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Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  Tyne and Wainsbeck

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

Tyne and Wainsbeck

Tyne and Wainsbeck

By Mark Akenside (1721–1770)

(From Pleasures of the Imagination)

WOULD I again were with you, O ye dales

Of Tyne, and ye most ancient woodlands! where,

Oft as the giant flood obliquely strides,

And his banks open, and his lawns extend,

Stops short the pleaséd traveller to view,

Presiding o’er the scene, some rustic tower

Founded by Norman or by Saxon hands;

O ye Northumbrian shades! which overlook

The rocky pavement and the mossy falls

Of solitary Wensbeck’s limpid stream,

How gladly I recall your well-known seats

Beloved of old; and that delightful time

When, all alone, for many a summer’s day

I wandered through your calm recesses, fed

In silence by some powerful hand unseen.