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I. SO long as Duddon ’twixt his cloud-girt walls | |
| Thridding the woody chambers of the hills | |
| Warbles from vaulted grot and pebbled halls | |
| Welcome or farewell to the meadow rills; | |
| So long as linnets chant low madrigals | 5 |
| Near that brown nook the laborer whistling tills, | |
| Or the late-reddening apple forms and falls | |
| Mid dewy brakes the autumnal redbreast thrills, | |
| So long, last poet of the great old race, | |
| Shall thy broad song through England’s bosom roll, | 10 |
| A river singing anthems in its place, | |
| And be to later England as a soul. | |
| Glory to Him who made thee, and increase | |
| To them that hear thy word, of love and peace! | |
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II. WHEN first that precinct sacrosanct I trod | 15 |
| Autumn was there, but Autumn just begun; | |
| Fronting the portals of a sinking sun, | |
| The queen of quietude in vapor stood, | |
| Her sceptre o’er the dimly crimsoned wood | |
| Resting in light. The year’s great work was done; | 20 |
| Summer had vanished, and repinings none | |
| Troubled the pulse of thoughtful gratitude. | |
| Wordsworth! the autumn of our English song | |
| Art thou; ’t was thine our vesper psalms to sing: | |
| Chaucer sang matins; sweet his note and strong, | 25 |
| His singing-robe the green, white garb of Spring: | |
| Thou like the dying year art rightly stoled,— | |
| Pontine purple and dark harvest gold. | |
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