Langdale Pikes

And through that valley winds a little stream like a pleasant thought, ’mid the gray rocks, and the purple heath; its banks are the only green things, as if the spring loved them for the sake of seeing her face mirrored in the clear stream. Some alders grow beside, and a profusion of wild flowers; also there is good sport for the angler.

Rise up, rise up, the cheerful sun
Has his golden race begun;
Though low from your cottage eaves,
Hang the thick vine’s clustering leaves,
Many a sunbeam has found way,
Shining messengers of day:
What can be the dream, whose power
Keeps you at so late an hour?

All the trouble has been mine,
Ready is your rod and line,
All prepared the rainbow flies,
Tyre ne’er knew such radiant dies
As the purple and the gold,
Which their filmy wings unfold:
Fairer baits were never cast—
Ho ! you sluggard, up at last?

What a silvery mist around,
Rises from the dewy ground!
Hot will be the noontide hours,
May it soon come down in showers :
But for shower or for shine,
I know of a woodland shrine,
Moss and leaves;—the fairy queen
’Mid its blossoms must have been.

Glittering in the morning beam,
Crystal runs our little stream,
See the flag-flowers bright and blue,
Tinge the small waves with their hue;
Azure, like a maiden's eye,
Surely there the trout will lie:
Shadowy hangs the alder bough
Hush! we must be silent now.