Classic Poem

Along the mountain let a shepherd guide
your twice-shod feet by tracks his slow sheep mark
in all their generations feeding wide,
bulking and whitening in the gathering dark.

Wherever in broad gullies steep screes hide
their guile in silent cataracts of stones
mistrust their poise; and watch his nimble stride;
slide merrily when the rustling torrent runs.

Great boulders wedge and pile; protruding crags
exasperate the rough, laborious stair.
Where men must cling and crawl, the leisured stags
are stepping lightly in the ambient air.

Or halt. A deeply breathing world is hush
in mellow splendour vast, unless their sound
is audible where many waters rush,
and gash the rocks with many an ancient wound.

These are your quarry. You it is invade
their old dominion in the tangled moss
and sulking, stagnant swamps. Your pick and spade
make deep your lines which cut their flows across.

While with one gesture you assemble rills,
and lead the wayward waters at your will,
and steal the verdure of a hundred hills,
with anxious greed continuing thirsty still,

with yet another seize the greatest lake
may lie convenient at your grasping hand,
and all its riches ruthless overtake
to realize the scheme your mind has planned.

With many-handed industry employ
your servile engines. Tear the mountains down
in serviceable blocks; uproot; destroy;
and stack the plunder of your building stone.

For now you must assault the great lake's marge;
and build a rampart on its shelving shores;
and bar the route by which it would discharge
the over-brimmng drainage of the moors.

Buttress the walls against the heavy freight
they bear anon: the drops and bubbles, borne
by all those busy aqueducts you late
contrived, of which the weeping hills are shorn

Take the earth. Draw your fascinating line
from where men herd and thirsting eyes look up
for water wistfully, at the just incline,
even to the lip of that vast rock-bound cup.

Its shadow as supposed will leap and sag
and lie, on accidents of rolling ground;
stretch your surveying chain, and drive a peg
at each length, till the leagues are all upwound.

Marshall your slaves along the chosen route;
and let them lay a causeway for the wains;
for these will pass for years with bread and fruit,
and basketfuls of relish for their pains.

Great piers support the channels in the air
by which the streams beneficent shall roll.
Look to it that, for glory, these declare
whatever majesty is in your soul.

For once upon a distant time to be,
when small men wonder at your antique ways,
that you should dream and fashion mightily,
these, whole or ruined, yet shall be your praise.

Your milliped is so disposed to ram
its trough-head hard against the mighty doors
which open where your river cuts the dam
through which the strained and measured water pours

Let the king's heart rejoice at grace and strength,
blessed provision of the garnered rain,
when the perfected instrument at length
stalks the descending hills and strides the plain

Watched as its nature asks it, for an age
pure floods of great refreshment pouring through
its cavities, your conduit will assuage
parched Birmingham and sweltering Timbuctoo