I

I FOLLOWED thee, wild stream of Paradise, White Usk, for ever showering the sunned bee In the pink chestnut and the hawthorn tree; And all along had magical surmise Of mountains fluctuant in those vesper skies, As unto mermen, caverned in mid-sea, Far up the vast green reaches, soundlessly The giant breakers form, and fall, and rise.

Above thy poet's dust, by yonder yew, Ere distance perished, ere a star began, His clear monastic measure, heard of few, Through lonelier glens of mine own being ran; And thou to me wert dear, because I knew The God who made thee gracious, and the man.