Öne to whose smooth-rubb'd soul can cling Nor form nor feeling great nor small, A reasoning, self-sufficing thing, An intellectual All in All!. Shut close the door! press down the latch Sleep in thy intellectual crust, Nor lose ten tickings of thy watch, Near this unprofitable dust. But who is He with modest looks, He is retired as noontide dew, He will seem worthy of your love. The outward shews of sky and earth, Of hill and valley he has view'd; And impulses of deeper birth Have come to him in solitude. In common things that round us lic The harvest of a quiet eye That broods and sleeps on his own heart. But he is weak, both man and boy, Hath been an idler in the land; Contented if he might enjoy The things which others understand. -Come hither in thy hour of strength, Come, weak as is a breaking wave! Here stretch thy body at full length; Or build thy house upon this grave, A CHARACTER, In the antithetical Manner. I marvel how Nature could ever find space and bloom, And bustle and sluggishness, pleasure and gloom. There's weakness, and strength both redundant and vain; Could pierce through a temper that's soft to disease, There's indifference, alike when he fails and succeeds, And attention full ten times as much as there needs, Pride where there's no envy, there's so much of joy; And mildness, and spirit both forward and coy. There's freedom, and sometimes a diffident stare Of shame scarcely seeming to know that she's there. Yet wants, heaven knows what, to be worthy the name. What a picture! 'tis drawn without nature or art, -Yet the Man would at once run away with your heart, And I for five centuries right gladly would be Such an odd, such a kind happy creature as he. A FRAGMENT. Between two sister moorland rills There is a spot that seems to lie And in this smooth and open dell A thing no storm can e'er destroy, The shadow of a Danish Boy. In clouds above, the lark is heard, He sings his blithest and his best; |