The Gentle Water Bird

"The Gentle Water Bird" is a poem by Australian poet John [Shaw Neilson].
It was originally published in The Sydney Morning Herald on 10 April 1926, as by "Shaw Neilson", and was subsequently reprinted in the author's single-author collections and a number of Australian poetry anthologies.
The poem details how the poet sees God in his study of a crane landing on water.

Critical reception

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."

Publication history

After the poem's initial publication in The Sydney Morning Herald it was reprinted as follows:New Poems by John Shaw Neilson, Bookfellow Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson by John Shaw Neilson, Lothian Cross-Country : A Book of Australian Verse edited by John Barnes and Brian MacFarlane, Heinemann Anthology of Australian Religious Poetry edited by Les Murray, Collins Dove John Shaw Neilson : Poetry, Autobiography and Correspondence edited by Cliff Hanna, UQP Hell and After : Four Early English-Language Poets of Australia edited by Les Murray, Carcanet Collected Verse of John Shaw Neilson edited by Margaret Roberts, UWA Publishing