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To The River Avon

By Walter Savage Landor

Topics: classic

Avon! why runnest thou away so fast?     Rest thee before that Chancel where repose     The bones of him whose spirit moves the world.     I have beheld thy birthplace, I have seen     Thy tiny ripples where they play amid     The golden cups and ever-waving blades.     I have seen mighty rivers, I have seen     Padus, recovered from his fiery wound,     And Tiber, prouder than them all to bear     Upon his tawny bosom men who crusht     The world they trod on, heeding not the cries     Of culprit kings and nations many-tongued.     What are to me these rivers, once adorn'd     With crowns they would not wear but swept away?     Worthier art thou of worship, and I bend     My knees upon thy bank, and call thy name,     And hear, or think I hear, thy voice reply.

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"Avon! why runnest thou away so fast?..."

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Author:Walter Savage Landor

"Avon! why runnest thou away so fast?..." by Walter Savage Landor

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"The Text is taken from Percy's Reliques (1765), vol. i. p. 71, 'given from two MS. copies, transmitted from Scotland.' Herd had a very similar bal"

Walter Savage Landor

About Walter Savage Landor

Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) was an English poet and prose writer whose "Imaginary Conversations" and lyric poems are marked by classical restraint and epigrammatic wit. His poem "Rose Aylmer" is one of the most admired short poems in English.

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"Now thou art gone, tho' not gone far,     It seems..."

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