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| THOU beautiful, romantic dell! | |
| Thy banks of hemlock highlands swell, | |
| Like huge sea billows, o’er the isles | |
| Round which the branching river smiles. | |
| Look up! how sombre and how vast | 5 |
| The shadows those dark mountains cast, | |
| Making noon twilight; or look down | |
| The giddy depths, so steep and brown, | |
| Where claret waters foam and play | |
| A tinkling tune, then dance away. | 10 |
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| Oft, with my oak-leaf basket green, | |
| On summer holidays serene, | |
| Along your hillsides have I strayed, | |
| And on the ground, all scarlet made, | |
| Picked in full stems, as low I kneeled, | 15 |
| Strawberries, rubies of the field, | |
| Coming late home; or in the flood | |
| Cooled the warm current of my blood, | |
| While swam the house-dog after me, | |
| With long red tongue lapt out in glee. | 20 |
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| ’T is glorious, here, at breaking day, | |
| To watch the orient clouds of gray | |
| Blush crimson, as the yellow sun | |
| Walks up to take his purple throne, | |
| And melts to snowy mists the dew | 25 |
| That kissed, all night, each blossom’s hue, | |
| Till, like a tumbling ocean spread, | |
| They hide low vale and tall cliff’s head, | |
| And many a tree’s fantastic form | |
| Looks like some tossed ship in a storm. | 30 |
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| How still the scene! yet here war’s hum | |
| Once echoed wildly from the drum, | |
| When waved the lily flower’s gay bloom | |
| O’er glittering troops with sword and plume, | |
| Who, on the clover meadows round, | 35 |
| Their white tents pitched, while music’s sound, | |
| From horn and cymbal, played some strain | |
| That oft had charmed the banks of Seine, | |
| And village girls came down to dance | |
| At evening with the youths of France. | 40 |
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| Fair was the hour, secluded dell! | |
| When last I taught my listening shell | |
| Sweet notes of thee. The bright moon shone, | |
| As on the shore I mused alone, | |
| And frosted rocks, and streams, and tree, | 45 |
| With rays that beamed like eyes on me. | |
| A silver robe the mountain’s hung, | |
| A silver song the waters sung, | |
| And many a pine was heard to quiver | |
| Along my own blue flowing river. | 50 |
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