Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Italy: Vols. XI–XIII. 1876–79. | | | | Clitumnus | | Clitumnus | | Lord Byron (1788–1824) |
| | (From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage)
BUT thou, Clitumnus! in thy sweetest wave | |
| Of the most living crystal that was e’er | |
| The haunt of river nymph, to gaze and lave | |
| Her limbs where nothing hid them, thou dost rear | |
| Thy grassy banks whereon the milk-white steer | 5 |
| Grazes; the purest god of gentle waters! | |
| And most serene of aspect, and most clear; | |
| Surely that stream was unprofaned by slaughters,— | |
| A mirror and a bath for Beauty’s youngest daughters! | |
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| And on thy happy shore a temple still, | 10 |
| Of small and delicate proportion, keeps, | |
| Upon a mild declivity of hill, | |
| Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps | |
| Thy current’s calmness; oft from out it leaps | |
| The finny darter with the glittering scales, | 15 |
| Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps; | |
| While, chance, some scattered water-lily sails | |
| Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubbling tales. | | | | |
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