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Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  Between Namur and Liége

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and Holland: Vols. XIV–XV. 1876–79.

Belgium: Meuse, the River

Between Namur and Liége

By William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

WHAT lovelier home could gentle fancy choose?

Is this the stream whose cities, heights, and plains,

War’s favorite playground, are with crimson stains

Familiar as the morn with pearly dews?

The morn, that now, along the silver Meuse,

Spreading her peaceful ensigns, calls the swains

To tend their silent boats and ringing wains,

Or strip the bough whose mellow fruit bestrews

The ripening corn beneath it. As mine eyes

Turn from the fortified and threatening hill,

How sweet the prospect of yon watery glade,

With its gray rocks clustering in pensive shade,

That, shaped like old monastic turrets, rise

From the smooth meadow-ground, serene and still!