How touching, when, at midnight, sweep By blazing fire, the still suspense Of hearts with gladness brimming o'er; For names once heard, and heard no more; Tears brightened by the serenade For infant in the cradle laid! Ah! not for emerald fields alone, With ambient streams more pure and bright Than fabled Cytherea's zone Glittering before the Thunderer's sight, Is to my heart of hearts endeared, The ground where we were born and reared! Hail, ancient Manners! sure defence, Where they survive, of wholesome laws; And ye, that guard them, Mountains old! VOL. IV. G Bear with me, Brother! quench the thought From the proud margin of the Thames, To humbler streams, and greener bowers. Yes, they can make, who fail to find, And profit by those kindly rays That through the clouds do sometimes steal, And all the far-off past reveal. Hence, while the imperial City's din Beats frequent on thy satiate ear, A pleased attention I may win That neither overwhelm nor cloy, But fill the hollow vale with joy! I. Nor envying shades which haply yet may throw A grateful coolness round that rocky spring, Bandusia, once responsive to the string Of the Horatian lyre with babbling flow; Careless of flowers that in perennial blow Through icy portals radiant as heaven's bow; I seek the birth-place of a native Stream. — Than pass in needless sleep from dream to dream: II. CHILD of the clouds! remote from Of sordid industry thy lot is cast; every taint Thine are the honours of the lofty waste; Not seldom, when with heat the valleys faint, Thy hand-maid Frost with spangled tissue quaint Thy cradle decks; to chant thy birth, thou hast No meaner Poet than the whistling Blast, And Desolation is thy Patron-saint! She guards thee, ruthless Power! who would not spare Those mighty forests, once the bison's screen, Where stalked the huge deer to his shaggy lair * Through paths and alleys roofed with sombre green, Thousand of years before the silent air Was pierced by whizzing shaft of hunter keen! *The deer alluded to is the Leigh, a gigantic species long since extinct. III. How shall I paint thee? Be this naked stone |