Not what Berkeley meant at all

I have a weakness for well-put-together poems with Bishop Berkeley in them:

The Fountain

Feathers up fast, and steeples; then in clods

Thuds into its first basin; thence as surf

Smokes up and hangs; irregularly slops

Into its second, tattered like a shawl;

There, chill as rain, stipples a danker green,

Where urgent tritons lob their heavy jets.

For Berkeley this was human thought, that mounts

From bland assumptions to inquiring skies,

There glints with wit, fumes into fancies, plays

With its negations, and at last descends,

As by a law of nature to its bowl

Of thus enlightened but still common sense.

We who have no such confidence must gaze

With all the more affection on these forms,

These spires, these plumes, these calm reflections, these

Similitudes of surf and turf and shawl,

Graceful returns upon acceptances.

We ask of fountains only that they play,

Though that was not what Berkeley meant at all.

- Donald Davie, New and Selected Poems

The phrase "graceful returns upon acceptances" in particular is worth keeping in mind.