Ii

Ours is a great wild country: If you climb to our castle's top, I don't see where your eye can stop; For when you've passed the cornfield country, Where vineyards leave off, flocks are packed, And sheep-range leads to cattle-tract, And cattle-tract to open-chase, And open-chase to the very base Of the mountain where, at a funeral pace, Round about, solemn and slow, One by one, row after row, Up and up the pine-trees go, So, like black priests up, and so Down the other side again To another greater, wilder country, That's one vast red drear burnt-up plain, Branched through and through with many a vein Whence iron's dug, and copper's dealt; Look right, look left, look straight before-- Beneath they mine, above they smelt, Copper-ore and iron-ore, And forge and furnace mould and melt, And so on, more and ever more, Till at the last, for a bounding belt, Comes the salt sand hoar of the great sea shore --And the whole is our Duke's country.