When I was in college, an English professor once devoted an entire lecture to discussing a single poem, “The Wild Swans at Coole,” created in 1916 by the Irish writer William Butler Yeats.

I still own the text book, coverless now and much worn. I thought of and reread the verses Monday before walking to a nearby pond to take the above picture. The poem ends like this:

“But now they drift on the still water

Mysterious, beautiful;

Among what rushes will they build,

By what lake’s edge or pool

Delight men’s eyes when I awake some day

To find they have flown away?”

When winter approaches, the wild swans at Bloomington, Minn., will also fly away. But for now they have chosen to remain with us.