# Looking-Glass River - Source: A Child's Garden of Verses (child-garden.gutenberg.org), Public domain, Robert Louis Stevenson, 1885; pictures by Jessie Willcox Smith, 1905; via Project Gutenberg - Reading level: Grades 1 and 2 - Subjects: Poems, Nature - Topics: clear, cool, stream, smooth, below, black - Length: 115 words, about 1 min - Original: - Page: - Open in Sprouts: Smooth it glides upon its travel, Here a wimple, there a gleam— O the clean gravel! O the smooth stream! Sailing blossoms, silver fishes, Paven pools as clear as air— How a child wishes To live down there! We can see our coloured faces Floating on the shaken pool Down in cool places, Dim and very cool; Till a wind or water wrinkle, Dipping marten, plumping trout, Spreads in a twinkle And blots all out. See the rings pursue each other; All below grows black as night, Just as if mother Had blown out the light! Patience, children, just a minute— See the spreading circles die; The stream and all in it Will clear by-and-by.