Fair Brussels, thou art far behind, Though, lingering on the morning wind, We yet may hear the hour Peal’d over orchard and canal, With voice prolong’d and measured fall, From proud Saint Michael’s tower. Thy wood, dark Soignies, holds us now, Where the tall beeches’ glossy bough For many a league around, With birch and darksome oak between, Spreads deep and far a pathless screen, Of tangled forest ground. Stems planted close by stems defy The adventurous foot--the curious eye For access seeks in vain; And the brown tapestry of leaves, Strew’d on the blighted ground, receives Nor sun, nor air, nor rain. No opening glade dawns on our way, No streamlet, glancing to the ray, Our woodland path has cross’d; And the straight causeway which we tread, Prolongs a line of dull arcade, Unvarying through the unvaried shade Until in distance lost. II. A brighter, livelier scene succeeds; In groupes the scattering wood recedes, Hedge-rows, and huts, and sunny meads, And corn-fields glance between; The peasant, at his labour blithe, Plies the hook’d staff and shorten’d scythe:-- But when these ears were green, Placed close within destruction’s scope, Full little was that rustic’s hope Their ripening to have seen! And, lo, a hamlet and its fane:-- Let not the gazer with disdain Their architecture view; For yonder rude ungraceful shrine, And disproportion’d spire, are thine, Immortal WATERLOO! III. Fear not the heat, though full and high The sun has scorch’d the autumn sky, And scarce a forest straggler now To shade us spreads a greenwood bough These fields have seen a hotter day Than e’er was fired by sunny ray. Yet one mile on--yon shatter’d hedge Crests the soft hill whose long smooth ridge Looks on the field below, And sinks so gently on the dale, That not the folds of Beauty’s veil In easier curves can flow. Brief space from thence, the ground again Ascending slowly from the plain, Forms an opposing screen, Which, with its crest of upland ground, Shuts the horizon all around. The soften’d vale between Slopes smooth and fair for courser’s tread; Not the most timid maid need dread To give her snow-white palfrey head On that wide stubble-ground; Nor wood, nor tree, nor bush are there, Her course to intercept or scare, Nor fosse nor fence are found, Save where, from out her shatter’d bowers, Rise Hougoumont’s dismantled towers. IV.