Musa Verticordia :: :: University of Virginia Library

I care not where my steps are bent
Nor what far lands I spy,
The happiest days that e'er I spent
Or shall spend till I die,
Were those when I a-fishing went
By Derwent and by Wye;

Or when I hastened to assail
With sympathetic rod
The darkling Dove, along whose Dale
Oft Izaac Walton trod;
And if but once I might prevail,
That hour I was a god!

Who glad as I, when morn arose
And I could sally out
To where the shadowed ripple flows
Beloved of timid trout?
No kinship had I then with those
Who have of day a doubt!

Then, as across the dewy mead
I hurried to the stream,
The lark on his delirious reed
Piped to the morning beam;
And straight I felt an unknown need
And straight began to dream.

The perfect permeance of delight
From that ecstatic strain,
The close communion with the flight
That fears no fall to pain,

Those kisses of the infinite
I shall not know again!

Ah me, the vision that I had!
The long day's playmate look!
It was too magical and mad
To set down in a book;
Though I was but a little lad,
With rod and line and hook.

And still in fancy I can see,
Where Derwent's flood is shed,
The laughing stream pretend to flee,
That yet is never fled,
And beckon with fantastic glee
Where I would fain be led.

How often down the shingly banks,
By mallow overgrown,

And herb-of-willow's purple ranks,
I followed him, alone,
And watched his waves' impatient pranks,
Opposed by stump or stone.

Then every pool a promise held;
Each rock or fallen tree,
Each tress of weed that swayed and swelled
In limpid fluency,
Harboured a mighty trout of eld
That might befall to me.

I loved them well, the spotty trout,
The silver grayling too,
But in those days I had no doubt
And half believed they knew
That skilfully to lure them out
Was what a boy must do.

The insects that hey love to snatch,
I studied them each one;
With silk and feathers I could match
The palmer or the dun,
And all the spinning-flies that hatch
And perish in a sun;

But yet, dear stream, no fish that glide
Above your pebbly bed
Your beauty from my heart could hide,
So sumptuously spread
Where'er you laved the meadow side
That I no more may tread.

Your waters, whereso'er they run
Are ministers of grace,—
Brown dapplements of shade and sun,
Green isles in grey embrace,

Rare plants, and warbling birds that shun
The more frequented place,—

These, and a thousand more than these,
Your cool declensions bring,
With lapse of delicate degrees
Whose pale illusioning
The painter cannot rightly seize
Nor poet rightly sing.

And you, deep-coiling Wye, where sail
Long weeds with starry flowers,
I followed oft through Darley Dale
Or past old Haddon's towers;
And still I love to tell the tale
Of those uncareful hours.

Nor yet, dear Dove, will I refrain
From greeting you once more;

To rove with you my feet are fain;
From meadow, wood, and tor
I hear you calling, as the main
Calls mariners from shore:

O river, sinuously bright
In youth's far-distant vale,
I see you from a lonely height,
Where soon my feet must fail,
And ever, as I climb, the night
Descends, and you grow pale.