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Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  Rivers of England

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

Rivers of England

Rivers of England

By John Dyer (1700?–1758)

(From The Fleece)

NO common pleasure warms the generous mind,

When it beholds the labors of the loom;

How widely round the globe they are dispersed,

From little tenements by wood or croft,

Through many a slender path, how sedulous,

As rills to rivers broad, they speed their way

To public roads, to Fosse, or Watling Street,

Or Armine, ancient works; and thence explore,

Through every navigable wave, the sea

That laps the green earth round: through Tyne, and Tees,

Through Weare, and Lune, and merchandizing Hull,

And Swale, and Aire, whose crystal waves reflect

The various colors of the tinctured web;

Through Ken, swift rolling down his rocky dale,

Like giddy youth impetuous, then at Wick

Curbing his train, and, with the sober pace

Of cautious eld, meandering to the deep;

Through Dart, and sullen Exe, whose murmuring wave

Envies the Dune and Rother, who have won

The serge and kersie to their blanching streams.