 | Madrigals, songs and sonnets |  |
152
II. FROM CORNWALL.
Rarely, O Friend, in these “degenerate days,”Can we discover any hamlet rude,
Where still the hush of pastoral solitude
Is undisturb'd in seldom-trodden ways.
How sweet, then, while the winter wind delays
To strip the beeches' solemn sisterhood,
In some sweet western valley, where intrude
No troubling sounds, and where no vulgar gaze
Can penetrate, to spend delicious hours
Beside the ferny becks and torrent-streams,
While fancy scales the cloud-embattled towers
Of Milton's empyrean, or sails wide
Through Spenser's faery sea, or in the bowers
Of Shakspeare's sonnets amorously doth hide!
| Madrigals, songs and sonnets | |