Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/184

162 Where, tumbling from aloft, a torrent swelled

The rapid stream whose margin we had trod;

A dreary mansion, large beyond all need,

With high and spacious rooms, deafened and stunned

By noise of waters, making innocent sleep

Lie melancholy among weary bones.

Uprisen betimes, our journey we renewed,

Led by the stream, ere noon-day magnified

Into a lordly river, broad and deep,

Dimpling along in silent majesty,

With mountains for its neighbours, and in view

Of distant mountains and their snowy tops,

And thus proceeding to Locarno's Lake,

Fit resting-place for such a visitant.

Locarno! spreading out in width like Heaven,

How dost thou cleave to the poetic heart,

Bask in the sunshine of the memory;

And Como! thou, a treasure whom the earth

Keeps to herself, confined as in a depth

Of Abyssinian privacy. I spake

Of thee, thy chestnut woods, and garden plots

Of Indian corn tended by dark-eyed maids;

Thy lofty steeps, and pathways roofed with vines,

Winding from house to house, from town to town,