ns far away,
Woods, meadows, and the mighty Severn blend,
While the gray heron up shoots, and screams for joy!
There the dark yew starts from the limestone rock
Into faint sunshine; there the ivy hangs
From the old oak, whose upper branches, bare,
Seem as admonishing the nether woods
Of Time's swift pace; while dark and deep beneath
The fearful hollow yawns, upon whose edge 170
One peeping cot sends up, from out the fern,
Its early wreath of slow-ascending smoke.
And who lives in that far-secluded cot?
Poor Dinah! She was once a serving-maid,
Most beautiful; now, on the wild wood's edge
She lives alone, alone, and bowed with age,
Muttering, and sad, and scarce within the sound
Of human kind, forsaken as the scene!
Nor pass we Fayland, with its fairy rings
Marking the turf, where tiny elves may dance, 180
Their light feet twinkling in the dewy gleam,
By moonlight. But what sullen demon piled
The rocks, that stern in desolation frown,
Through the deep solitude of Goblin-Coombe,[78]
Where, wheeling o'er its crags, the shrilling kite 183
More dismal makes its utter dreariness!
But yonder, at the foot of Mendip, smiles
The seat of cultivated Addington:[79]
And there, that beautiful but solemn church
Presides o'er the still scene, where one old friend[80] 190
Lives social, while the shortening day unfelt
Steals on, and eve, with smiling light, descends--
With smiling light, that, lingering on the tower,
Reminds earth's pilgrim of his lasting home.
Is that a magic garden on the edge
Of Mendip hung? Even so it seems to gleam;
While many a cottage, on to Wrington's smoke
(Wrington, the birth-place of immortal Locke),
Chequers the village-crofts and lowly glens
With porch of flowers, and bird-cage, at the door, 200
That seems to say--England, with all thy crimes,
And smitten as thou art by pauper-laws,
England, thou only art the poor man's home!
And yonder Blagdon, in its sheltered glen,
Sits pensive, like a rock-bird in its cleft.
The craggy glen here winds, with ivy hung,
Beneath whose dark, depending tresses peeps
The Cheddar-pink; there fragments of red rock
Start from the verdant turf, among the flowers.
And who can paint sweet Blagdon, and not think 210
Of Lang