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Others taught me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths--and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.
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Comments
Actually the first line of the poem is not "Others TAUGHT me with having knelt at well-curbs" it is "Others TAUNT me with having knelt at well-curbs" In other words other people that he knows have managed to see what is hidden in the depths of the well, but possibly because of his own shallow nature he cannot see beyond his reflection on the surface.
Jeanette from United States