Some Diversions of a Man of Letters by Edmund William Gosse
page 70 of 330 (21%)
page 70 of 330 (21%)
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Where woodbines cluster round the door,
Where shells and moss o'erlay the floor, And on whose top an hawthorn blows, Amid whose thickly-woven boughs Some nightingale still builds her nest, Each evening warbling thee to rest; Then lay me by the haunted stream, Rapt in some wild poetic dream, In converse while methinks I rove With Spenser through a fairy grove." To show how identical were the methods of the two brothers we may compare the foregoing lines with the following from Thomas Warton's "Ode on the Approach of Summer" (published when he was twenty-five, and possibly written much earlier):-- "His wattled cotes the shepherd plaits; Beneath her elm the milkmaid chats; The woodman, speeding home, awhile Rests him at a shady stile; Nor wants there fragrance to dispense Refreshment o'er my soothèd sense; Nor tangled woodbine's balmy bloom, Nor grass besprent to breathe perfume, Nor lurking wild-thyme's spicy sweet To bathe in dew my roving feet; Nor wants there note of Philomel, Nor sound of distant-tinkling bell, Nor lowings faint of herds remote, Nor mastiff's bark from bosom'd cot; |
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