Running filled with every craft possible to be seen 

 Waters, betwixt the Nore and Oxford; the Forth, 

 winding in still loops under the walls of 

 Stirling and grey Cambuskenneth ; the Clyde, 

 running past the hills of Dumbarton and 

 Argyll, already salt with the sea-flood pouring 

 in by the ocean-gates of Arran and Ailsa ; the 

 deep flood of Tay or Shannon ; these, and 

 others, will always have a host to praise and 

 magnify. But many of us will dream rather 

 of chalk-streams in Devon, of the rippling 

 amber-yellow flood of Derwent in the Peakland 

 valleys, of Tweed and Teviot, of slow streams 

 among woods and bright rivers going like 

 cold flame through wide straths and lowlands : 

 of small narrow waters whose very names are 

 wedded to beauty and to 'old, unhappy, far- 

 off things,' Otterbourne, the Water of Urr, 

 the Water of Quair, Allan Water. Above 

 all will some of us think of those peat-stained 

 bracken-dyed burns, that leap and dance and 

 sing down the steep ways of rock and heather 

 in the Scotland of our love. 



For my own part I find myself in so great 

 agreement with a friend, who expresses better 

 than I can do the love and haunting spell of 

 the brown hill-water (which is neither a river 

 nor exactly a stream nor yet a rivulet, but 

 with something of each and more of what in 

 142 



