Dwarfing the town that to the hillside clings On terraced slopes, the castle, nobly planned And noble in its ruined greatness, flings Its double challenge to the sea and land. Oh, if the ancient spirit of the place Could win free utterance in articulate tones, What tales to hearten and inspire and brace Would issue from these grey and lichened stones Once manned and held by paladin and peer, Now tenanted by jackdaws, bats and owls, Save when the casual tourist through its drear And grass-grown courts disconsolately prowls. Once famous as the scene of Border fights, Now watching, in the greatest war of all, Old men, with their bilingual acolytes, Beating, outside its gates, a little ball; While on the crumbling battlements on high, Where mail-clad men-at-arms kept watch and ward, Adventurous sheep amaze the curious eye Instead of grazing on the level sward. Inland the amphitheatre of hills Sweeps round with Snowdon as their central crest, And murmurs of innumerable rills Blend with the heaving of the ocean’s breast. Already Autumn’s fiery finger laid On heath and marsh and woodland far and wide In all their gorgeous pageantry has arrayed The tranquil beauties of the countryside. Here every prospect pleases, and the spot, Unspoilt, unvulgarized by man, remains, Thanks largely to a System which has not Accelerated or improved its trains. Yet even here, amid untroubled ways, Far from the city’s fevered, tainted breath, Yon distant plume of yellow smoke betrays The ceaseless labours of the mills of death. THE LITTLE RIVER Let mighty pens praise mighty rivers— The Yang-tse-Kiang or Hoang-Ho, In climes that desiccate the livers Of foreigners who come and go. Some may prefer the Mississippi, Others the Nile, whose genial flood Enriches the industrious “Gippy” With gifts of fertilizing mud. BATES found the Amazon amazing; But, all unfit for lordly themes; I choose the simpler task of praising One of our humble Berkshire streams. Here are no tropical surprises, No cataracts roaring from the steep; No hippo your canoe capsizes, No rhinos on the bather creep. Here, as along the banks you potter, The fiercest creature is the gnat; You may perhaps espy an otter, You’re sure to see a water-rat. The kingfisher, a living jewel, On halcyon days darts in and out, But never interrupts the duel Between the angler and the trout. Hard by the plovers wheel and clamour, The gold is still upon the gorse, And mystery and calm and glamour Brood o’er the little river’s source, Where, in a pool of blue-green lustre, The water bubbles from the sand, And pine-trees in a solemn cluster Like sentinels around it stand.