A brook, with easy current, murmured near;

Water so cool and clear

The peasants drink not from the humble well,

Which they with sacrifice of rural pride,

Have wedded to the cocoa-grove beside;

Nor tanks of costliest masonry dispense

To those in towns who dwell,

The work of Kings, in their beneficence.

Fed by perpetual springs, a small lagoon,

Pellucid, deep, and still, in silence join’d

And swell’d the passing stream. Like burnish’d steel

Glowing, it lay beneath the eye of noon;

And when the breezes, in their play,

Ruffled the darkening surface, then, with gleam

Of sudden light, around the lotus stem

It rippled, and the sacred flowers that crown

The lakelet with their roseate beauty, ride,

In gentlest waving rock’d, from side to side;

And as the wind upheaves

Their broad and buoyant weight, the glossy leaves

Flap on the twinkling waters, up and down.