NOW BEAMED the evening star;

And from embattled clouds emerging slow
Cynthia came riding on her silver car;

And hoary mountain-cliffs shone faintly from afar.

AND now the downy cheek and deepened voice

Gave dignity to Edwin's blooming prime;

And walks of wider circuit were his choice,

And vales more mild, and mountains more sublime.
One evening as he framed the careless rhyme,

It was his chance to wander far abroad,
And o'er a lonely eminence to climb,
Which heretofore his foot had never trode;
A vale appeared below, a deep retired abode.

Thither he hied, enamoured of the scene;
For rocks on rocks piled, as by magic spell,
Here scorched with lightning, there with ivy green,
Fenced from the north and east this savage dell.
Southward a mountain rose with easy swell,
Whose long, long groves eternal murmur made;
And toward the western sun a streamlet fell,

Where, through the cliffs, the eye remote surveyed
Blue hills, and glittering waves, and skies in gold arrayed.

ALONG this narrow valley you might see
The wild deer sporting on the meadow ground,
And, here and there, a solitary tree,

Or mossy stone, or rock with woodbine crowned.
Oft did the cliffs reverberate the sound

Of parted fragments tumbling from on high; And from the summit of that craggy mound The perching eagle oft was heard to cry, Or on resounding wings to shoot athwart the sky.