TO A SEXTON

1799 1800

Written in Germany.

LET thy wheel-barrow alone -
Wherefore, Sexton, piling still

In thy bone-house bone on bone?

"T is already like a hill

In a field of battle made,

Where three thousand skulls are laid;

These died in peace each with the other,Father, sister, friend, and brother.

Mark the spot to which I point!

From this platform, eight feet square,

Take not even a finger-joint:

Andrew's whole fire-side is there.

Here, alone, before thine eyes,

Simon's sickly daughter lies,

From weakness now, and pain defended,
Whom he twenty winters tended.

Look but at the gardener's pride-
How he glories, when he sees

Roses, lilies, side by side,

Violets in families!

By the heart of Man, his tears,
By his hopes and by his fears,

Thou, too heedless, art the Warden
Of a far superior garden.

Thus then, each to other dear,

Let them all in quiet lie,

Andrew there, and Susan here,
Neighbours in mortality.

And, should I live through sun and rain
Seven widowed years without my Jane,
O Sexton, do not then remove her,
Let one grave hold the Loved and Lover!

THE DANISH BOY

A FRAGMENT

1799 1800

Written in Germany. It was entirely a fancy; but intended as a prelude to a ballad poem never written.

I

BETWEEN two sister moorland rills

There is a spot that seems to lie
Sacred to flowerets of the hills,
And sacred to the sky.

And in this smooth and open dell
There is a tempest-stricken tree;
A corner-stone by lightning cut,
The last stone of a lonely hut;
And in this dell you see

A thing no storm can e'er destroy,
The shadow of a Danish Boy.

II

In clouds above, the lark is heard,
But drops not here to earth for rest;
Within this lonesome nook the bird

Did never build her nest.

No beast, no bird hath here his home; Bees, wafted on the breezy air,

Pass high above those fragrant bells

To other flowers:

to other dells

Their burthens do they bear;

The Danish Boy walks here alone:

The lovely dell is all his own.

III

A Spirit of noon-day is he;

Yet seems a form of flesh and blood; Nor piping shepherd shall he be,

Nor herd-boy of the wood.

A regal vest of fur he wears,

In colour like a raven's wing;

It fears not rain, nor wind, nor dew;

But in the storm 't is fresh and blue
As budding pines in spring;

His helmet has a vernal grace,

Fresh as the bloom upon his face.

IV

A harp is from his shoulder slung;
Resting the harp upon his knee,
To words of a forgotten tongue
He suits its melody.

Of flocks upon the neighbouring hill
He is the darling and the joy;

And often, when no cause appears,
The mountain-ponies prick their ears,
-They hear the Danish Boy,
While in the dell he sings alone
Beside the tree and corner-stone.

V

There sits he; in his face you spy

No trace of a ferocious air,

Nor ever was a cloudless sky

So steady or so fair.

The lovely Danish Boy is blest

And happy in his flowery cove:

From bloody deeds his thoughts are far; And yet he warbles songs of war,

That seem like songs of love,

For calm and gentle is his mien;
Like a dead Boy he is serene.