[From The Poet's Pilgrimage to Waterloo.]

The Sacred Mountain.

A GENTLE river wound its quiet way

Through this sequester'd glade, meandering wide;

Smooth as a mirror here the surface lay,

Where the pure lotus, floating in its pride,

Enjoy'd the breath of heaven, the sun's warm beam,
And the cool freshness of its native stream.

Here o'er green weeds whose tresses waved outspread,
With silent lapse the glassy waters run;
Here in fleet motion o'er a pebbly bed

Gliding they glance and ripple to the sun;
The stirring breeze that swept them in its flight,
Raised on the stream a shower of sparkling light.

SOUTHEY.

[From Lines written in an Album]

The Rotha.

LOVELIER river is there none

Underneath an English sun;

From its source it issues bright,
Upon hoar Helvellyn's height,
Flowing where its summer voice
Makes the mountain herds rejoice;
Down the dale it issues then,
Not polluted there by men;

While its lucid waters take

Their pastoral course from lake to lake,
Please the eye in every part,

Lull the ear, and soothe the heart,

Till into Windermere sedate

They flow and uncontaminate.

SOUTHEY.

[From The Village Patriarch, Book v.]

FIVE rivers, like the fingers of a hand,

Flung from black mountains, mingle, and are one Where sweetest valleys quit the wild and grand, And eldest forests, o'er the silvan Don, Bid their immortal brother journey on,

A stately pilgrim, watch'd by all the hills.

Say, shall we wander where, through warriors' graves,
The infant Yewden, mountain-cradled, trills
Her Doric notes? Or, where the Locksley raves

Of broil and battle, and the rocks and caves
Dream yet of ancient days? Or, where the sky

Darkens o'er Rivilin, the clear and cold,

That throws his blue length, like a snake, from high?

Or, where deep azure brightens into gold

O'er Sheaf, that mourns in Eden? Or, where roll'd
On tawny sands, through regions passion-wild,

And groves of love, in jealous beauty dark,

Complains the Porter, Nature's thwarted child,

Born in the waste, like headlong Wiming? Hark!
The poised hawk calls thee, Village Patriarch!
He calls thee to his mountains! Up, away!
Up, up, to Stanedge! higher still ascend,
Till kindred rivers, from the summit grey,
To distant seas their course in beauty bend,
And, like the lives of human millions, blend
Disparted waves in one immensity !

EBENEZER ELLIOTT.

The Nile.

T flows through old hush'd Ægypt and its sands,

IT

Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream,

And times and things, as in that vision, seem

Keeping along it their eternal stands,—

Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands

That roamed through the young world, the glory extreme Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam,

The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands.

Then comes a mightier silence, stern and strong,

As of a world left empty of its throng,

And the void weighs on us; and then we wake,

And hear the fruitful stream lapsing along
'Twixt villages, and think how we shall take
Our own calm journey on for human sake.

LEIGH HUNT.

[From The Rivulet.]

THIS little rill, that from the springs

Of yonder grove its current brings,
Plays on the slope awhile, and then
Goes prattling into groves again,

Oft to its warbling waters drew
My little feet when life was new.

And when the days of boyhood came,
And I had grown in love with fame,
Duly I sought thy banks, and tried
My first rude numbers by thy side.
Thou, ever-joyous rivulet,

Dost dimple, leap, and prattle yet ;
And sporting with the sands that pave
The windings of thy silver wave,
And dancing to thy own wild chime,
Thou laughest at the lapse of time.
The same sweet sounds are in my ear
My early childhood loved to hear;
As pure thy limpid waters run;
As bright they sparkle to the sun;
As fresh and thick the bending ranks
Of herbs that line thy oozy banks;
The violet there, in soft May dew,
Comes up, as modest and as blue;
As green amid thy current's stress,
Floats the scarce-rooted watercress :