CLEAR WATERS 



The streams of the Saxons are languid and dead, 

 Like the mist on the mountain when summer is fled. 

 With thy wild, thronging billows, now softened, now shrill, 

 Like the laugh of fair children that sport on the hill, 

 Now all glowing with light and all snowy with foam, 

 Like the maids of the land of my heart and my home. 



Going up stream there is yet nearly twenty miles of 

 the Wye between Rhayader and that lonely hollow 

 beneath Plinlimmon where lurks its birthplace. From 

 the mountain spur above, on a still day following a 

 storm, you can hear with something more than the 

 ear of faith the faint chords of a wonderful trio. It is 

 the infant waters of the Wye, the Severn, and the 

 Rheidol, plashing from their fountain springs. No 

 wonder it set the harps of the old bards twanging and 

 stirred George Borrow to much original eloquence. 

 Surely, for those to whom rivers are something more 

 than geographical expressions, there is not a spot in 

 all these islands quite so significantly suggestive. If 

 you have a heart that can feel, and a fancy that can be 

 moved by such things, they will be touched here. If 

 not, let it pass. For there is quite tolerable trouting 

 in the Wye when it gets big enough, which is pretty 

 soon, for the Tarenig, of equal volume and rising in the 

 high breast of Plinlimmon, joins it three miles below. 

 This is more than can be said, I fear, for the Severn, 

 for though equally prolific, the little sheep town of 

 Llanidloes holds the same fixed views on trout as the 

 men of Rhayader have always cherished towards the 

 salmon. 



Salmon ascend the Severn in fair numbers to its 

 head-waters. But, as for some inexplicable reason 



