If I say I have heard voices who will believe me?
“None has dipped his hand in the black waters of the sky nor picked the yellow lilies that sway on their clear stems and no tree has waited long enough nor still enough to touch fingers with the moon.”
I looked and there were little frogs with puffed out throats, singing in the slime.
Where this text comes from
First published in Al Que Quiere! A Book of Poems (1917). 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 2026-08-12.
Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/william-carlos-williams_poetry, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).
Earlier sources (6)
This poem as JSON or plain text . Line anchors #L1–#L12.
Cite this poem
William Carlos Williams (1883–1963).
“Pastoral.” First published in Al Que Quiere! A Book of Poems (1917).
Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/william-carlos-williams/pastoral-3/.
Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.
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