Resistless, roaring, dreadful, down it comes,

From the rude mountain, and the mossy wild,
Tumbling through rocks abrupt, and sounding far;
Then o'er the sanded valley floating spreads,
Calm, sluggish, silent; till again, constrained
Between two meeting hills, it bursts away,

Where rocks and woods o'erhang the turbid stream;
There gathering triple force, rapid, and deep,

It boils, and wheels, and foams, and thunders through.

THOMSON.

[From The Pleasures of Imagination, Book ii.] WE view,

Amid the noontide walk, a limpid rill

Gush through the trickling herbage, to the thirst
Of summer, yielding the delicious draught

Of cool refreshment; o'er the mossy brink
Shines not the surface clearer, and the waves
With sweeter music murmur as they flow?

MARK AKENSIDE.

[From Ode to Leven-Water.]

PURE

E stream! in whose transparent wave
My youthful limbs I wont to lave;
No torrents stain thy limpid source,
No rocks impede thy dimpling course,

That sweetly warbles o'er its bed,
With white, round, polish'd pebbles spread ;
While, lightly poised, the scaly brood
In myriads cleave thy crystal flood;
The springing trout in speckled pride;
The salmon, monarch of the tide;
The ruthless pike, intent on war;
The silver eel, and mottled par.
Devolving from thy parent lake,
A charming maze thy waters make,
By bowers of birch, and groves of pine,
And edges flower'd with eglantine.

TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT.

[From Love Poem-Written in a Quarrel.]

SEE where the Thames, the purest stream

That wavers to the noon-day beam,

Divides the vale below;

While like a vein of liquid ore

His waves enrich the happy shore,

Still shining as they flow!

Nor yet, my Delia, to the main

Runs the sweet tide without a stain,

Unsullied as it seems;

The nymphs of many a sable flood
Deform with streaks of oozy mud

The bosom of the Thames.

Some idle rivulets, that feed

And suckle every noisome weed,
A sandy bottom boast;

For ever bright, for ever clear,
The trifling shallow rills appear
In their own channel lost.

Thus fares it with the human soul,
Where copious floods of passion roll,
By genuine love supplied;

Fair in itself the current shows,

But ah! a thousand anxious woes

Pollute the noble tide.

WILLIAM COWPER.

A Comparison.

HE lapse of time and rivers is the same,

THE

Both speed their journey with a restless stream;

The silent pace with which they steal away,

No wealth can bribe, no prayers persuade to stay;
Alike irrevocable both when past,

And a wide ocean swallows both at last.
Though each resemble each in every part,

A difference strikes at length the musing heart;
Streams never flow in vain ; where streams abound
How laughs the land with various plenty crowned!
But time, that should enrich the nobler mind,
Neglected, leaves a dreary waste behind.

COWPER.

BE

To the River Arun.

E the proud Thames of trade the busy mart!
Arun, to thee will other praise belong!

Dear to the lover's and the mourner's heart,
And ever sacred to the sons of song!

Thy banks romantic hopeless Love shall seek,
Where o'er the rocks the mantling bindweed flaunts;
And Sorrow's drooping form and faded cheek
Choose on thy willow'd shore her lonely haunts.
Banks, which inspired thy Otway's plaintive strain !
Wilds, whose lorn echoes learned the deeper tone
Of Collins' powerful shell! yet once again
Another poet-Hayley-is thine own!
Thy classic stream anew shall hear a lay,
Bright as its waves, and various as its way.

CHARLOTTE SMITH.

[From Clifton.]

THE yellow Avon, creeping at my side,

In sullen billows rolls a muddy tide;

No sportive Naiads on her streams are seen,
No cheerful pastimes deck the gloomy scene;
Fix'd in a stupor by the cheerless plain,

For fairy flights the fancy toils in vain ;

For though her waves, by commerce richly blest,
Roll to her shores the treasures of the west,

Though her broad banks trade's busy aspect wears, She seems unconscious of the wealth she bears. THOMAS CHATTERTON,

ΟΝ

[From The Death of Nicou.]

N Tiber's banks, Tiber, whose waters glide
In slow meanders down to Gaigra's side;
And, circling all the horrid mountain round,
Rushes impetuous to the deep profound;
Rolls o'er the ragged rocks with hideous yell;
Collects its waves beneath the earth's vast shell :
There for awhile, in loud confusion hurled,

It crumbles mountains down, and shakes the world,
Till, borne upon the pinions of the air,

Through the rent earth the bursting waves appear;
Fiercely propell'd, the whiten'd billows rise,
Break from the cavern and ascend the skies:
Then lost and conquered by superior force,
Through hot Arabia holds its rapid course.

The Banks of Nith.

CHATTERTON.

THE Thames flows proudly to the sea,
Where royal cities stately stand;

But sweeter flows the Nith to me,

Where Cummins ance had high command:

When shall I see that honour'd land,

That winding stream I love so dear!