Night over Grasmere Lake

The haunting calls of distant ducks

Pierced the shrouded sky

And soared for the moon beyond the clouds,

Eclipsed by solemn stooping boughs.

These words she made her haunts,

These lines drowned her brilliance

Mid the vastness of Grasmere Lake

Where she cast her fleece dispassionate

In a starless night,

Overlooking the darkened golden grave

Of a poet long dead

Entombed in his lyrical laurels,

Recumbent on ballads soft

Under a smeared plot of grass

Scattered with leaves withered

And a tuft of drooping daffodils.

All in abstract slumber lay

But the moon above,

Below – the unseen mourning ducks,

And the lone stranger beside the grave.