The Poetical Works of Anna Seward :: :: University of Virginia Library

Poet of Needwood, much my heart approves
This thy owed duty to his ravaged groves,
The lost! the lovely!—who, in better days,
View'd their each grace reflected in thy lays:
And O! when many a future age has pass'd,
Rolling oblivious o'er his nameless waste,
Its some-time beauties shall again revive,
And in thy pictured strains for ever live.

395

Come, pensive list'ning, ye once jocund throng,
Whilome that roved those Forest Haunts along!
Explored, with pleasure bright'ning in your air,
Each coy, green labyrinth, and each turfy lair,
Still, as in prime of youth, the wanton Spring
Expanded to the sun her showery wing,
And cliffs, illustrious in their golden bloom,
Rose o'er the glades of light-besprinkled gloom.

Nor absent ye, when Summer's fervid hours
Dropt more luxuriant curtains on the bowers,
And the vast oak's writhed arms, of dusky green,
Shadow'd the dappled tenants of the scene;
With rival elm, whose mossy trunk appears
Out-numbering far the lonely eagle's years.

Nor when the months consummate left their vales
To suns less ardent, less benignant gales,
And Autumn painted, with his tawny hand,
The shrinking foliage; and, in colours bland,
Streak'd the pale red with purple, faint and brief,
And tipt with tarnish'd gold each trembling leaf.

Nor e'en when Phœbus' steeds, no longer fleet,
With mane dishevell'd, streaming to their feet,
Struggling through clouds, th' hybernal solstice gain,
Their necks bedropt with globes of freezing rain,

396

And the loud tyrant of the dying year
Stript other groves, made other forests sear;
For Needwood to his sway disdain'd to yield,
His polish'd umbrage an unfailing shield,
Those numerous hollies on his breast and brow,
That thrust their scarlet clusters through the snow,
Or spread their glossy leaves to transient rays,
The rebel glory of the icy days.

Nor if, ere yet arisen, dim Morning heard
Your light-heel'd coursers paw the dewy sward,
When the sly prowler stole adown the wind,
And hoped he left no tell-tale scent behind.
Vain hope! your swift staunch hounds the scent began;
To right and left their hurrying numbers ran,
Till found the taint, in streaming files they hie,
And in one shrill, continuous clamouring cry,
To which th' accordant forest joyous rings,
Hang on his rear while o'er the vale he springs;
Dash through the rhymy glades, and round the hills,
As when, receiving tribute brooks and rills,
O'er flinty bed a river foams and roars,
Loud and impatient of meandering shores,
Or, deepen'd, shews the Sun his mirror'd face,
Or zones with silver light the mountain's base.

Now, come with Mundy, where the ruin lowers,
He hymns the dirge of the devasted bowers!

397

Echo his wailing o'er their fallen state,
Whom centuries hail'd irregularly great!
Come, execrate the edict that destroy'd,
Leaving time-hallow'd Needwood bare and void!
There fell Imagination's rural fane!
Thence fled fair-shafted Dian's votive train;
All which the bard entranced in forest sees,
Satyrs and Fauns, and leaf-crown'd Dryades!
They fled, when Avarice, with rapacious frown,
From Mercia's temples struck her sylvan crown.

Yet, gentle Minstrel, they whose raptured ears
Drank thy sweet song in the departed years,
Saw oaken wreaths thy auburn brows entwine,
The well-won meed at Needwood's shadowy shrine,
Shall find thy Gratulation's vivid glow
Match'd by the Requiem, in its mournful flow;
The orb of Mundy's muse-illumined day
Setting with rival, though with milder ray;
Pleased, shall compare the evening with the noon,
And feel, in equal power, the Cypress garland won.

“Needwood Forest,” one of the sweetest ocal poems in our language, of which Mr Mundy, in 1776, printed 500 copies for presents to his friends. He has resisted all solicitation to publish it at large; but such a beautiful work cannot die. It will be given to future times; so also will the Fall of Needwood.

Milton, in Comus, makes Naiades the plural of Naiad:

“Amid the flowery-kirtled Naiades.”