I.

NOT envying shades which haply yet may throw A grateful coolness round that rocky spring, Bandusia, once responsive to the string

Of the Horatian lyre with babbling flow;

Careless of flowers that in perennial blow
Round the moist marge of Persian fountains cling;
Heedless of Alpine torrents thundering
Through icy portals radiant as heaven's bow;

I seek the birth-place of a native Stream.
All hail, ye mountains! hail, thou morning light!
Better to breathe upon this aëry height

Than pass in needless 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 honours of the lofty waste;

Not seldom, when with heat the valleys faint,

Thy hand-maid Frost with spangled tissue quaint to chant thy birth, thou hast

Thy cradle decks;

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,

Where stalked the huge deer to his shaggy lair * Through paths and alleys roofed with sombre green, Thousand of years before the silent air

Was pierced by whizzing shaft of hunter keen!

* The deer alluded to is the Leigh, a gigantic species long since extinct.

III.

How shall I paint thee?

Be this naked stone

My seat while I give way to such intent;
Pleased could my verse, a speaking monument,
Make to the eyes of men thy features known.
But as of all those tripping lambs not one
Outruns his fellows, so hath Nature lent
To thy beginning nought that doth present
Peculiar grounds for hope to build upon.
To dignify the spot that gives thee birth,
No sign of hoar Antiquity's esteem
Appears, and none of modern Fortune's care;
Yet thou thyself hast round thee shed a gleam
Of brilliant moss, instinct with freshness rare;
Prompt offering to thy Foster-mother, Earth!

IV.

TAKE, cradled Nursling of the mountain, take
This parting glance, no negligent adieu!

A Protean change seems wrought while I

pursue

The curves, a loosely-scattered chain doth make;

Or rather thou appear'st a glistering snake,
Silent, and to the gazer's eye untrue,

Thridding with sinuous lapse the rushes, through
Dwarf willows gliding, and by ferny brake.

Starts from a dizzy steep the undaunted Rill
Robed instantly in garb of snow-white foam;

And laughing dares the Adventurer, who hath clomb
So high, a rival purpose to fulfil ;

Else let the Dastard backward wend, and roam,

Seeking less bold achievement, where he will!

V.

SOLE listener, Duddon! to the breeze that played
With thy clear voice, I caught the fitful sound
Wafted o'er sullen moss and craggy mound,
Unfruitful solitudes, that seemed to upbraid
The sun in heaven! — but now to form a shade
For Thee, green alders have together wound
Their foliage; ashes flung their arms around;
And birch-trees risen in silver colonnade.
And thou hast also tempted here to rise,

'Mid sheltering pines, this Cottage rude and grey;
Whose ruddy children, by the mother's eyes
Carelessly watched, sport through the summer day,
Thy pleased associates:- light as endless May
On infant bosoms lonely Nature lies.