"Whenever I plunge my arm, like this, In a basin of water, I never miss The sweet sharp sense of a fugitive day Fetched back from the thickening shroud of grey.     

Hence the only prime     

And real love-rhyme     

That I know by heart     

And that leaves no smart,

Is the purl of a little valley fall About three spans wide and two spans tall Over a table of solid rock

And into a scoop of the self-same block; The purl of a runlet that never ceases In stir of kingdoms, in wars, in peaces; With a hollow, boiling voice it speaks And has spoken since hills were turfless peaks."

Extract from Under the Waterfall, by Thomas Hardy