Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79.
To the River Arun
By Charlotte Smith (1749–1806)B
Arun, to thee will other praise belong:
Dear to the lover’s and the mourner’s heart,
And ever sacred to the sons of song.
Thy banks romantic hopeless Love shall seek,
Where o’er the rocks the mantling bind-weed flaunts;
And Sorrow’s drooping form and faded cheek
Choose on thy willowed shore her lonely haunts.
Banks, which inspired thy Otway’s plaintive strain!
Wilds, whose lorn echoes learned the deeper tone
Of Collins, powerful shade! yet once again
Another poet, Hayley, is thine own.
Thy classic stream again shall hear a lay
Bright as its waves and various as its way.