O clear are England's waters all, her rivers, streams and rills,

Flowing stilly through her valleys lone and winding up her

hills,

But river, stream, or rivulet through all her breadth who

names

For beauty and for pleasantness with our own pleasant Thames.

The men of grassy Devonshire the Tamar well may love,
And well may rocky Derbyshire be noisy of her Dove,
But with all their grassy beauty, nor Dove nor Tamar
shames,

Nor Wye, beneath her winding woods, our own green pleasant Thames.

I care not if it rises in the Seven Wells' grassy springs, Or at Thanes' head whence the rushy Churn its gleaming waters brings,

From the Cotswolds to the heaving Nore, our praise and love it claims,

From the Isis' fount to the salt sea Nore, how pleasant is the Thames !

O Gloucestershire and Wiltshire well its gleaming waters. love,

And Oxfordshire and Berkshire rank it all their streams

above;

Nor Middlesex nor Essex nor Kent nor Surrey claims

A river equal in their love to their own noble Thames.

How many a brimming river swells its waters deep and clear, The Windrush and the Cherwell and the Thame to Dorset

dear,

The Kennet and the Lodden that have music in their names, But no grandeur like to that in yours, my own mast-shadow'd Thames.

Flow on in glory, still flow on, O Thames, unto the sea, Through glories gone, through grandeurs here, through greatness still to be:

Through the free homes of England flow, and may yet higher fames,

Still nobler glories star your course, O my own native Thames !

WILLIAM COX BENNET.

[From Mudal in June.]

MUDAL, that comes from the lonely mere,

Silent or whispering, vanishing ever,

Know you of aught that concerns us here?—
You, youngest of all God's creatures, a river.

Born of a yesterday's summer shower,

And hurrying on with your restless motion,
Silent or whispering, every hour,

To lose yourself in the great lone ocean.

Your banks remain; but you go by,

Through day and through darkness swiftly sailing ;

Say, do you hear the curlew cry,

And the snipe in the night-time hoarsely wailing?

Do you watch the wandering hinds in the morn;
Do you hear the grouse-cock crow in the heather;
Do you see the lark spring up from the corn,
All in the radiant summer weather?

WILLIAM BLACK.

[From Paracelsus.-v.]

FESTUS. Thus the Mayne glideth

Where my Love abideth.

Sleep's no softer it proceeds

On through lawns, on through meads,
On and on, whate'er befall,
Meandering and musical,
Though the niggard pasturage

Bears not on its shaven ledge

Aught but weeds and waving grasses
To view the river as it passes,
Save here and there a scanty patch
Of primroses too faint to catch
A weary bee.

Paracelsus. More, more; say on!

Fest.

And scarce it pushes

Its gentle way through strangling rushes,

Where the glossy king-fisher

Flutters when noon-heats are near,
Glad the shelving banks to shun,
Red and streaming in the sun,

Where the shrew-mouse with pale throat
Burrows, and the speckled stoat;

Where the quick sandpipers flit

In and out the marl and grit

That seems to breed them, brown as they :

Nought disturbs its quiet way,

Save some lazy stork that springs,

Trailing it with legs and wings,

Whom the shy fox from the hill

Rouses, creep he ne'er so still.

ROBERT BROWNING.

[From La Saisiaz.]

SK the rush if it suspects

Whence and how the stream which floats it had a

rise, and where and how

Falls or flows on still! What answer makes the rush except

that now

Certainly it floats and is, and, no less certain than itself,

Is the everyway external stream that now through shoal and

shelf

Floats it onward, leaves it-may be-wrecked at last, or lands on shore

There to root again and grow and flourish stable evermore.

-May be ! mere surmise not knowledge: much conjecture

styled belief,

What the rush conceives the stream means through the voyage blind and brief.

BROWNING

[From In a Gondola.]

H, which were best, to roam or rest?

Он

The land's lap or the water's breast?

To sleep on yellow millet-sheaves,

Or swim in lucid shallows, just
Eluding water-lily leaves,

An inch from Death's black fingers, thrust
To lock you, whom release he must;
Which life were best on Summer eves ?

BROWNING.

[From Sordello, Book vi.]

LIKE yonder breadth of watery heaven, a bay,
And that sky-space of water, ray for ray

And star for star, one richness where they mixed
As this and that wing of an angel, fixed,

Tumultuary splendours folded in

To die.

BROWNING.