Poetical Fragments from Ethel Churchill Volume II/Alteration

by Letitia Elizabeth Landon

CHAPTER III.

ALTERATION.

My heart hath turned aside
    From its early dreams;
To me their course has been
    Like mountain streams.

Bright and pure they left
    Their place of birth;
Soon on every wave
    Came taints of earth.

Weeds grew upon the banks,
    And, as the waters swept,
A bad or useless part
    Of all they kept,

Till it reached the plain below,
    An altered thing
Bearing gloomy trace,—
    Of its wandering.

Altered from Stanzas in The Amulet, 1826

Not in Blanchard