While yet thou wast a grovelling puling chit,
Thy bones not fashioned, and thy joints not knit,
The Roman taught thy stubborn knee to bow,
Though twice a Cæsar could not bend thee now.
His victory was that of orient light,
When the sun's shafts disperse the gloom of night.
Thy language at this distant moment shows
How much the country to the conqueror owes;
Expressive, energetic, and refined,
It sparkles with the gems he left behind:
He brought thy land a blessing when he came,
He found thee savage, and he left thee tame;
Taught thee to clothe thy pinked1 and painted hide,
And grace thy figure with a soldier's pride;
He sowed the seeds of order where he went,
Improved thee far beyond his own intent;
And, while he ruled thee by the sword alone,
Made thee at last a warrior like his own..
Religion, if in heavenly truths attired,
Needs only to be seen to be admired;
But thine, as dark as witcheries of the night,
Was formed to harden hearts and shock the sight;
Thy Druids struck the well-hung harps they bore
With fingers deeply dyed in human gore;
And while the victim slowly bled to death,
Upon the rolling chords rang out his dying breath.
THE PROCESSION OF RIVERS.2
AND afterwards the famous rivers came,
Which do the earth enrich and beautify:
The fertile Nile, which creatures new doth frame;
Long Rhodanus, whose source springs from the sky;
Fair Ister, flowing from the mountains high;
Divine Scamander, purpled yet with blood
(1) Pinked-pierced with small holes-punctured; in allusion to the custom of tattooing, practised by our British ancestors. See "Pictorial History of England," vol. i. p. 129.
(2) An extract from "The Faerie Queene," book iv. canto xi.
(3) Creatures new, &c.-The mud of the Nile used to have a fabulous reputation for producing, in consequence of its singular richness, new and monstrous animals.
Of Greeks and Trojans, which therein did die;
Pactolus,' glistring with his golden flood;
And Tigris fierce, whose streams of none may be withstood;
Great Ganges, and immortal Euphrates;
Deep Indus, and Mæander intricate;
Slow Peneus, and tempestuous Phasides;2
Swift Rhine, and Alpheus, still immaculate;3
Araxes, feared for great Cyrus' fate;
Tibris, renowned for the Romans' fame;
Rich Orinoko, though but knowen late;
And that huge river which doth bear his name
Of warlike Amazons which do possess the same.
The noble Thames, with all his noble train;
The Ouse, whom men do rightly Isis name;
The bounteous Trent, that in himself enseams1
Both thirty sorts of fish, and thirty streams;
The chalky Kennet, and the Thetis grey;
The moorish Colne, and the soft-sliding Breane ;7
The wanton Lea, that oft doth lose his way;
And the still Darent, in whose waters clean
Ten thousand fishes play, and deck his pleasant stream.
There was the speedy Tamar, which divides
The Cornish and the Devonish confines,
Through both whose borders swiftly down it glides,
And meeting Plym, to Plymouth thence declines;
And Dart, nigh choked with sands of tinny mines;
But Avon marchéd in more stately path,
Proud of his adamants with which he shines
And glistens wide, as als of wondrous Bath,
And Bristol fair, which on his waves he buildeth hath.
(1) Pactolus-see note 4, p. 9.
(2) Phasides-The Phasis of ancient Colchis.
(3) Immaculate-in allusion to the fable of this river passing under the sea to Sicily without mingling its waters. This epithet properly signifies unspotted. (4) Enseams-Critics are not agreed whether this word means here, encloses, or fattens, nourishes.
(5) Thirty, &c.-See note 12, p. 146.
(6) Thetis-it is difficult to say what river is meant here.
(7) Breane-perhaps the Brent is intended.
(8) Adamants-the quartz crystals found at Clifton, and usually called Bristol diamonds. (See also p. 82, note 2.)
Next these the plenteous Ouse came far from land,
By many a city and by many a town,
. And many rivers taking underhand
Into his waters, as he passeth down—
The Cle, the Were, the Guant, the Stour, the Rowne;
Thence doth by Huntingdon and Cambridge flit '—
My mother Cambridge, whom as with a crown
He doth adorn, and is adorned of it
With many a gentle muse, and many a learned wit.
Next these came Tyne, along whose stony bank
That Roman monarch3 built a brazen wall,
Which might the feeble Britons strongly flank
Against the Picts, that swarméd over all,
Which yet thereof Gualsever they do call;
And Tweed, the limit betwixt Logris' land
And Albany; and Eden, though but small,
Yet often stained with blood of many a band
Of Scots and English both, that tyned on his strand.
THE CATARACT OF LODORE."
How does the water come down at Lodore ?8
Here it comes sparkling,"
And there it lies darkling;
Here smoking and frothing,
Its tumult and wrath in,
(1) Cambridge flit-The Cam is a tributary of the Ouse, but poetically the Ouse may be said to flow past Cambridge.
(2) Spenser was educated at Cambridge, and hence regarded it as his Alma Mater. (See p. 253.)
(4) Gualsever-Wall of Severus. Gwal, or gual, is British for wall.
(5) Logris-or Loegria-an old poetical name of England, as Albany was of Scotland.
(6) Tyned-fought, or perished.
(7) This poem is a literary curiosity-showing the fertility and energy of our native tongue. We have here at least one hundred and fifty adjectives applied to water dashing down a cascade, and nearly every one of them apt and expressivemany very happily descriptive.
(8) Lodore-a waterfall, one hundred feet in height, near Keswick, in Cumberland.
(9) Dr. Wallis, in his valuable English grammar-written in Latin-shows that in the formation of many English words there is a remarkable correspond
It hastens along, conflicting, strong,
Now striking and raging,
As if a war waging,
Its caverns and rocks among.
Rising and leaping,
Sinking and creeping,
Swelling and flinging,
Showering and springing,
Eddying and whisking,
Spouting and frisking,
Twining and twisting,
Around and around,
Collecting, disjecting,
With endless rebound;
Smiting and fighting,
A sight to delight in;
Confounding, astounding,
Dizzing and deafening the ear with its sound.
Reeding and speeding,
And shocking and rocking,
And darting and parting,
And threading and spreading,
And whizzing and hissing,
And dripping and skipping,
And whitening and brightening,
And quivering and shivering,
And hitting and splitting,
And shining and twining,
And rattling and battling,
And shaking and quaking,
And pouring and roaring,
And waving and raving,
And tossing and crossing,
And flowing and growing,
And running and stunning,
And hurrying and skurrying,
And glittering and flittering,
And gathering and feathering,
ence between the sound and the sense.
Thus words beginning with sp, as
"sparkling," denote, says he, "dispersion or expansion;" with sm and sw, as "smoking," and "swelling,' a sort of noiseless agitation or gentle lateral motion;" with str, as "strong," "energy, strength, effort," &c. The above lines will furnish many illustrations of the general principle.
And dinning and spinning,
And foaming and roaming,
And dropping and hopping,
And working and jerking,
And heaving and cleaving,
And thundering and floundering;
And falling and crawling and sprawling,
And driving and riving and striving,
And sprinkling and twinkling and wrinkling,
And sounding and bounding and rounding,
And bubbling and troubling and doubling,
Dividing and gliding and sliding,
And grumbling and rumbling and tumbling,
And clattering and battering and shattering;
And gleaming and steaming and streaming and beaming,
And rushing and flushing and brushing and gushing,
And flapping and rapping and clapping and slapping,
And curling and whirling and purling and twirling,
Retreating and beating and meeting and sheeting,
Delaying and straying and playing and spraying,
Advancing and prancing and glancing and dancing,
Recoiling, turmoiling and toiling and boiling,
And thumping and flumping and bumping and jumping,
And dashing and flashing and splashing and clashing;
And so never ending, but always descending,
Sounds and motions for ever and ever are blending
All at once and all o'er, with a mighty uproar-
And this way the water comes down at Lodore.
BREATHES there the man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
"This is my own-my native land!"
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned,
From wandering on a foreign strand ?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well!
For him no minstrel's raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
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