The Mill Water

Only the sound remains of the old mill; gone is the wheel;

on the prone roof and walls the nettle reigns.

Water that toils no more dangles white locks and, falling,

mocks the music of the mill-wheel’s busy roar.

Pretty to see, by day its sound is naught

compared with thought and talk and noise of labour and of play.

Night makes the difference; in calm moonlight,

gloom infinite, the sound comes surging in upon the sense:

Solitude, company, when it is night -

grief or delight by it must haunted or concluded be.

Often the silentness has but this one companion;

wherever one creeps in, the other is.

Sometimes a thought is drowned by it,  sometimes out of it climbs;

All thoughts begin or end upon this sound.

Only the idle foam of water falling,  changelessly recalling,

where once men had a work-place and a home.

Edward Thomas.

3 March 1878 – 9 April 1917

Photograph by John Mears of the Old Mill on the Bridge, Vernon, France.