A Poet's Home

Two pretty rills do meet, and meeting makeWithin one valley a large silver lake:About whose banks the fertile mountains stoodIn ages passed bravely crowned with wood,Which lending cold-sweet shadows gave it graceTo be accounted Cynthia's bathing-place;And from her father Neptune's brackish court,Fair Thetis thither often would resort,Attended by the fishes of the sea,Which in those sweeter waters came to plea.There would the daughter of the Sea God dive,And thither came the Land Nymphs every eveTo wait upon her: bringing for her browsRich garlands of sweet flowers and beechy boughs.For pleasant was that pool, and near it thenWas neither rotten marsh nor boggy fen,It was nor overgrown with boisterous sedge,Nor grew there rudely then along the edgeA bending willow, nor a prickly bush,Nor broad-leaved flag, nor reed, nor knotty rush.But here well-ordered was a grove with bowers,There grassy plots set round about with flowers.Here you might through the water see the landAppear, strowed o'er with white or yellow sand;Yon deeper was it, and the wind by whiffsWould make it rise and wash the little cliffsOn which, oft pluming, sat unfrighted thanThe gaggling wild-goose and the snow-white swan,With all those flocks of fowls which to this day,Upon those quiet waters breed and play.For though those excellences wanting beWhich once it had, it is the same that weBy transposition name the Ford of Arle,And out of which, along a chalky marle,That river trills whose waters wash the fortIn which brave Arthur kept his royal court.North-east, not far from this great pool, there liesA tract of beechy mountains, that arise,With leisurely ascending, to such heightAs from their tops the warlike Isle of WightYou in the ocean's bosom may espy,Though near two furlongs thence it lie.The pleasant way, as up those hills you climb,Is strewed o'er with marjoram and thyme,Which grows unset. The hedgerows do not wantThe cowslip, violet, primrose, nor a plantThat freshly scents: as birch, both green and tall;Low sallows, on whose blooming bees do fall;Fair woodbines, which about the hedges twine;Smooth privet, and the sharp-sweet eglantine,With many moe whose leaves and blossoms fairThe earth adorn and oft perfume the air.

When you unto the highest do attainAn intermixture both of wood and plainYou shall behold, which, though aloft it lie,Hath downs for sheep and fields for husbandry,So much, at least, as little needeth more,If not enough to merchandise their store.

In every row hath nature planted thereSome banquet for the hungry passenger.For here the hazel-nut and filbert grows,There bullice, and, a little farther, sloes.On this hand standeth a fair weilding-tree,On that large thickets of blackberries be.The shrubby fields are raspice orchards there,The new felled woods like strawberry gardens are,And had the King of Rivers blessed those hillsWith some small number of such pretty rillsAs flow elsewhere, Arcadia had not seenA sweeter plot of earth than this had been.