竭 I. NOT envying Latian shades, if yet they throw A grateful coolness round that crystal Spring, The Sabine Bard was moved her praise to sing; Round the moist marge of Persian fountains cling; Heedless of Alpine torrents thundering Through ice-built arches radiant as heaven's bow; I seek the birthplace of a native Stream. All hail, ye mountains! hail, thou morning light! Better to breathe at large on this clear height, Than toil in heedless sleep from dream to dream: Pure flow the verse, pure, vigorous, free, and bright, For Duddon, long-loved Duddon, is my theme! II. CHILD of the clouds! remote from every taint Of sordid industry thy lot is cast; Thine are the honors of the lofty waste; Not seldom, when with heat the valleys faint, Thy handmaid 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, III. How shall I paint thee? Be this naked stone IV. TAKE, cradled Nursling of the mountain, take *The deer alluded to is the Leigh, a gigantic species long since extinct. A Protean change seems wrought while I pursue Thridding with sinuous lapse the rushes, through Else let the dastard backward wend, and roam, V. SOLE listener, Duddon ! to the breeze that played On infant bosoms lonely Nature lies. VI. FLOWERS. ERE yet our course was graced with social trees, VII. "CHANGE me, some God, into that breathing rose!" The love-sick Stripling fancifully sighs, The envied flower beholding, as it lies The thousandth part of what the Nymph bestows; And what the little careless innocent Ungraciously receives. Too daring choice! There are whose calmer mind it would content To be an unculled floweret of the glen, Fearless of plough and scythe; or darkling wren That tunes on Duddon's banks her slender voice. VIII. WHAT aspect bore the Man who roved or fled, First of his tribe, to this dark dell, — who first In this pellucid Current slaked his thirst? What hopes came with him? what designs were spread Along his path? His unprotected bed What dreams encompassed? Was the intruder nursed In hideous usages, and rites accursed, That thinned the living and disturbed the dead? No voice replies ; — both air and earth are mute; And thou, blue Streamlet, murmuring yield'st no more Than a soft record, that, whatever fruit Of ignorance thou mightst witness heretofore, To soothe and cleanse, not madden and pollute! |