142
MARIUS BEWLEY
seems to me so beautifully employed that one is grateful for it as
for the clear water it describes. It is a metaphysical poem in the
strictest sense of the term, but its meaning is so perfectly contained
in its lines that we experience it without the effort of intellectual
analysis, almost beyond thought's dimension. In "The End of the
Rainbow," time seemed to be the ultimate actor, almost the ground
and meaning of experience itself. But the verses below are beautiful
because they live in a world of perception that transcends time, a
world in which experience is once again focused at its human
center:
Over a ground of slate and light gravel,
Clear water, so shallow that one can see
The numerous springs moving their mouths of sand,'
And the dark trout are clearly to be seen,
Swimming this water which is color of air
So that the fish appear suspended nowhere and
In nothing. With a delicate bend and reflex
Of their tails the trout slowly glide
From the shadowy side into the light, so clear,
And back again into the shadows; slow
And so definit e, like thought emerging
Into a clear place in the mind, then going back,
Exchanging shape for shade. Now and again
One fish glides into the center of the pool
And hangs between the surface and the slate
For selieral minutes without moving, like
A silence in a dream; and when I stand
At such a time, observing this, my life,
Seems to have been suddenly moved a great
Distance away on every side, as though
The quietest thought of all stood in the pale
Watery light alone, and was no more
My own than the speckled trout I stare upon
All but unseeing.
Marius Bewley
