Not envying Latian shades--if yet they throw A grateful coolness round that crystal Spring, Blandusia, prattling--as when long ago The Sabine Bard was moved her praise to sing;[431][EV] Careless of flowers that in perennial blow 5 Round the moist marge of Persian fountains cling; Heedless of Alpine torrents thundering Through ice-built arches[432] radiant as heaven's bow; I seek the birth-place of a native Stream.--[EW] All hail, ye mountains! hail, thou morning light! 10 Better to breathe at large on this clear height Than toil[433] in needless sleep from dream to dream: Pure flow the verse, pure, vigorous, free, and bright, For Duddon, long-loved Duddon, is my theme! VARIANTS: [Footnote 431: 1837. Not envying shades which haply yet may throw A grateful coolness round that rocky spring, Blandusia, once responsive to the string Of the Horatian lyre with babbling flow; 1820. ] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote EU: With this last stanza compare what Charles Lamb wrote to Dorothy Wordsworth on May 25, 1820, after reading the poem: "I have traced the Duddon in thought and with repetition along the banks (alas!) of the Lea--(unpoetical name): it is always flowing and murmuring in my ears." (_Letters of Charles Lamb_, edited by Alfred Ainger, vol. ii. p. 56.)--ED.] [Footnote EV: See Horace, _Carmina_ III. 13, _Ad fontem Blandusiæ_: ... unde loquaces Lymphæ desiliunt tuæ, and compare _Epistolae_ I. 16, 9.--ED.] [Footnote 432: 1837. Through icy portals ... 1820. ] [Footnote EW: Mr. Herbert Rix--late Assistant Secretary to the Royal Society--has made a very minute and careful study of the Duddon Valley--repeated during many seasons--with the object of localising the allusions in the sonnets. I am indebted to him for the following notes, which bear his name. The Rev. Canon Rawnsley has also studied the Duddon Valley with great care, and I place his comments beside those of Mr. Rix, both when they are supplementary, and when they differ from the conclusions come to by Mr. Rix.--ED. "The Duddon rises on Wrynose Fell, near to the 'Three-Shire Stone,' where Westmoreland, Cumberland, and Lancashire meet, though which of the rills descending from the heights above Wrynose Gap and uniting to form the streamlet which flows along the pass, is to be regarded as the ultimate source, or which of them the poet may have followed, it would perhaps be difficult to say. More than one takes its rise in just such a spot as we find described in the second and third sonnets, where the 'lofty waste' is haunted by the Spirit of 'Desolation,' where the 'whistling blast' sweeps bleakly by, and where 'naked stones,' such as the poet chose for his seat, are scattered all around. James Thorne, in his _Rambles by Rivers_ (London, 1844, p. 10), has given a rough woodcut of the source of the Duddon." (Herbert Rix.)