The Cataract of Lodore

"How does the water
Come down at Lodore?"
My little boy asked me
Thus, once on a time;
And moreover he tasked me
To tell him in rhyme.
Anon, at the word,
There first came one daughter,
And then came another,
To second and third
The request of their brother,
And to hear how the water
Comes down at Lodore,
With its rush and its roar,
As many a time
They had seen it before.
So I told them in rhyme,
For of rhymes I had store;
And 'twas in my vocation
For their recreation
That so I should sing;
Because I was Laureate
To them and the King.
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- Robert Southey.

During one of our holidays in Wales in the late nineties I found an abandoned poetry collection in the cottage we stayed in which had this poem in it. It was love at first sight.

Unscientific view on the Lake Poets

I'm not prone to considerations such as these, and I love the poetry of all three (especially no. 1), but vapidly, superficially, optically?

		♥