ON RECEIVING HIS DESCRIPTION, IN VERSE, OF AN AUTUMNAL SCENE, NEAR EYAM,
IN THAT COUNTY, SEPTEMBER, 1791.
High on the airy mountain’s sunny side,
On the rais’d heath-bush, gay in purple pride,
You seat me, Edwin, where you sat serene,
And with the pen of Genius sketch’d the scene;
Taught his bold lines each feature wild to trace,
Each rude magnificence, each sylvan grace;
Vast barren hills, and deep luxuriant dales,
That the sun gilds, the volant cloud half veils,
Alternate. Ah! no spot recorded then,
No distant valley, and no nearer glen,
That twining Wye’s cerulean current laves,
Or yellow Derwent with his frothing waves;
No rock, no hamlet, on the mountain’s swell,
No village, nestling in the shadowy dell,
But, as I meet their lov’d, familiar name,
Swift, as the lightning’s penetrating flame,
To my charm’d soul return her morning years,
Their transports heighten’d, and dispell’d their cares.
Thus on the spirit Memory’s local spell
No time can weaken, and no change repel;
It melts the heart, and rushes through the brain,
With pleasure, sweeter for the mingled pain.
What heart but feels that pain, that pleasure’s strife,
Oft as it traces back the maze of life!
But O! where warm the ingenuous passions glow,
That avarice, pride, nor wild ambition know,
This local spell!—how instant is its power,
To chase the Present, and the Past restore!
SCOTLAND, than thine, what poets more endear
Their native scenes, and send our spirits there?
Ah! when they sing of Tay, of Forth, and Clyde,
Of Leader-Haughs, and Yarrow’s flowery side,
Their strains my heart with softer rapture fire
Than MASON’S, GRAY’S, or DARWIN’S lays inspire;
Their loftier rhyme though loftier Genius taught,
Glow in their image, and sublime their thought.
And when you, EDWIN, bid description’s truth
Recall the scenes that charm’d my early youth,
I feel these eyes suffus’d by gushing tears,
While through their crystal shine my happier years,
Fair as the Spring’s first flowers, and verdant fields,
Seen through the illumin’d rains departing April yields.