Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and Holland: Vols. XIV–XV. 1876–79. | | | | Belgium: Meuse, the River | | Between Namur and Liége | | William Wordsworth (1770–1850) |
| | | WHAT lovelier home could gentle fancy choose? | |
| Is this the stream whose cities, heights, and plains, | |
| War’s favorite playground, are with crimson stains | |
| Familiar as the morn with pearly dews? | |
| The morn, that now, along the silver Meuse, | 5 |
| 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, | 10 |
| How sweet the prospect of yon watery glade, | |
| With its gray rocks clustering in pensive shade, | |
| That, shaped like old monastic turrets, rise | |
| From the smooth meadow-ground, serene and still! | | | | |
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