Strange Water Wheels at Beachville

Here in the river you descry
Wheels revolve to keep quarries dry;
Elsewhere such pumps are drove by steam,
But here by current of the stream.

Easy it the water carries,
And leaves dry the beds of quarries;
Continuous at perpetual kiln,
You withdraw lime and with stone fill.

Where this text comes from

First published in Poems of James McIntyre (1889). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-20.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/james-mcintyre_poetry, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (3)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L8.

Cite this poem

James McIntyre (1828?–1906). “Strange Water Wheels at Beachville.” First published in Poems of James McIntyre (1889). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/james-mcintyre/strange-water-wheels-at-beachville/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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