The conscious water saw its God, and blushed.

This line is from Richard Crashaw’s devotional poem on the biblical Wedding at Cana (John 2:1–11), where Christ turns water into wine. Crashaw, a 17th-century English poet associated with the metaphysical and Catholic devotional tradition, treats the miracle not as a bare narrative but as a moment of cosmic recognition: even inanimate creation responds to the presence of its Creator. The conceit imagines the water as suddenly “conscious” when confronted with Christ, and its transformation into wine is rendered as a kind of modest, reverent “blush” at seeing God.

Crashaw compresses theology into a striking image. “Conscious water” personifies nature, suggesting that creation has an innate capacity to acknowledge divinity when it encounters it directly. The “blush” works on two levels: it is the literal reddening of water into wine, and a figurative sign of shame, awe, or chastity before holiness. The line also exemplifies Crashaw’s baroque metaphysical style—sensuous, paradoxical, and emotionally charged—where physical change becomes a spiritual emblem. The miracle is thus framed as both transformation and revelation: matter recognizes its Maker and is altered by that recognition.