Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889
The Death of the White Heron
By Maurice Thompson (18441901)I
Across light shoals and eddies deep,
From lettuce raft to weedy brake.
I saw a monster reptile swim,
The delicate outlines of a fawn.
The green teal and the swift curlew;
Of lily-bonnets over them;
Between the wisps of water-grass.
I draped my boat with Spanish moss,
I hung gay air-plants over me;
Crouching for a treacherous spring,
Among the rushes green and dense.
Set straight across the velvet haft.
Scanning the lake, the sky, the wood.
From water-weed to lily-pad,
The hammer of the golden-wing.
Dreaming above the silent flood;
The hideous snake-bird coiled its throat,
Wild things grown suddenly, strangely tame—
They could not tempt me to a shot.
By grassy brinks and shady shores,
Mid dusky cypress stems and knees,
Over which each day the herons flew.
Flow through the fringe of rushes green,
The rushes gayly answering.
Like breath blown from a sleeper’s mouth,
Came a lone heron white as snow.
The hazy sunshine of the spring;
The gloomy moss-hung cypress grove;
He flashed his golden eyes on mine.
The prize was great, the mark was fair!
The silken string until I knew
Lay on my left forefinger joint—
My ear, swift-drawn across my cheek:
With sharp recoil and deadly ring,
It made the very water thrill,—
Hissed the flying arrow’s feather!
A quick collapse, a quivering—
A heavy fall, a sullen plash,
Of snow, he lay upon the lake!
Strutting upon a lily-pad;
The belted kingfisher laughed aloud,
Like a half-wakened slumberer;
From gallinule and crying-bird,
The hammer of the golden-wing!
Cypress Lake, Florida.