br /><br />sé que voy a quererte sin preguntas<br />sé que vas a quererme sin respuestas.
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