From Bristol to Lynton.

H yes! adown the brimming river flood
Leon and I, upon that happy day
Which from the memory will not pass away,
Slipt under heights of rich o'erhanging wood
That towering upward hid nigh half the sky;
So flush the foliage nought within was seen,
Save where some boulder far off or anigh
Did catch the sparkle of the morning rays;
All else was muffled in the sumptuous green.

VOL. VI.

B

10

FROM BRISTOL TO LYNTON.

The other side in huge and massive blocks
Sheer from the winding water's marge arose,
Height upon height, their battered fronts, ablaze
With splintered crags and rough red naked rocks,
Against the sunshine down the reaches stood,
And shut out nigh half heaven from the eye.

Within the heart there beat a full repose
And stirred the feelings; and the being did sway
With the rare joyance that no sorrow knows
Of those at last now started on the way
Of some entrancing pleasure looked-for long,
Which floods the spirit with an undersong
Of live emotions, human and divine,
Going up in praise and love to God alway,
Like low-toned music, which steals on the ear
Of one that sleepeth in the breaking morn,
And, entering in the workings of his brain,
Filleth the mirrored chambers of the mind
With saintly forms and voices thrilling clear,
Which to Faith's struggling eyes will scarce appear
While in the flesh we yet watch in our mail;
So delicate and so subtle, and more frail,
Than such as conscious effort could attain,
E'en his of inner vision most refined
Among the poets which the Earth has borne,
Who of his friendship tells the charmed tale
Through divers modulations, clear, yet fine

11

FROM BRISTOL TO LYNTON.

As are the shades of whiteness which suffuse
The inner lining of the greeny sheath
Which doth enclose the water-lily's bloom,
Or those frail crimsons which at night illume
The sculptured abbot sleeping by his stall,
In silence at the rising of the moon,
Shed from the Glories of the Saints o'er him
Mantling in the East window vast and dim,
That hangs a half-lit shadow in the wall,

The wan

And

reflexions of whose dream-like hues

In just perceived dimness tinge his swoon.
Such like the joyance words cannot define,
Which from the live depths of the heart beneath
Stole like the bloodrise through the poisèd being,
swayed it, as at sundown oft is swayed
By its own breath the harebell on the hill,
While all things round are hushed and dewy-still;
Or as some luminous petal lightly stirred
By the pulsations of a humming-bird
Hovering without a slowly-opening flower:

Of thought

as well as words beyond the power, Which consciousness alone was dimly seeing, So subtle the vibrations which it made.

The woods declining from their heights fell back
In many a fold, until at length they lay

In a

half-circle round a widening plain,

Which

now was border of the brimming tide :

VOL. VI.

B 2