The ear tries to distinguish the words and gather the meaning; but the syllables are intertangled--it is like listening to a low sweet song in a language all unknown.

This is the water falling gently over the mossy hatch and splashing faintly on the stones beneath; the blue dragon-flies dart over the smooth surface or alight on a broad leaf--these blue dragon-flies when thus resting curl the tail upwards.
Farther up above the mere there is a spot where the pool itself ends, or rather imperceptibly disappears among a vast mass of aquatic weeds.

To these on the soft oozy mud succeed acres of sedge and rush and great turfs of greyish grass.

Low willows are scattered about, and alder at the edge and where the ground is firmer.

This is the home of the dragon-flies, of the coots, whose white bald foreheads distinguish them at a distance, and of the moorhens.
A narrow lane crosses it on a low bank or causeway but just raised above the level of the floods.