And now reposing on thy banks once more, I wooed amid thy waving willows hoar : Seeking awhile to rest, — till the bright sun Till Eve's last hush shall close the silent scene. William Lisle Bowles. 'T CHERWELL, FROM THE TERRACE. I. IS evening! With a mind to which the shade On the old terrace-wall far forward bent, I watch, while slowly the last sunbeams fade Of those brief years to lone seclusion given, ARISTOCRATIC stream! II. Thou who dost brook No trade upon thy waters! never soil Ne'er hast thou been, ne'er shalt thou be, forsook The pool by bathers sought, glassy and still: Faintly thy charms, when he who was my friend John Bruce Norton. Chester. CHESTER. OW charmed we pilgrims from the eager West, How Where only life, and not its scene, is old, The holly-wreath and dial's moon-orbed face, The Gothic tankard, crowned with beaded ale, The faded aquatint of Chevy Chace, And heirloom bible, harmonized the tale. Then roamed we forth as in a wondrous dream, Night and her planet their enchantments wove, And Harold's war-cry died upon the blast. The floating mist that hung on Brewer's hill, From ivied tower, above the meadows sere, We watched the fray with hunted Charles of yore, When grappled Puritan and Cavalier, And sunk a traitor's throne on Rowton moor. We tracked the ramparts in the lunar gloom, Knelt by the peasants at St. Mary's shrine; With his own hermit mused at Parnell's tomb, And breathed the cadence of his pensive line. Beneath a gable mouldering and low, The pious record we could still descry, Which, in the pestilence of old De Foe, Proclaimed that here death's angel flitted by. At morn the venders in the minster's shade, Of Holland whispered then the sullen barge, The quaint arcades of traffic's feudal range, The diamond casements and the moated grange, The oaken effigies of buried earls, A window blazoned with armorial crest, Here William's castle frowns upon the tide; Once more we sought the parapet, to gaze, And mark the hoar-frost glint along the dales; Or, through the wind-cleft vistas of the haze, Welcome afar the mountain-ridge of Wales. Ah, what a respite from the onward surge Anonymous. Chillington. INSCRIPTION FOR A STONE ERECTED AT THE SOWING OF A GROVE OF OAKS AT CHILLINGTON, THE SEAT OF T. GIFFORD, ESQ., 1790. THER stones the era tell OTHER When some feeble mortal fell; I stand here to date the birth Of these hardy sons of earth. Which shall longest brave the sky, I must moulder and decay; But the years that crumble me Cherish honor, virtue, truth, Stone at heart, and cannot grow. William Cowper. |