5
SONNET.
SCENERY BETWEEN NAMUR AND LIEGE.
What lovelier home could gentle Fancy chuse?
Is this the Stream, whose cities, heights, and plains,
War's favorite play-ground, are with crimson stains
Familiar, as the Morn with pearly dews?
The Morn, that now along the silver Meuse
Spreading her peaceful ensigns, calls the Swains
To tend their silent boats and ringing wains,
Or strip the bough whose mellow fruit bestrews
The ripening corn beneath it. As mine eyes
Turn from the fortified and threatening hill,
How sweet the prospect of yon watery glade,
With its grey rocks, clustering in pensive shade,
That, shaped like old monastic turrets, rise
From the smooth meadow-ground, serene and still
Is this the Stream, whose cities, heights, and plains,
War's favorite play-ground, are with crimson stains
Familiar, as the Morn with pearly dews?
The Morn, that now along the silver Meuse
Spreading her peaceful ensigns, calls the Swains
To tend their silent boats and ringing wains,
Or strip the bough whose mellow fruit bestrews
The ripening corn beneath it. As mine eyes
Turn from the fortified and threatening hill,
How sweet the prospect of yon watery glade,
With its grey rocks, clustering in pensive shade,
That, shaped like old monastic turrets, rise
From the smooth meadow-ground, serene and still
