Where Cart rins rowin' to the sea,
but
Where Doon rins wimplin' clear;
And Dante says, or makes Francesca say,
Siede la terra dove nata fui
Sulla marina dove Po discende
Per aver pace co' seguaci sui.
Per aver pace: a lovely phrase. And that brings me to Michael Drayton.
That was a poet—author also of one lovely lyric—who treated our rivers after the fashion of his day, which ran to length and tedious excess. Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis is by pages too long; but that is nothing to Drayton's masterpiece. With the best dispositions in the world I have never been able to get right through the Polyolbion. His anthropomorphism is surprising, and a little of it only, amusing.
Here is an example, wherein he desires to express the fact that an island called Portholme stands in the Ouse at Huntingdon.
Held on with this discourse, she—[that is, Ouse]—not so far hath run,
But that she is arrived at goodly Huntingdon
Where she no sooner views her darling and delight,
Proud Portholme, but becomes so ravished with the sight,
That she her limber arms lascivious doth throw
About the islet's waist, who being embraced so,
Her flowing bosom shows to the enamour'd Brook;
and so on.