T.

ADIEU, Rydalian Laurels! that have

grown

And spread as if ye knew that days might come ye would shelter in a happy home,

When

On this fair Mount, a Poet of your own,

One who ne'er ventured for a Delphic crown
To sue the God; but, haunting your green shade
All seasons through, is humbly pleased to braid
Ground-flowers, beneath your guardianship, self sown.
Farewell! no Minstrels now with harp new-strung
For summer wandering quit their household bowers;
Yet not for this wants Poesy a tongue

To cheer the Itinerant on whom she pours
Her spirit, while he crosses lonely moors,

Or musing sits forsaken halls among.

II.

WHY should the Enthusiast, journeying through this Isle
Repine as if his hour were come too late?

Not unprotected in her mouldering state,
Antiquity salutes him with a smile,

Mid fruitful fields that ring with jocund toil,

And pleasure-grounds where Taste, refined Co-mate Of Truth and Beauty, strives to imitate,

Far as she may, primeval Nature's style.

Fair land! by Time's parental love made free,
By social Order's watchful arms embraced;

With unexampled union meet in thee,

For eye and mind, the present and the past;

With golden prospect for futurity,

If what is rightly reverenced may last.

III.

THEY called Thee MERRY ENGLAND, in old time;
A happy people won for thee that name
With envy heard in many a distant clime;

And, spite of change, for me thou keep'st the same
Endearing title, a responsive chime

To the heart's fond belief; though some there are Whose sterner judgments deem that word a snare For inattentive Fancy, like the lime

Which foolish birds are caught with. Can, I ask,
This face of rural beauty be a mask

For discontent, and poverty, and crime ;
These spreading towns a cloak for lawless will?
Forbid it, Heaven!-and MERRY ENGLAND still
Shall be thy rightful name, in prose and rhyme !

IV.

TO THE RIVER GRETA, NEAR KESWICK.

GRETA, what fearful listening! when huge stones
Rumble along thy bed, block after block:
Or, whirling with reiterated shock,

Combat, while darkness aggravates the groans:
But if thou (like Cocytus from the moans
Heard on his rueful margin) thence wert named
The Mourner, thy true nature was defamed,
And the habitual murmur that atones

For thy worst rage, forgotten. Oft as Spring
Decks, on thy sinuous banks, her thousand thrones,
Seats of glad instinct and love's carolling,
The concert, for the happy, then may vie
With liveliest peals of birth-day harmony:
To a grieved heart, the notes are benisons.

V.

TO THE RIVER DERWENT.

AMONG the mountains were we nursed, loved Stream! Thou near the eagle's nest-within brief sail,

I, of his bold wing floating on the gale,

Where thy deep voice could lull me! Faint the beam Of human life when first allowed to gleam

On mortal notice.-Glory of the vale,

Such thy meek outset, with a crown, though frail,
Kept in perpetual verdure by the steam

Of thy soft breath!-Less vivid wreath entwined
Nemæan victor's brow; less bright was worn,
Meed of some Roman chief—in triumph borne
With captives chained; and shedding from his car
The sunset splendours of a finished war

Upon the proud enslavers of mankind !