II.

Yet wandering content in lowlier ways, By brambly lane and lawn-embroidered mere, By quiet river in whose waters clear The clustering willows and tall towers gaze Of minster-town whose ancient bells ring out And trail their music through thy thoughtful rhyme Like far-off echoes of an older time When trembled in their peal no note of doubt. Landless, yet holder of a royal fief In all the beauty by rich nature wrought— Each blossoming hedge-row with an earldom fraught, Wide duchies bound in every golden sheaf— Thine the unchallenged tenure of the whole, By right divine of unstained poet-soul!