I. Juvenile Poems. The Angler’s Song

FROM the river’s plashy bank,

Where the sedge grows green and rank,

And the twisted woodbine springs,

Upward speeds the morning lark

To its silver cloud-and hark!

On his way the woodman sings.

On the dim and misty lakes

Gloriously the morning breaks,

And the eagle’s on his cloud:—

Whilst the wind, with sighing, wooes

To its arms the chaste cold ooze,

And the rustling reeds pipe loud.

Where the embracing ivy holds

Close the hoar elm in its folds,

In the meadow’s fenny land,

And the winding river sweeps

Through its shallows and still deeps,—

Silent with my rod I stand.

But when sultry suns are high

Underneath the oak I lie

As it shades the water’s edge,

And I mark my line, away

In the wheeling eddy, play,

Tangling with the river sedge.

When the eye of evening looks

On green woods and winding brooks,

And the wind sighs o’er the lea,—

Woods and streams,—I leave you then,

While the shadow in the glen

Lengthens by the greenwood tree.