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