I.
As mad sexton’s bell, tolling
For earth’s loveliest daughter,
Night’s dumbness breaks rolling
Ghostily:
So our boat breaks the water
Witchingly.
II.
As her look the dream troubles
Of her tearful-eyed lover,
So our sails in the bubbles
Ghostily
Are mirrored, and hover
Moonily.
Credits
Thomas Lovell Beddoes was a 19th-century English poet and playwright, celebrated for his dark Romantic sensibility and macabre imagination. Best known for his verse drama Death's Jest-Book, Beddoes spent much of his adult life in Germany and Switzerland, writing in near obscurity. "A Song on the Water" showcases his gift for distilling gothic atmosphere into lyrical miniature — where sound, reflection, and grief dissolve into one another.
