ADIEU, Rydalian Laurels! that have grown On this fair Mount, a Poet of your own, To cheer the Itinerant on whom she pours Or musing sits forsaken halls among. VOL. V. II. WHYshould the Enthusiast, journeying through this Isle 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, 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; And, spite of change, for me thou keep'st the same 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 Combat, while darkness aggravates the groans: But if thou (like Cocytus from the moans Heard on his rueful margin) thence wert named 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, Of thy soft breath !-Less vivid wreath entwined |