hung
Its garland of green berries, and the bramble
Trail'd 'mid the camomile its ripening fruit.
Most lovely was the verdure of the hills--
A rich luxuriant green, o'er which the sky
Of blue, translucent, clear without a cloud,
Outspread its arching amplitude serene.
With many a gush of music, from each brake
Sang forth the choral linnets; and the lark,
Ascending from the clover field, by fits
Soar'd as it sang, and dwindled from the sight.
'Mid the tall meadow grass the ox reclined,
Or bent his knee, or from beneath the shade
Of the broad beech, with ruminant mouth, gazed forth.
Rustling with wealth, a tissue of fair fields,
Outstretch'd to left and right in luxury;
And the fir forests on the upland slopes
Contrasted darkly with the golden grain.

II.

Pensively by the river's bank I stray'd--
Now gazing on the corn-fields ripe and rich;
Now listening to the carol of the birds
From bush and brake, that with mellifluous notes
Fill'd the wide air; and now in mournful thought--
That yet was full of pleasure--running through
The mazy past. I know not how it was,
But from the sounds--the season--and the scene--
Soften'd my heart; and, as the swallow wings
In autumn back to softer sunnier climes--
When summer, like a bright fallacious dream,
Hath with its flowers and fragrance pass'd away--
So, from the turmoil of maturer years,
In boyish thoughts my spirit sought relief.

III.

Embathed in beauty pass'd before my sight,
Like blossoms that with sunlight shut and ope,
The half-lost dreams of many a holiday,
In boyhood spent on that blue river side
With those whose names, even now, as alien sounds
Ring in the ear, though then our cordial arms
Enwreathed each other's necks, while on we roam'd,
Singing or silent, pranksome, never at rest,
As life were but a jocund pilgrimage,
Whose pleasant wanderings found a goal in heaven.
But when I reach'd a winding of the stream,
By hazels overarch'd, whose swollen nuts
Hung in rich clusters, from his marginal bank
Of yellow sand, ribb'd by receding waves,
I scared the ousel, that, like elfin sprite,
Amid the water-lilies lithe and green,
Zig-zagg'd from stone to stone; and, turning round
The sudden jut, reveal'd before me stood,