Thomas Warton, 1777 (1728-1790)
Avon, thy rural view, thy pastures wild,
The willows that o’erhang thy twilight edge,
Their boughs entangling with the embattled sedge;
Thy brink with watery foliage quaintly fring’d,
Thy surface with reflected verdure ting’d;
Soothe me with many a pensive pleasure mild.
But while I muse, that here the bard divine,
Whose sacred dust yon high arch’d 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,
Fram’d 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 charmed 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-cover’d with 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 embroider’d o’er.
Pale Terror leads the visionary band,
And sternly shakes his sceptre dropping blood.
“Monody written near Stratford-upon-Avon.” Miscellaneous Odes. 1777.