A mile across the level land (A pool is set with willows), So cool and calm, from hidden springs, You ripple on 'neath summer skies, By weir and lock, by bridge and mill, Then waking after fevered days, The shadowy headland through the haze, The air intoxicates like wine, The flying sail, the hissing brine (B 838) 193 16 Oh, in that larger place, amid The ecstasy of motion, When you are free and fearless, hid Within the leaping ocean, When fond constraint to freedom yields, The quiet source that bore you. O Chalvey stream, dear Chalvey stream, What though to careless eyes you seem I'm not ashamed to call you friend, To own our fond relations, Like all things mortal you depend On your associations. A. C. Benson. S Two Rivers AYS Tweed to Till "What gars ye rin sae still? " Though ye rin with speed For ae man that ye droon Anon. Dartside CANNOT tell what you say, green leaves, But I know that there is a spirit in you, I cannot tell what you say, rosy rocks, But I know that there is a spirit in you, I cannot tell what you say, brown streams, But I know that in you too a spirit doth live, "Oh green is the colour of faith and truth, And rose the colour of love and youth, And brown of the fruitful clay. Sweet Earth is faithful, and fruitful, and young, And you shall know what the rocks and the streams And the whispering woodlands say." Charles Kingsley. Lynmouth HAVE brought her I love to this sweet place, Around my love and me the brooding hills, Closing upon this spot the summer fills, And over which there rules the summer sky. Behind us on the shore down there, the sea And now another hill shuts out the sound. And now we breathe the odours of the glen, The tree that dwells with one ecstatic thought, The flower that flowereth and knoweth nought, Our path is here, the rocky winding ledge That sheer o'erhangs the rapid shouting stream; The green exuberant branches overhead And wonderful are all those mossy floors Spread out beneath us in some pathless place, Where the sun only reaches and outpours His smile, where never a foot hath left a trace. And there are perfect nooks that have been made By the long growing tree, through some chance turn Its trunk took; since transformed with scent and shade, And filled with all the glory of the fern. And tender-tinted wood flowers are seen, Clear starry blooms and bells of pensive blue, That lead their delicate lives there in the green— What were the world if it should lose their hue? Even o'er the rough out-jutting stone that blocks Down there seem written thick with many a rune. And here, upon that stone, we rest awhile, Arthur O'Shaughnessy. On Exmoor HERE the pale road gleams like a riband through the heather, W By the dust edged white as a line of frozen foam, While chance has gathered groups of two or three together, O'er the great brown vista we are riding home. In a purple shadow are the lower summits hooded, Oh land that I love! as a woman's, pure and tender, |