Lesson of the Water-Mill

Listen to the Water-Mill: Through the live-long day how the clicking of its wheel wears the hours away! Languidly the autumn wind stirs the forest leaves. From the field the reaper sing binding up their sheaves: And a proverb haunts my mind, as a spell is cast, "The mill cannot grind with the water that is past.” -Sarah Doudney-

(It dose no good to think back. The mill cannot grind with the water that is past, as the old people in the mountains used to say, move on, and be productive.)