Hi Arthur,

This is a fine piece. I like it (but, like one or two comments from others) 
I sense the ending isn't yet altogether right.
I sense the line: "slack limbs were spread, chill and white." is something 
that is both stating the obvious (swans have "white wings" and the body 
would be chilled anyway...) and I feel as if I can see her like that without 
being told it. The last line, however, is where the magic of the poem begins 
to work... (such powerful endings often throw things back into the poem to 
see if the rest can be tightened up...).
I also feel the line: a place of still shades and peace, is telling me, and 
I sense you're showing me what it's like and so don't have to tell me.
I'd consider omitting each of the lines I've mentioned. And... finding a 
title that works harder!
I can't remember where the phrase "terrible beauty" originated (was it 
Yeats?) but that's what your poem has.
Bob




>From: arthur seeley <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: New Sub: Jenny's Well.
>Date: Sun, 29 Sep 2002 18:59:33 +0100
>
>             Jenny’s Well
>
>Further back from here,
>a path forks east towards the Foss,
>leads down through some trees,
>slender silver-boled  birch, delicately leaved,
>some young beech and hazel, too,
>then on down to a narrow ghyll,
>
>clear and cold, that spills
>from a scar of pale limestone,
>greened about with moss and fern,
>into a deep pool below.
>The pool is quiet
>save for the soft fall of waters,
>
>a place of still shades and peace,
>the only movements, ripples over the pane
>or changes of  broken light through a canopy
>of wind-shook patterns onto leaf- mould
>where a stone cut with a name,
>a date and a cross remembers her death.
>
>Her searchers found her floating there, face down,
>her long fair hair was fanned around,
>slack limbs were spread, chill and white.
>She seemed, they said, like a swan in flight.






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