| |
| “IS Ednam, then, so near us? I must gaze | |
| On Thomson’s cradle-spot,—as sweet a bard | |
| (Theocritus and Maro blent in one) | |
| As ever graced the name,—and on the scenes | |
| That first to poesy awoke his soul, | 5 |
| In hours of holiday, when boyhood’s glance | |
| Invested nature with an added charm.” | |
| So saying to myself, with eager steps, | |
| Down through the avenues of Sydenham | |
| (Green Sydenham, to me forever dear, | 10 |
| As birth-house of the being with whose fate | |
| Mine own is sweetly mingled,—even with thine, | |
| My wife, my children’s mother), on I strayed | |
| In a perplexity of pleasing thoughts, | |
| Amid the perfume of blown eglantine, | 15 |
| And hedgerow wild-flowers, memory conjuring up | |
| In many a sweet, bright, fragmentary snatch, | |
| The truthful, soul-subduing lays of him | |
| Whose fame is with his country’s being blent, | |
| And cannot die; until at length I gained | 20 |
| A vista from the road, between the stems | |
| Of two broad sycamores, whose filial boughs | |
| Above in green communion intertwined; | |
| And lo! at once in view, nor far remote, | |
| The downward country, like a map unfurled, | 25 |
| Before me lay,—green pastures, forests dark,— | |
| And, in its simple quietude revealed, | |
| Ednam, no more a visionary scene. | |
| |
| A rural church; some scattered cottage roofs, | |
| From whose secluded hearths the thin blue smoke, | 30 |
| Silently wreathing through the breezeless air, | |
| Ascended, mingling with the summer sky; | |
| A rustic bridge, mossy and weather-stained; | |
| A fairy streamlet, singing to itself; | |
| And here and there a venerable tree | 35 |
| In foliaged beauty,—of these elements, | |
| And only these, the simple scene was formed. * * * * * | |
| |
