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.