Egrets

Once as I travelled through a quiet evening, I saw a pool, jet-black and mirror-still. Beyond, the slender paperbarks stood crowding; each on its own white image looked its fill, and nothing moved but thirty egrets wading - thirty egrets in a quiet evening. Once in a lifetime, lovely past believing, your lucky eyes may light on such a pool. As though for many years I had been waiting, I watched in silence, till my heart was full of clear dark water, and white trees unmoving, and, whiter yet, those thirty egrets wading.