"What thoughts must through the creature's brain have passed!

Even from the topmost stone, upon the steep,

Are but three bounds; and look, sir, at this last-
O master! it has been a cruel leap.

"For thirteen hours he ran a desperate race;
And in my simple mind we cannot tell

What cause the hart might have to love this place,
And come and make his death-bed near the well.

"Here on the grass perhaps asleep he sank,
Lulled by the fountain in the summer-tide;
This water was perhaps the first he drank
When he had wandered from his mother's side.

"In April here beneath the scented thorn

He heard the birds their morning carols sing; And he, perhaps, for aught we know, was born Not half a furlong from that self-same spring.

"Now, here is neither grass nor pleasant shade; The sun on drearier hollow never shone ;

So will it be, as I have often said,

66

Till trees and stones and fountain, all are gone."

Gray-headed shepherd, thou hast spoken well; Small difference lies between thy creed and mine: This beast not unobserved by Nature fell;

His death was mourned by sympathy divine.

"The Being that is in the clouds and air,
That is in the green leaves among the groves,
Maintains a deep and reverential care

For the unoffending creatures whom he loves.

"The pleasure-house is dust-behind, before,
This is no common waste, no common gloom;
But Nature, in due course of time, once more
Shall here put on her beauty and her bloom.

"She leaves these objects to a slow decay,

That what we are, and have been, may be known;

But, at the coming of the milder day,

These monuments shall all be overgrown.

"One lesson, shepherd, let us two divide,

Taught both by what she shows and what concealsNever to blend our pleasure or our pride

With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.”

1800.

III.

POWER OF MUSIC.

AN Orpheus! an Orpheus! yes, faith may grow bold,
And take to herself all the wonders of old ;-

Near the stately Pantheon you'll meet with the same
In the street that from Oxford hath borrowed its name.

His station is there; and he works on the crowd,
He sways them with harmony merry and loud ;
He fills with his power all their hearts to the brim—
Was aught ever heard like his fiddle and him?

What an eager assembly! what an empire is this!
The weary have life, and the hungry have bliss ;
The mourner is cheered, and the anxious have rest :
And the guilt-burthened soul is no longer opprest.

As the moon brightens round her the clouds of the night,
So he, where he stands, is a centre of light;
It gleams on the face, there, of dusky-browed Jack,
And the pale-visaged baker's, with basket on back.

That errand-bound prentice was passing in hasteWhat matter? he's caught--and his time runs to waste. The newsman is stopped, though he stops on the fret ; And the half-breathless lamplighter-he's in the net!

The porter sits down on the weight which he bore;
The lass with her barrow wheels hither her store;
If a thief could be here, he might pilfer at ease;
She sees the musician, 'tis all that she sees!

He stands, backed by the wall; he abates not his din;
His hat gives him vigour, with boons dropping in

From the old and the young, from the poorest; and there!
The one-pennied boy has his penny to spare.

O blest are the hearers, and proud be the hand

Of the pleasure it spreads through so thankful a band; I am glad for him, blind as he is!-all the while

If they speak 'tis to praise, and they praise with a smile.

That tall man, a giant in bulk and in height,
Not an inch of his body is free from delight;
Can he keep himself still, if he would? oh, not he!
The music stirs in him like wind through a tree.

Mark that cripple who leans on his crutch; like a tower
That long has leaned forward, leans hour after hour!
That mother, whose spirit in fetters is bound,
While she dandles the babe in her arms to the sound.

Now, coaches and chariots! roar on like a stream ;
Here are twenty souls happy as souls in a dream :
They are deaf to your murmurs-they care not for you,
Nor what ye are flying, nor what ye pursue!

1806.

IV.

RESOLUTION AND INDEPENDENCE.

THERE was a roaring in the wind all night;
The rain came heavily, and fell in floods;
But now the sun is rising calm and bright ;

The birds are singing in the distant woods;
Over his own sweet voice the stock-dove broods;
The jay makes answer as the magpie chatters;
And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.

All things that love the sun are out of doors;
The sky rejoices in the morning's birth;

The grass is bright with rain-drops;—on the moors
The hare is running races in her mirth ;

And with her feet she from the plashy earth

Raises a mist, that, glittering in the sun,

Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run.

I was a traveller then upon the moor,

I saw the hare that raced about with joy;
I heard the woods and distant waters roar;
Or heard them not, as happy as a boy :
The pleasant season did my heart employ :
My old remembrances went from me wholly;
And all the ways of men, so vain and melancholy.

But, as it sometimes chanceth, from the might
Of joy in minds that can no further go,
As high as we have mounted in delight

In our dejection do we sink as low;

To me that morning did it happen so ;
And fears and fancies thick upon me came;
Dim sadness-and blind thoughts, I knew not, nor
could name.

I heard the skylark warbling in the sky;
And I bethought me of the playful hare:
Even such a happy child of earth am I;

Even as these blissful creatures do I fare;
Far from the world I walk, and from all care;
But there may come another day to me-
Solitude, pain of heart, distress, and poverty.

My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought,
As if life's business were a summer mood;
As if all needful things would come unsought
To genial faith, still rich in genial good;
But how can he expect that others should
Build for him, sow for him, and at his call
Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all?

I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy,
The sleepless soul that perished in his pride;

Of him who walked in glory and in joy

Following his plough, along the mountain side:
By our own spirits are we deified;

We poets in our youth begin in gladness;

But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.

Now, whether it were by peculiar grace,

A leading from above, a something given,

Yet it befell, that, in this lonely place,

When I, with these untoward thoughts had striven, Beside a pool bare to the eye of heaven,

I saw a man before me unawares:

The oldest man he seemed that ever wore gray hairs.

As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie

Couched on the bald top of an eminence; Wonder to all who do the same espy,

By what means it could thither come, and whence, So that it seems a thing endued with sense : Like a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a shelf Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun itself;

Such seemed this man, not all alive nor dead,
Nor all asleep--in his extreme old age:
His body was bent double, feet and head
Coming together in life's pilgrimage;

As if some dire constraint of pain, or rage
Of sickness felt by him in times long past,

A more than human weight upon his frame had cast.

Himself he propped, body, and pale face,
Upon a long gray staff of shaven wood:
And, still as I drew near with gentle pace,
Upon the margin of that moorish flood
Motionless as a cloud the old man stood,
That heareth not the loud winds when they call
And moveth altogether, if it move at all.

At length, himself unsettling, he the pond
Stirred with his staff, and fixedly did look
Upon the muddy water, which he conned,
As if he had been reading in a book :
And now a stranger's privilege I took ;
And, drawing to his side, to him did say,
“This morning gives us promise of a glorious day.”

A gentle answer did the old man make,

In courteous speech, which forth he slowly drew: And him with further words I thus bespake, "What occupation do you there pursue? This is a lonesome place for one like you." Ere he replied, a flash of mild surprise Broke from the sable orbs of his yet-vivid eyes.

His words came feebly, from a feeble chest,
But each in solemn order followed each,
With something of a lofty utterance drest-

Choice word and measured phrase, above the reach
Of ordinary men ; a stately speech;

Such as grave livers do in Scotland use,

Religious men, who give to God and man their dues.

He told, that to these waters he had come
To gather leeches, being old and poor :
Employment hazardous and wearisome!

And he had many hardships to endure:

From pond to pond he roamed, from moor to moor; Housing, with God's good help, by choice or chance, And in this way he gained an honest maintenance.