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Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  Return of George the Third to Windsor Castle

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79.

Windsor

Return of George the Third to Windsor Castle

By William Lisle Bowles (1762–1850)

NOT that thy name, illustrious dome! recalls

The pomp of chivalry in bannered halls,

The blaze of beauty, and the gorgeous sights

Of heralds, trophies, steeds, and crested knights;

Not that young Surrey there beguiled the hour

With “eyes upturned unto the maiden’s tower,”—

O, not for these the Muse officious brings

Her gratulations to the best of kings:

But that, from cities and from crowds withdrawn,

Calm peace may meet him on the twilight lawn;

That here among these gray primeval trees

He may inhale health’s animating breeze;

That these old oaks which far their shadows cast,

May soothe him while they whisper of the past.

And when from that proud terrace he surveys

Slow Thames devolving his majestic maze

(Now lost on the horizon’s verge, now seen

Winding through lawns, and woods, and pastures green),

May he reflect upon the waves that roll,

Bearing a nation’s wealth from pole to pole,

And own (ambition’s proudest boast above)

A king’s best glory is his country’s love.