Sleep-walking vapor, like a visitant ghost,
            Hovers above a lake
Of Tennysonian calm just before dawn.
Inverted trees and boulders waver and coast
In polished darkness. Glints of silver break
Among the liquid leafage, and then are gone.

Everything’s doused and diamonded with wet.
            A cobweb, woven taut
On bending stanchion frames of tentpole grass,
Sags like at trampoline or firemen’s net
With all the glitter and riches it has caught,
Each drop a paper weight of Steuben glass.

No birdsong yet, no cricket, nor does the trout
            Explode in water-scrolls
For a skimming fly. All that is yet to come.
Things are as still and motionless throughout
The universe as ancient Chinese bowls,
And nature is magnificently dumb.

Why does this so much stir me, like a code
            Or muffled intimation
Of purposes and preordained events?
It knows me, and I recognize its mode
Of cautionary, spring-tight hesitation,
This silence so impacted and intense.

As in a water-surface I behold
           The first, soft, peach decree
Of light, its pale, inaudible commands.
I stand beneath a pine-tree in the cold,
Just before dawn, somewhere in Germany,
A cold, wet Garand rifle in my hands.