The Avon and the Thames

Fine lyric lore the first book reads,
Of woodland wanderings;
The other, ancient, holy deeds
And orisons of kings.

Mitres and crowns continually

Allure the chanting Thames;—

The Avon lilts to any lea
For cowslip diadems.

The Thames, at Oxford turned the sage,
The Prince at Windsor grown,
Betakes himself in pilgrimage
To Lambeth's reverend throne.

But Avon, gentle Avon, goes
Far from such loud renown,
Beneath old Warwick's porticos
To quiet Stratford town.

And there-sweet home of high romance!-
It loiters, giving praise
For him whose consecrating glance
Sought once its leafy ways.

Gold reveries, silken dreams, beside
Its marge their glamour blend,
Till, slipping to the Severn's tide,
It smiles an envied end.

While Thames and Avon onward sing,
Their music's spell shall fall,

The one's on warrior, priest and king,
The other's upon all.

39

ARTHUR UPSON.

I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD

Those who go to the English Lake District are "on the edge of a country—a famous and beautiful country-which has given a school of poetry to England, and to which crowds of visitors come every year, where Wordsworth lived and died, and where all at one time Southey, Coleridge, DeQuincey, Arnold of Rugby, his poet son, Matthew Arnold, and Miss Martineau, lived and worked, drawing their inspiration from the quiet beauty of the mountains and building up work that England has not let die." Whether we sojourn at Windermere, Ambleside, Keswick or Derwentwater, the lover of nature's poets makes a pilgrimage to the little Grasmere Churchyard of St. Oswald and Dove Cottage for:

"In Grasmere's Vale, whose nestling dimple lake
Laughs to the hills which seem to wed the sky,
Sweet Alice dwelt, a wild flower of the brake,
That lovelier grew as Spring and Spring went by.

“The day died out in purple on the lake,

A warm light brooded over stirless flowers,
They laid her mid the blossoms of the brake,

The wild blooms she had loved in childhood's hours."

Not far from Dove Cottage, where William and Dorothy Wordsworth lived from 1799 to May 1829, he wrote "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud."

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
poet could not but be gay,

A

In such jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought.

For oft when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

41

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

INSIDE OF KING'S COLLEGE CHAPEL, CAMBRIDGE

Although at a distance the profiles of Oxford and Cambridge are almost the same, King's College Chapel at Cambridge makes up for any possible deficiency in the outline. The chapel is the glory of Cambridge and England. Of the perpendicular English Gothic, the lofty ceiling with its delicate fan tracery reminds one of huge white scallop shells. The Tudor rose and portcullis are carved in every nook. With the sunshine streaming through the richly painted east and west windows the interior becomes a gorgeous vision of light and glory, of vivid and superb colors.

Tax not the royal Saint with vain expense,
With ill-matched aims the Architect who planned-
Albeit labouring for a scanty band

Of white-robed Scholars only-this immense

And glorious work of fine intelligence!

Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore Of nicely-calculated less or more;

So deemed the man who fashioned for the sense

These lofty pillars, spread that branching roof
Self-poised, and scooped into ten thousand cells
Where light and shade repose, where music dwells

Lingering and wandering on as loth to die;
Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof
That they were born for immortality.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE

September 3, 1802

The visitor to the great metropolis of London should if possible stand on Westminster Bridge as Wordsworth did and read these lines that make up one of his finest sonnets. Few poems are more often quoted. One morning in the summer of 1802 the poet was going over Westminster Bridge on the way to Dover. The great city was still sleeping and the early sun made the scene one of such grandeur that the following poem took form as he traveled on towards his destination.

Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear

The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.