At the alder-darkened brink Where the stream slows to a lucid jet I lean to the water, dinting its top with sweat, And see, before I can drink, A startled inchling trout Of spotted near-transparency, Trawling a shadow solider than he. He swerves now, darting out To where, in a flicked slew Of sparks and glittering silt, he weaves Through stream-bed rocks, disturbing foundered leaves, And butts then out of view Beneath a sliding glass Crazed by the skimming of a brace Of burnished dragon-flies across its face, In which deep cloudlets pass And a white precipice Of mirrored birch-trees plunges down Toward where the azures of the zenith drown. How shall I drink all this? Joy’s trick is to supply Dry lips with what can cool and slake, Leaving them dumbstruck also with an ache Nothing can satisfy.