I have taken the liberty to name this passage from George MacDonald’s book At the Back of the North Wind and to call it a poem and to break it into lines. It seems to me to be a beautiful free verse poem. It occurs in chapter 15 as if it comes from a children’s nursery rhyme book. The mother cannot understand a word of it and calls it nonsense, but the boy thinks he has heard it before in the river’s song at the back of the North Wind. I think George was giving us a clue. [EW]
I know a river
whose waters run asleep
run
run ever singing
in the shallows
dumb in the hollows
sleeping so deep
and all the swallows
that dip their feathers in the hollows
or in the shallows
are the merriest swallows of all
for the nests they bake
with the clay they cake
with the water they shake
from their wings that rake
the water out of the shallows
or the hollows
will hold together in any weather Continue reading
The Word in Vision 