The traveller in a burning clime Longs for the temperate English skies, And will be talking of the time When he shall see her cliffs arise Above the gray sea swaying broadly Past Dover and the Cliff of Lear. But I, when others boast of home And of the Strand's o'er-peopled way, Preferring London before Rome, And Thames to Arno any day, Turn, and again do hear in fancy A thin stream among heathery scarps Among the fern and heather brown, Past some menhir unrifled still, The Ellé I hear go tinkling down 'Neath quaint Sainte Barbe upon her hill, Where all the mountain air is quickened By wild memorial perfume. I am no Celt, and yet the thought Of pine, and rock, and heathy height, And pools where the huge never-caught Mysterious trout, half out of sight, Swim slowly by or flash a glimmer Of sides with old signs scriptured o'er, And of the strain'd unending song Of rushing water in oak-woods, Will catch me, when I walk along Amid the town's prosaic moods, And with a strange nostalgia move me, And something of a mortal pang. |