Poems by William Stanley Roscoe

Wild restless stream! thy course I trace
With musing steps, when Evening gray
Steals o'er the vale with silent pace,
And shuts the crimson gates of day.

As on thy chequer'd banks I rove,
And listen to the woodlark's note,
Or blackbird pipe the song of love,
Responsive to his partner's throat;

I seek the various-tinted flowers,
That speck the mountain's lofty side;
Or those that in thy wild-wove bowers,
Their fragrant sweets unheeded hide.

Falling in many a gurgling rill,
From stormy Langdale's pathless brow,
And sparkling on the grassy hill,
Thou seek'st the sunny vale below.

There, wandering by the hazel bush,
I scarcely mark thy silent stream:
Now forth again I see thee gush,
And catch the sun's departing beam.

Now sparkling on thy pebbled bed,
Now in a sportive whirlpool playing:
Or by the fragrant cool shade led,
Within the lonely green-wood straying.

Now rushing deep the vale along,
Thou boisterous roll'st thy little wave;
Till Grasmere's waters lost among,
No more thy troubled stream shall rave.

Such is the life of woe-born man,
Doom'd the like chequer'd course to take,
Till, worn, he end his fretful span,
In dark oblivion's cheerless lake.

University of Virginia Library

TO THE RIVER BRATHAY,

IN LANGDALE. WRITTEN AT RYDAL, IN WESTMORELAND, 1797.