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(From The Poet’s Pilgrimage)
THE SEASON of her splendor is gone by, | |
| Yet everywhere its monuments remain: | |
| Temples which rear their stately heads on high, | |
| Canals that intersect the fertile plain, | |
| Wide streets and squares, with many a court and hall, | 5 |
| Spacious and undefaced, but ancient all. | |
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| Time hath not wronged her, nor hath Ruin sought | |
| Rudely her splendid structures to destroy, | |
| Save in those recent days with evil fraught, | |
| When Mutability, in drunken joy | 10 |
| Triumphant, and from all restraint released, | |
| Let loose the fierce and many-headed beast. | |
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| But for the scars in that unhappy rage | |
| Inflicted, firm she stands and undecayed; | |
| Like our first sires’, a beautiful old age | 15 |
| Is hers, in venerable years arrayed; | |
| And yet to her benignant stars may bring | |
| What fate denies to man,—a second spring. | |
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| When I may read of tilts in days of old, | |
| And tourneys graced by chieftains of renown, | 20 |
| Fair dames, grave citizens, and warriors bold, | |
| If Fancy would portray some stately town, | |
| Which for such pomp fit theatre should be, | |
| Fair Bruges, I shall then remember thee. | |
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| Nor did thy landscape yield me less delight, | 25 |
| Seen from the deck as slow it glided by, | |
| Or when beneath us, from thy Belfry’s height, | |
| Its boundless circle met the bending sky; | |
| The waters smooth and straight, thy proper boast, | |
| And lines of roadside trees in long perspective lost. | 30 |
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| No happier landscape may on earth be seen, | |
| Rich gardens all around and fruitful groves, | |
| White dwellings trim relieved with lively green, | |
| The pollard that the Flemish painter loves, | |
| With aspens tall and poplars fair to view, | 35 |
| Casting o’er all the land a gray and willowy hue. | |
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