Where thy swift trout leap, and thy swallows dip, 'Neath a gray tor's shadow 'twas mine to know The pure first touch of a virgin lip,

And the virgin pant of a breast of snow.

River of Dart! O river of Dart!

By thy waters wild I have found a heart.

MORTIMER COLLINS.

[From The Two Streams.]

HERE have been brotherhoods in song,

THE

And human friendships true;

There have been lovers unto death,

Yes, and right many too.

But never in the march of time,

And ne'er in mortal knowing,

From history or nobler rhyme

Hath there been such constant flowing:

One from mountains far away,

One from glades of emerald shining,

Flowing, flowing evermore

For a delicate combining.

If upon a summer's day,

When the air is blue and bracing,
You for Merkland take your way,
Sweet uneasy fancies chasing;
You may see the famous grove—
If not famous, then most surely

Ripe for fame, which is but love-
Where they mingle most demurely.
Not in song and babbling play
Which no poet could unravel;
But in tender simple way,
On a bed of golden gravel.
Where I sit I see them now,-
Bothlin with her endless winding
From a mountain's purple brow,
Sacred contemplation finding;
In still nooks of shady rest,
Gleaming greenly 'neath the holly:
Youth, she says, is often blest
With a touch of melancholy.
Luggie from the oriend fields
Wiser is, yet hath a beauty,
Which the snowy conscience yields
To the softened face of duty.
All she does bespeaks a grace,
Yet the grace hath that of sadness.
We behold in many a face,
Where we had expected gladness.
But when Bothlin meets her there,
See the change to sudden glory!
Surely such another pair

Never met in classic story.

DAVID GRAY.

The Brooklet.

DEEP unlovely brooklet, moaning slow
Thro' moorish fen in utter loneliness!
The partridge cowers beside thy loamy flow
In pulseful tremor, when with sudden press
The huntsman flusters thro' the rustled heather.
In March thy sallow-buds from vermeil shells
Break, satin-tinted, downy as the feather

Of moss-chat that among the purplish bells
Breasts into fresh new life her three unborn.
The plover hovers o'er thee, uttering clear
And mournful-strange, his human cry forlorn :
While wearily, alone, and void of cheer
Thou glid'st thy nameless waters from the fen,
To sleep unsunned in an untrampled glen.

D. GRAY.

[From The Luggie.]

BETWEEN its spotless-clothed banks, in clear

Pellucid luculence, the Luggie seems

Charmed in its course, and with deceptive calm

Flows mazily in unapparent lapse,

A liquid silence.

D. GRAY.

[From The Luggie.]

OVER the mill dam

Sounding, a cataract in miniature,

White-robed it dashes thro' unceasing mist.
Thro' ivied bridge, adown its rocky bed
Shadowed by wavy limes whose branches bend
Kissing the wave to ripples, on it purls
Abrupt, capricious, past the hazel bower
Where marriageable maid is being woo'd.

D. GRAY.

A

[From Colibri, Canto iii.]

ND now the waters dream

And darken in the shadows where they keep Rich stains of leaf and flower buried deep,

In pastures where the feeding fishes gleam,

Spangled with sun and stars; and now the stream,
Bounding with glossy back beneath some cape,
Goes onward like an oscillating snake,
Until one midmost rock's unyielding shape
Thwarts it, and lo! whole seas of fury break
From lashed sides, and the rock and river wage
A roaring, endless strife.

ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY.

[From At Stratford-upon-Avon.]

AND, touched with the sweet glamour of the year,

The winding Avon murmured in its bed.

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.

The Valley Stream.

STREAM flowing swiftly, what music is thine?

The breezy rock-pass, and the storm-wooing pine,
Have taught thee their murmurs,

Their wild mountain murmurs ;

Subdued in thy liquid response to a sound
Which aids the repose of this pastoral ground;
Where mingles our valley an awe with the love
It smiles to the sheltering bastions above:
Thy cloud-haunted birthplace,

O Stream, flowing swiftly!

Encircle our meadows with bounty and grace;
Then move on thy journey with tranquiller pace,

To find the great waters,

The great ocean-waters,

Blue, wonderful, boundless to vision or thought ;Thence, thence, might thy musical tidings be brought !

One waft of the tones of the infinite sea!

Our gain is but songs of the mountain from thee,

O child of the mountain!

O Stream of our Valley!