258

The River Duddon.

A SERIES OF SONNETS.

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE RIVER DUDDON rises upon Wrynose Fell, on the confines of Westmoreland, Cumberland, and Lancashire; and, serving as a boundary to the two last counties, for the space of about twenty-five miles, enters the Irish Sea, between the Isle of Walney and the Lordship of Millum.

Yes, they can make, who fail to find,
Short leisure even in busiest days;
Moments, to cast a look behind,
And profit by those kindly rays

That through the clouds do sometimes steal,
And all the far-off past reveal.

Hence, while the imperial city's din
Beats frequent on thy satiate ear,
A pleased attention I may win
To agitations less severe,
That neither overwhelm nor cloy,
But fill the hollow vale with joy!

I.

NOT envying shades which haply yet may
throw

A grateful coolness round that rocky spring,
Blandusia, 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 foun-
tains cling;

III.

How shall I paint thee?--Be this naked stone

ment,

Pleased could my verse, a speaking monu
My seat while I give way to such intent;
[known.
Make to the eyes of men thy features
Outruns his fellows, so hath nature lent
But as of all those tripping lambs not one
To thy beginning naught 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
[gleam
Yet thou thyself hast round thee shed a
Of brilliant moss, instinct with freshness
rare;
[earth!
Land bright, Prompt offering to thy foster-mother,

Heedless of Alpine torrents thundering
Through icy portals radiant as heaven's
bow;

I seek the birthplace of a native stream.
All hail, ye mountains! hail, thou morning
light!

Better to breathe upon this aery height
Than pass in needless sleep from dream to
dream:

Pure flow the verse, pure, vigorous, free, 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,
[quaint
Thy hand-maid frost with spangled tissue
Thy cradle decks; to chant thy birth thou
hast

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*
[sombre green,
Through paths and alleys roofed with
Thousands of years before the silent air
Was pierced by whizzing shaft of hunter
keen!

care;

SOLE listener, Duddon ! to the breeze that
played
[sound
With thy clear voice, I caught the fitful

Unfruitful solitudes, that seemed to upbraid

*The deer alluded to is the Leigh, a gigantic Wafted o'er sullen moss and craggy mound, species long since extinct.