Poem by Thomas Warton

Monody Written near Stratford-upon-Avon

AVON, thy rural views, thy pastures wild,
The willows that o’erhang thy twilight edge,
Their boughs entangling with the embattled sedge;
Thy brink with watery foliage quaintly fringed,
Thy surface with reflected verdure tinged,
Soothe me with many a pensive pleasure mild.
But while I muse, that here the bard divine,
Whose sacred dust yon high-arched aisles enclose
Where the tall windows rise in stately rows
Above the embowering shade,
Here first, at Fancy’s fairy-circled shrine,
Of daisies pied his infant offering made;
Here playful yet, in stripling years unripe,
Framed of thy reeds a shrill and artless pipe,—
Sudden thy beauties, Avon, all are fled,
As at the waving of some magic wand:
An holy trance my charméd spirit wings,
And awful shapes of warriors and of kings
People the busy mead,
Like spectres swarming to the wizard’s hall;
And slowly pace, and point with trembling hand
The wounds ill-covered by the purple pall.
Before me Pity seems to stand
A weeping mourner, smote with anguish sore,
To see Misfortune rend in frantic mood
His robe, with regal woes embroidered o’er.
Pale Terror leads the visionary band,
And sternly shakes his sceptre, dropping blood.

1. Verses Written at Montauban, 1750
2. King Arthur’s Funeral
3. Sonnet Written after Seeing Wilton House
4. On Revisiting the River Loddon
5. Inscription over a Spring in Blenheim Gardens

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