Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79.
Don and Rother
By Ebenezer Elliott (17811849)A
Dear Rother! native Don!
We meet again, to talk, with vain regret,
Of deedless aims! and years remembered yet,—
The past and gone!
O rivers of the heart!
I hear a voice, unvoyaged billows o’er,
Which bids me hasten to their pathless shore,
And cries, “Depart!”
Where virtues are veiled crimes?
Have I not read thee, even from youth to age?
Thou blotted book, with only one bright page!
Thy honest rhymes!
Hast thou reared on the plain?
What useful moments count’st thou in thine hour?
What victim hast thou snatched from cruel power?
What tyrant slain?”
Yes, rivers of the heart!
O’er that blind deep, where morning casts no ray
To cheer the oarless wanderer on his way,
I will depart.
My soul shall talk with you;
For on your banks my infant thoughts were nursed;
Here from the bud the spirit’s petals burst,
When life was new.
My feet through flowers to stray;
Ere my tongue lisped, amid your dewy bowers,
Its first glad hymn to mercy’s sunny showers
And air and day;
Along your windings borne,
My blue eye caught your glimmer in the vale,
Where halcyons darted o’er your willows pale,
On wings like morn.
Like green leaves round the root!
Then thought, with danger came, and flowered like woe!
But deeds, the fervent deeds that blush and glow,
Are virtue’s fruit.