To The River Greta, Near Keswick

Greta, what fearful listening! when huge stones Rumble along thy bed, block after block: Or, whirling with reiterated shock, Combat, while darkness aggravates the groans: But if thou (like Cocytus from the moans Heard on his rueful margin) thence wert named The Mourner, thy true nature was defamed, And the habitual murmur that atones For thy worst rage, forgotten. Oft as Spring Decks, on thy sinuous banks, her thousand thrones, Seats of glad instinct and love's carolling, The concert, for the happy, then may vie With liveliest peals of birth-day harmony: To a grieved heart, the notes are benisons.

Compare The Prelude, book i. l. 269 (vol. iii. p. 140):--

"Was it for this That one, the fairest of all rivers, loved To blend his murmurs with my nurse's song, And, from his alder shades and rocky falls, And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice That flowed along my dreams?

* * * * *

Make ceaseless music that composed my thoughts To more than infant softness."

ED.