Here shouted o'er the battle-plain
The Pict, the Saxon, and the Dane:
And many a long succeeding year
Saw the fierce Norman's proud career,
The deadly hate of feudal foes,
The stain that dyed the pallid rose,
And all the sanguinary spoil
Of foreign and intestine broil.
But now, through banks from strife remote,
Thy crystal waters wind along,
Responsive to the wild bird's note,
Or lonely boatman's careless song.
Oh! ne'er may thy sweet echoes swell
Again with war's demoniac yell!
Oh! ne'er again may civil strife
Here aim the steel at kindred life!
Ne'er may those deeds of night and crime,
That stain the rolls of feudal time,
Again pollute these meads and groves,
Where science dwells, and beauty roves!
And should some foreign tyrant's band
Descend to waste the beauteous land,
Thy swelling current, eddying red,
Shall roll away the impious dead.
Let fancy lead, from Trewsbury Mead,*
With hazel fringed, and copsewood deep,
Where scarcely seen, through brilliant green,
Thy infant waters softly creep,
To where the wide-expanding Nore
Beholds thee, with tumultuous roar,
Conclude thy devious race,
And rush, with Medway's confluent wave,
To seek, where mightier billows rave,
Thy giant sire's embrace.
*The Thames rises in a field called Trewsbury Mead, near the villages of Tarlton and Kemble, in Gloucestershire.
Where Kemble's wood-embosomed spire
Adorns the solitary glade,
And ancient trees, in green attire,+
Diffuse a deep and pleasant shade,
Thy bounteous urn, light-murmuring, flings
The treasures of its infant springs,
And fast, beneath its native hill,
Impels the silver-sparkling rill,
With flag-flowers fringed and whispering reeds,
Along the many-coloured meads.
Thames! when, beside thy secret source,
Remembrance points the mighty course
Thy defluent waters keep;
Where Kemble's woo l-embosome-l spire,
Above the tranquil valley swells;
Where wild flowers wave, in rich attire
Their starry cups and pendent bells;
In fields, with softest beauty bright,
Thy crystal sources rise to light:
While many an infant naiad brings
The treasures of her subject springs:
And simply flows thy new-born stream
Where brighter verdure streaks the meads,
Half-veiled from the meridian beam
By spear-grass tall, and whispering reeds.
Thames! when, beside, &c.
+ I am slightly indebted, in this stanza, to one of Ariosto's most exquisite descriptions:
La fonte discorrea per mezzo un prato,
D'arbori antiqui e di bell' ombre adorno,
Che i viandanti col mormorio grato
A bere invita, e a far seco soggiorno.
Un culto monticel dal manco lato
Le difende il calor del mezzo giorno.
Quivi, come i begli occhi prima torse,
D'un cavalier la giovane s'accorse:
D'un cavalier, che all' ombra d'un boschetto,
Nel margin verde, e bianco, e rosso, e giallo,
Sedea pensoso, tacito, e soletto,
Sopra quel chiaro e liquido cristallo.
Advancing, with perpetual flow,
Through banks still widening as they go,
To mingle with the deep;
Emblemed in thee, my thoughts survey
Unruffled childhood's peaceful hours,
And blooming youth's delightful way
Through sunny fields and roseate bowers;
And thus the scenes of life expand
Till death draws forth, with steady hand,
Our names from his capacious urn;
And dooms alike the base and good,
To pass that all-absorbing flood,
O'er which is no return.
Whence is the ample stream of time?*
Can fancy's mightiest spell display,
Where first began its flow sublime,
Or where its onward waves shall stray?
What gifted hand shall pierce the clouds
Oblivion's fatal magic rears,
And lift the sable veil, that shrouds
The current of the distant years?
The sage with doubt the past surveys,
Through mists which memory half dispels:
And on the course of future days
Impenetrable darkness dwells.
The present rolls in light: awhile
We hail its evanescent smile,
Rejoicing as it flies:
Ephemera on the summer-stream,
Heedless of the descending beam,
And distant lowering skies.
False joys, with fading flowerets crowned,
And hope, too late delusive found,
And fancy's meteor-ray,
And all the passions, light and vain.
That fill ambition's fatal train,
Attend our downward way.
"Whence is the stream of years? whither do they roll along? where have they hid, in mist, their many-coloured sides ?"—OSSIAN.
Some struggle on, by tempests driven :
To some a gentler course is given:
All down the self-same stream are rolled:
Their day is passed-their tale is told.
Youth flies, as bloom forsakes the grove,
When icy winter blows:
And transient are the smiles of love,
As dew-drops on the rose.
Nor may we call those things our own,
Which, ere the new-born day be flown,
By chance, or fraud, or lawless might,
Or sterner death's supreme award,
Will change their momentary lord,
And own another's right.
As oceans now o'er quicksands roar,
Where fields and hamlets smiled of yore;
As now the purple heather blows,
Where once impervious forests rose ;
So perish from the burthened ground
The monuments of human toil :
Where cities shone, where castles frowned,
The careless ploughman turns the soil.
How many a chief, whose kindling mind
Convulsed this earthly scene,
Has sunk, forgotten by mankind,
As though he ne'er had been !
Even so the chiefs of modern days,
On whom admiring nations gaze,
Shall sink, by common fate oppressed:
Their name, their place, remembered not:
Not one grey stone to point the spot
Of their eternal rest.
Sit proprium quidquam, puncto quod mobilis hore, Nunc prece, nunc pretio, nunc vi, nunc sorte suprema, Permutet dominos, et cedat in altera jura.-HORATIUS.
Flow proudly, Thames! the emblem bright
And witness of succeeding years!
Flow on, in freedom's sacred light,
Nor stained with blood, nor swelled with tears.*
Sweet is thy course, and clear, and still,
By Ewan's old neglected mill:
Green shores thy narrow stream confine,
Where blooms the modest eglantine,
And hawthorn-boughs o'ershadowing spread,
To canopy thy infant bed.
Now peaceful hamlets wandering through,
And fields in beauty ever new,
Where Lechlade sees thy current strong
First waft the unlabouring bark along ;
Thy copious waters hold their way
Tow'rds Radcote's arches, old and grey,
Where triumphed erst the rebel host,†
When hapless Richard's hopes were lost,
And Oxford sought, with humbled pride,
Existence from thy guardian tide.
The wild-flower waves, in lonely bloom,
On Godstow's desolated wall:
Their thin shades flit through twilight gloom,
And murmured accents feebly fall.
The aged hazel nurtures there
* In the first edition :
Flow on, and still behold combined
The peasant, warrior, prince, and sage,
With hand, and heart, and will, and mind,
Uphold their ancient heritage!
Sweet is thy course, &c.
Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford and Duke of Ireland, the favorite of Richard the Second, was defeated in the vicinity of Radcote by the Earl of Derby, in the year 1387, and escaped by swimming with his horse across the river.
A small chapel, and a wall, enclosing an ample space, are all now remaining of Godstow Nunnery. A hazel grows near the chapel, the fruit of which is always apparently perfect, but is invariably found to be hollow.
This nunnery derives its chief interest from having been the burial-place of the beautiful Rosamond, who appears, after her death, to have been regarded as a saint.
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