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Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  Monastic Ruins

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79.

Emont (Eamont), the River

Monastic Ruins

By William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

From “The Prelude

THE VARIED banks

Of Emont, hitherto unnamed in song,

And that monastic castle, mid tall trees,

Low standing by the margin of the stream,

A mansion visited (as fame reports)

By Sidney, where, in sight of our Helvellyn,

Or stormy Cross-fell, snatches he might pen

Of his Arcadia, by fraternal love

Inspired,—that river and those mouldering towers

Have seen us side by side, when, having clomb

The darksome windings of a broken stair,

And crept along a ridge of fractured wall,

Not without trembling, we in safety looked

Forth, through some Gothic window’s open space,

And gathered with one mind a rich reward

From the far-stretching landscape, by the light

Of morning beautified, or purple eve;

Or, not less pleased, lay on some turret’s head,

Catching from tufts of grass and hare-bell flowers

Their faintest whisper to the passing breeze,

Given out while midday heat oppressed the plains.