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

Severn, the River

The Severn

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892)

(From In Memoriam)

THE DANUBE to the Severn gave

The darkened heart that beat no more;

They laid him by the pleasant shore,

And in the hearing of the wave.

There twice a day the Severn fills;

The salt sea-water passes by,

And hushes half the babbling Wye,

And makes a silence in the hills.

The Wye is hushed nor moved along,

And hushed my deepest grief of all,

When filled with tears that cannot fall,

I brim with sorrow drowning song.

The tide flows down, the wave again

Is vocal in its wooded walls;

My deeper anguish also falls,

And I can speak a little then.