142 THE AUTHOR OF " DARTMOOR/' 



description could make the sunlight appear more bril- 

 liant, or the illumed verdure more striking, than the 

 magnificent expression — 



*^ Beneath the Summer noon 

 Gloriously rests." 



" Years have flown 

 Of sorrow, since my raptured boyish eye 

 First, from this murmuring strand, an eager glance 

 Threw o'er yon lucid waters ; — years have flown, 

 Sweet Lara, yet thy bank uprushes still 

 With the old charm, and Sal tram's pensile woods 

 Seem beautiful as ever. Exquisite — , 



Most exquisite that loveliness must be, 

 Which triumphs o^er satiety, and grows 

 More valued from possession. Let me stray 

 A moment here delighted. Every step 

 Awakes a varying scene by Nature's hand 

 Fair sketched of leaf-crowned hills, and flowery vales. 

 And lawns of fadeless emerald, and streams 

 That as tliey flow, upon the well-pleased ear, 

 Pour music ; and green capes that to the wave, 

 Blue as the heaven above it, nod their groves 

 In gales Atlantic; and far — far away 

 Th' immense of landscape sweeping to the edge 

 Of the encircling Moor. p.p. 16 17. 



"O! beautiful 

 Art thou, Devonia, or when Spring awakes 

 The bud — the flower ; or when the leafiness 

 Crowning thy hills, beneath the summer noon 

 Gloriously rests ; or Autumn sheds her hues 

 Divine : and if stern Winter rule the day 

 O'er thee the monarch of the sunken year 

 Reigns with paternal mildness." p. 4. 



What a glorious description of sun-set is given in the 

 succeeding passage, no human effort could transfer it 

 to canvas. 



" Let me gaze 

 At the great vision ere it pass ; for now 

 The day-god hovers o'er the western hill, 

 And sheds his last fond ray. Farewell ! farewell ! 

 Who givest beauty to the cloud, and light — 

 Joy, music, to the earth I and must yon tints 

 And shapes divine which thou hast formed, decay, — 

 The mountain, and the temple, and the tower, 

 That float in yonder fields of air; — the isles 

 Of all-surpassing loveliness; and seas 



