The Gentle Water Bird
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| "The Gentle Water Bird" | |
|---|---|
| by John Shaw Neilson | |
| Written | 1926 |
| First published in | The Sydney Morning Herald |
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Publication date | 10 April 1926 |
| Full text | |
 The Gentle Water Bird at Wikisource | |
"The Gentle Water Bird" (1926) is a poem by Australian poet John Shaw Neilson.[1]
It was originally published in The Sydney Morning Herald on 10 April 1926,[2] as by "Shaw Neilson", and was subsequently reprinted in the author's single-author collections and a number of Australian poetry anthologies.[1]
The poem details how the poet sees God in his study of a crane landing on water.
In his biography of Shaw Neilson for The Advocate Bernard O'Brien wrote: "His family was Scottish and Presbyterian, and his mother had a touch of melancholy which made his early religious training very severe. As a boy he was not allowed even to go out walking on Sunday. But an interesting poem, "The Gentle Water Bird," tells how he arrived at a truer idea of religion and of God. Watching the cranes in the reeds, it suddenly struck him that the God Who created these lovely creatures, and provided them with such a peaceful, contented existence, must Himself be attractive, loving and kind. The poem salutes the bird as a messenger from heaven, and his whole life was nourished by that conviction."[3]