The Dragonfly

I wound myself in a white cocoon of singing,
   All day long in the brook's uneven bed,
   Measuring out my soul in a mucous thread;
Dimly now to the brook's green bottom clinging,
   Men behold me, a worm spun-out and dead,
Walled in an iron house of silky singing.

Nevertheless at length, O reedy shallows,
   Not as a plodding nose to the slimy stem,
   But as a brazen wing with a spangled hem,
Over the jewel-weed and the pink marshmallows,
   Free of these and making a song of them,
I shall arise, and a song of the reedy shallows!