III.

What fine and rare domains Untold for leagues around; Green parks, and meads, and plains, And bosky woods profound,-- A realm of leafiness, and sweet enchanted ground! Before the palace lies a shaven lawn, Sloping and shining in the dews of dawn, With turfy terraces, and garden bowers, Where rows of slender urns are full of flowers; Broad oaks o'erarch the winding avenues, Edged round with evergreens of fadeless bloom, And pour a thousand intermingling hues, A many tinted flood of golden gloom; Far-seen through twinkling leaves, The fountains gush aloft like silver sheaves, Drooping with shining ears, and crests of spray, And foamy tassels blowing every way, Shaking in marble basins white and cold, A bright and drainless shower of beaded grain, Which winnows off, in sun-illumined rain The dusty chaff, a cloud of misty gold; Around their volumes, down the plashy tide, The swans are sailing mixed in lilies white, Like virgin queens in soft disdain and pride, Sweeping amid their maids with trains of light; A little herd of deer with startled looks, In shady parks where all the year they browse, Head-down are drinking at the lucid brooks, Their antlers mirrored with the tangled boughs; My rivers flow beyond, with guardant ranks Of silver-liveried poplars, on their banks; Barges are fretting at the castle piers, Rocking with every ripple in the tide; And bridges span the stream with arches wide, Their stony 'butments mossed and gray with years; An undulating range of vales, and bowers, And columned palaces, and distant towers, And on the welkin mountains bar the view, Shooting their jagged peaks sublimely up the blue!