Sonnet LXIII. To Colebrooke Dale.
By Anna Seward
Thy GENIUS, Colebrooke, faithless to his charge,
Amid thy woods and vales, thy rocks and streams,
Form'd for the Train that haunt poetic dreams,
Naiads, and Nymphs, - now hears the toiling Barge
And the swart Cyclops ever-clanging forge
Din in thy dells; - permits the dark-red gleams,
From umber'd fires on all thy hills, the beams,
Solar and pure, to shroud with columns large
Of black sulphureous smoke, that spread their veils
Like funeral crape upon the sylvan robe
Of thy romantic rocks, pollute thy gales,
And stain thy glassy floods; - while o'er the globe
To spread thy stores metallic, this rude yell
Drowns the wild woodland song, and breaks the Poet's spell.