IV.

WRITTEN AT LYONS,

AFTER A WALK ON SUNDAY EVENING 3.

WHEN I behold the levity of France,
England, my heart is filled with fear for thee:
To brave the laws of God is to be free-

To hold that all things are the effect of Chance,
Pure wisdom; while Death's insubstantial lance
Alone is feared as God; and Piety,

And Faith, and bright-eyed Hope are doomed to be
Lost in the maze of Pleasure. When advance
The thoughtless revellers to laugh and leer,
I think of thee, my Country, and deplore
Thy future downfal, end of all things dear!
Ah! if I could forget thee, never more

66

Be thy ungrateful son allowed to hear
Thy green leaves rustle, and thy torrents roar *.'

* Wordsworth's Ode on the General Thanksgiving, 1816.

ENGLAND, with all thy faults thou art a Shrine Hallowed by many virtues! Thou art the Throne Of Liberty. In thy loved soil alone

Are manners purified by Faith Divine.

Around thee all our best affections twine;
Our infant fancies hold communion,

Dear Land, with thee, and every thing of thine.
England, I glory to be called thy Son!

Untainted be this happy Spot of Earth

By foreign manners, and by foreign crime!

Omay her sons, though spread through many a clime,
Remember the fair country of their birth—
Yea, cherish dear the dust of every grave

Where rest the relics of the great and brave.

VI.

THE MARRIAge of the rHONE WITH THE SAONE.

In classic lore how many a glorious stream
Is animated with a living soul!

When waters roar, and murmuring billows roll
In cadences melodious, there seem

A God in anger, and the Poet's dream
Of River Goddess, brilliant as the beam
Of bright Apollo starting from his goal
Of orient splendor. Such, from pole to pole,
Poets have fondly feigned. And such I deem
The marriage of the waters of the Rhone
With the fair stream of his more gentle Bride,
The glassy bosom of the expectant Saone :
She all complacency-and he, with pride
Glittering, and kissing every pebbly stone
That playfully obstructs his pleasant tide.

VII.

THE RHONE 5.

AT last I see thy waters, lovely River!

So many years of thy bold stream I've thought,
I cannot say when first thy spirit wrought
In me to wish this moment. Never, never
Can I forget thy loveliness,-thy quiver
Of beautiful impatience as though sought
By wingéd spirits, unwilling to be caught.
Thy waters run as fretted by a fever.

Full many a stream I've gazed on with delight;
And some the tribute of my Muse have won
With fervent love, rekindling as I write.

Of thee, fair Syd*, I've sung, and other streams:-
The Sister-Avons, both poetic names †,

Live in my memory with the rushing Rhone.

* In Devonshire.

+ Shakspeare, at Stratford-upon-Avon, and Chatterton at Bristol, where is another river of this name.

VIII.

THE SAVOY MOUNTAINS 6.

WE travelled with the waters of the Rhone,
Losing the thought of this world's many ills
In his swift current, and majestic hills

Which threw their large broad shadows deeply down;
Above them stood, not high, the setting sun;
With one of his most soft and witching smiles,-
Which even grief-worn hearts of pain beguiles-
Upon the Savoy Mountains mild he shone.
White rocks upon their summits hung like snow,
And on their sides, like soft clouds, lay as white:
Behold them all on fire, so warm they glow
With the last beams of Sol's most mellow light.
He sinks behind the mountains of the Rhone-
The light grows purple on their sides,-'tis gone!