ONE cultivated spot there was, that spread
Its flowery bosom to the noonday beam,
Where many a rose-bud rears its blushing head,
And herbs for food with future plenty teem.
Soothed by the lulling sound of grove and stream,
Romantic visions swarm on Edwin's soul.

37

ART, empire, earth itself, to change are doomed ; Earthquakes have raised to heaven the humble vale, And gulfs the mountain's mighty mass entombed.

NOW BEAMED the evening star;

And from embattled clouds emerging slow
Cynthia came riding on her silver car;

And hoary mountain-cliffs shone faintly from afar.

AND now the downy cheek and deepened voice

Gave dignity to Edwin's blooming prime;

And walks of wider circuit were his choice,

And vales more mild, and mountains more sublime.
One evening as he framed the careless rhyme,
It was his chance to wander far abroad,
And o'er a lonely eminence to climb,
Which heretofore his foot had never trode;
A vale appeared below, a deep retired abode.

Thither he hied, enamoured of the scene;
For rocks on rocks piled, as by magic spell,
Here scorched with lightning, there with ivy green,
Fenced from the north and east this savage dell.
Southward a mountain rose with easy swell,
Whose long, long groves eternal murmur made;
And toward the western sun a streamlet fell,

Where, through the cliffs, the eye remote surveyed
Blue hills, and glittering waves, and skies in gold arrayed.