Hartley Coleridge (1796–1849)

WE parted on the mountains, as two streams

From one clear spring pursue their several ways;

And thy fleet course hath been through many a maze

In foreign lands, where silvery Padus gleams

To that delicious sky, whose glowing beams

Brightened the tresses that old poets praise;

Where Petrarch’s patient love and artful lays,

And Ariosto’s song of many themes,

Moved the soft air. But I, a lazy brook,

As close pent up within my native dell,

Have crept along from nook to shady nook,

Where flow’rets blow, and whispering Naiads dwell.

Yet now we meet, that parted were so wide,

O’er rough and smooth to travel side by side.