Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
Among the woods and copses, nor disturb
The wild green landscape. Once again I see
These hedgerows, hardly hedgerows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!”
Meditation, contemplation, serenity, each not unmixed with pathos, are the keynotes of this part of the Wye valley; and our river would have done well enough if not another poet had ever afterwards sung of its banks and flood. But this was not to be its fate: for has not Tennyson told us in “In Memoriam” how “half the babbling Wye” is hushed by the Severn, whose mightier tide drives back its flood?—
“The Wye is hushed, nor moved along,