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Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  The Bridge between Clifton and Leigh Woods

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79.

Clifton

The Bridge between Clifton and Leigh Woods

By William Lisle Bowles (1762–1850)

FROWN ever opposite, the angel cried,

Who, with an earthquake’s might and giant hand,

Severed these riven rocks, and bade them stand

Severed forever! The vast ocean-tide,

Leaving its roar without at his command,

Shrank, and beneath the woods through the green land

Went gently murmuring on, so to deride

The frowning barriers that its force defied!

But Art, high o’er the trailing smoke below

Of sea-bound steamer, on yon summit’s head

Sat musing; and where scarce a wandering crow

Sailed o’er the chasm, in thought a highway led;

Conquering, as by an arrow from a bow,

The scene’s lone genius by her elfin-thread.