Water Colours

The trembling water glimpsed
through dark tangle
Of late-month April’s
delicatest thorn,
One moment put the cuckoo-
flower to scorn
Where its head hangs by
sedges,
Severn bank-full.
But dark water has a hundred
fires on it;
As the sky changes it changes
and ranges through
Sky colours and thorn
colours, and more would do,
Were not the blossom truth so
quick on it,
And beauty brief in action as
first dew.