*_The Forsaken.

Poems founded on the Affections_.

[XII.] This was an overflow from the affliction of Margaret, and excluded as superfluous there; but preserved in the faint hope that it may turn to account, by restoring a shy lover to some forsaken damsel; my poetry having been complained of as deficient in interests of this sort, a charge which the next piece, beginning, 'Lyre! though such power do in thy magic live!' will scarcely tend to obviate.

The natural imagery of these verses was supplied by frequent, I might say intense, observation of the Rydal Torrent.

What an animating contrast is the ever-changing aspect of that, and indeed of every one of our mountain brooks, to the monotonous tone and unmitigated fury of such streams among the Alps as are fed all the summer long by glaciers and melting snows! A traveller, observing the exquisite purity of the great rivers, such as the Rhone at Geneva, and the Reuss at Lucerne, where they issue out of their respective lakes, might fancy for a moment that some power in Nature produced this beautiful change, with a view to make amends for those Alpine sullyings which the waters exhibit near their fountain heads; but, alas! how soon does that purity depart, before the influx of tributary waters that have flowed through cultivated plains and the crowded abodes of men.
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