  On the painted bridge at Mottisfont above the Test I’ve stood Where the dab-chick from a rushy raft directs her little brood, Where fringed with sedge and willow-weed the waters spread about And linger in pellucid glooms the sleepy spotted trout. I’ve seen the tawny tumult of the headlong Highland spate, And the ebb round Hair-brush Island (which the map calls Chiswick Ait) Where the withy bristles shimmer and the purple mud-banks gleam And the lights come out by Thornycroft’s and glisten in the stream. ’Twere good to be at Abergeirch: the little brook again Greets the brine among the shingle on the beetling coast of Lleyn,— O the shallows on the sand-banks where the dozing flat-fish lie And the heather surging inland till it breaks against the sky! But the chalky scaurs of Compton hold the shadows; and between Lie the water-meads of Mottisfont enamelled with such green As discolours all I’ve looked upon in valleys far apart— For the water-meads of Mottisfont lie nearest to my heart. |
|
