Sonnet LXIII

TO COLEBROOKE DALE.

Thy Genius, Colebrooke, faithless to his charge,

Amid thy woods and vales, thy rocks and streams,

Form'd for the Train that haunt poetic dreams,

Naiads, and Nymphs,—now hears the toiling Barge

And the swart Cyclops ever-clanging forge

Din in thy dells;—permits the dark-red gleams,

From umber'd fires on all thy hills, the beams,

Solar and pure, to shroud with columns large

Of black sulphureous smoke, that spread their veils

Like funeral crape upon the sylvan robe

Of thy romantic rocks, pollute thy gales,

And stain thy glassy floods;—while o'er the globe

To spread thy stores metallic, this rude yell

Drowns the wild woodland song, and breaks the Poet's spell.