High, high above so many rocks they seemed to lie:
Deep back into the park, beyond the places of
So
much adventuring : on chasms of schist, split by
Sheer blows of archaic force, we clambered toward the sun
And dared and chose or sulked alone and sometimes wondered.
Back toward the Ramble, there, like a hidden garden,
The three of them, ringing the sunlight reflected in their flood
In full spring, dancing, remain beyond the reaches of darkness.
The ponds, the three, have they departed?
I sought them once in the summer; remembering treacheries
Of remembrance, how what never occurred can usurp the true
Event's privileges, warned that they might not be there,
I climbed upward, in June's more distant margin, through
Tangles of greeny brush towards th.e places they used
To lie among-past where the twisting path that each winter
Revealed as Snake Hill, white, dangerous and cruel,
Clung to the curving rise, tender, asphalted, innocent,
Black, in the green of summer's wisdom.
And there they were, still braiding together the rippling water,
Leaping into view as I parted a budding hedge
Like some famous painting one finally sees, abroad,
At the end of a great corridor, bound with a connection
Stronger than merely the old rope of total resemblance
To the reproductions of it one had always known.
As, leaping into view, three graces, dancing, bending
Naked arms in a circle of girl, redeem the mere hopes
That art books' intimations spoke.
And there they were: the unroaring water flashed silver,
And high, hot light shot up from the three shallow bowls,
Surfaces gently amove, one to another spilled:
One giving, one accepting, one returning that flow,
The benefits of the surface, light and awareness thrown
Off them, through the eye, to the overseeing mind–
And all this happening with barely a trace of motion
Across their faces, as if the world had too much light
Ever to mirror in water shining.
As if the three must be forever almost still,
Fixed like an image so well known that memory
Need never reanimate it even for an instant,
