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And there they built up, without mortar or lime, A Man on the peak of the crag.

They built him of stones gathered up as they lay:

"Drink, pretty creature, drink," she said in such

a tone

That I almost received her heart into my own.

I sy belt him and christened him all in one day, 'Twas little Barbara Lewthwaite, a child of beauty A chin both vigorous and hale ;

4d without scruple they called him Ralph Jones. Nos Ralph is renowned for the length of his bones; The Magg of Legberthwaite dale.

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rare!

I watched them with delight, they were a lovely pair. Now with her empty can the maiden turned away: But ere ten yards were gone her footsteps did she stay.

Right towards the lamb she looked; and from a shady place

I unobserved could see the workings of her face: If Nature to her tongue could measured numbers bring,

Thus, thought I, to her lamb that little Maid might sing:

"What ails thee, young One? what? Why pull so at thy cord?

Is it not well with thee? well both for bed and board? Thy plot of grass is soft, and green as grass can be ; Rest, little young One, rest; what is 't that aileth thee?

What is it thou wouldst seek? What is wanting to thy heart?

Thy limbs are they not strong? And beautiful

thou art:

This grass is tender grass; these flowers they have

no peers;

Tar dew was falling fast, the stars began to blink; And that green corn all day is rustling in thy ears!

I heard a voice; it said, "Drink, pretty creature,

drink!"

Ard, looking o'er the hedge, before me I espied Aw-white mountain-lamb with a Maiden at its sile.

Se hp nor kine were near; the lamb was all ak ne,

its a slender cord was tethered to a stone; cance on the grass did the little Maiden LIFEl,

If the sun be shining hot, do but stretch thy woollen

chain,

This beech is standing by, its covert thou canst gain; For rain and mountain-storms! the like thou need'st not fear,

The rain and storm are things that scarcely can come here.

Rest, little young One, rest; thou hast forgot the day When my father found thee first in places far away; Wh to that mountain-lamb she gave its evening Many flocks were on the hills, but thou wert owned

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must belong,

XV.

TO H. C.

SIX YEARS OLD.

O THOU ! whose fancies from afar are brought;
Who of thy words dost make a mock apparel,
And fittest to unutterable thought

The breeze-like motion and the self-born carol;
Thou faery voyager! that dost float
In such clear water, that thy boat
To brood on air than on an earthly stream;
May rather seem
Suspended in a stream as clear as sky,

Where earth and heaven do make one imagery;
O blessed vision! happy child!
Thou art so exquisitely wild,

I think of thee with many fears

For what may be thy lot in future years.

I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest, Lord of thy house and hospitality;

And Grief, uneasy lover! never rest

But when she sate within the touch of thee.
O too industrious folly!

O vain and causeless melancholy!
Nature will either end thee quite;

Or, lengthening out thy season of delight,
Preserve for thee, by individual right,

A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks.
What hast thou to do with sorrow,

Or the injuries of to-morrow?

Thou art a dew-drop, which the morn brings forth,
Ill fitted to sustain unkindly shocks,
Or to be trailed along the soiling earth;
A gem that glitters while it lives,
And no forewarning gives;

But, at the touch of wrong, without a strife
Slips in a moment out of life.

XVI.

1802.

INFLUENCE OF NATURAL OBJECTS

IN CALLING FORTH AND STRENGTHENING THE IMAGINATION IN BOYHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH.

FROM AN UNPUBLISHED POEM.

[This extract is reprinted from "THE FRIEND."]

WISDOM and Spirit of the universe!

For she looked with such a look, and she spake Thou Soul, that art the Eternity of thought!

with such a tone,

That I almost received her heart into my own."

And giv'st to forms and images a breath

And everlasting motion! not in vain,

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Ner was this fellowship vouchsafed to me
in stunted kindness. In November days,
We vapours rolling down the valleys made
Azely scene more lonesome; among woods
At nan; and mid the calm of summer nights,
We, by the margin of the trembling lake,
Leath the gloomy hills, homeward I went
in tade, such intercourse was mine:
He was it in the fields both day and night,
And by the waters, all the summer long.
Asia the frosty season, when the sun
Was, and, visible for many a mile,

Te stage-windows through the twilight blazed,
I need not the summons: happy time

2 was indeed for all of us; for me
It was a time of rapture! Clear and loud
Tenge-dock tolled six-I wheeled about,
Pred and exulting like an untired horse

tares not for his home.-All shod with steel Wessed along the polished ice, in games Ceferate, imitative of the chase

dodand pleasures,-the resounding horn, The park loud-chiming, and the hunted hare. * trunga the darkness and the cold we flew, data voice was idle: with the din am, the precipices rang aloud; The cañess trees and every icy crag Tied he iron; while far-distant hills

retumult sent an alien sound

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Stopped short; yet still the solitary cliffs
Wheeled by me-even as if the earth had rolled
With visible motion her diurnal round!
Behind me did they stretch in solemn train,
Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watched
Till all was tranquil as a summer sea.

XVII.

THE LONGEST DAY.

ADDRESSED TO MY DAUGHTER.

LET us quit the leafy arbour, And the torrent murmuring by; For the sun is in his harbour, Weary of the open sky.

Evening now unbinds the fetters
Fashioned by the glowing light;

All that breathe are thankful debtors
To the harbinger of night.

Yet by some grave thoughts attended
Eve renews her calm career;
For the day that now is ended,
Is the longest of the year.

Dora sport, as now thou sportest,
On this platform, light and free;
Take thy bliss, while longest, shortest,
Are indifferent to thee!

Who would check the happy feeling
That inspires the linnet's song?
Who would stop the swallow, wheeling
On her pinions swift and strong?

Yet at this impressive season, Words which tenderness can speak From the truths of homely reason, Might exalt the loveliest cheek;

And, while shades to shades succeeding
Steal the landscape from the sight,
I would urge this moral pleading,
Last forerunner of "Good night!"

SUMMER ebbs; each day that follows

Is a reflux from on high,
Tending to the d..rksome hollows
Where the frosts of winter lie.

1799.

He who governs the creation,

In his providence, assigned
Such a gradual declination

To the life of human kind.

Yet we mark it not;-fruits redden,
Fresh flowers blow, as flowers have blown,
And the heart is loth to deaden

Hopes that she so long hath known.

Be thou wiser, youthful Maiden!
And when thy decline shall come,
Let not flowers, or boughs fruit-laden,
Hide the knowledge of thy doom.

Now, even now, ere wrapped in slumber, Fix thine eyes upon the sea

That absorbs time, space, and number; Look thou to Eternity!

Follow thou the flowing river

On whose breast are thither borne
All deceived, and each deceiver,
Through the gates of night and morn;

Through the year's successive portals; Through the bounds which many a star Marks, not mindless of frail mortals, When his light returns from far.

Thus when thou with Time hast travelled
Toward the mighty gulf of things,
And the mazy stream unravelled
With thy best imaginings;

Think, if thou on beauty leanest,
Think how pitiful that stay,
Did not virtue give the meanest
Charms superior to decay.

Duty, like a strict preceptor,
Sometimes frowns, or seems to frown;
Choose her thistle for thy sceptre,
While youth's roses are thy crown.

Grasp it, if thou shrink and tremble,
Fairest damsel of the green,
Thou wilt lack the only symbol
That proclaims a genuine queen ;

And ensures those palms of honour
Which selected spirits wear,
Bending low before the Donor,
Lord of heaven's unchanging year!

1817.

XVIII.

THE NORMAN BOY.

HIGH on a broad unfertile tract of forest-skirted Down,

Nor kept by Nature for herself, nor made by man his own,

From home and company remote and every playful

joy,

Served, tending a few sheep and goats, a ragged Norman Boy.

Him never saw I, nor the spot; but from an English Dame,

Stranger to me and yet my friend, a simple notice

came,

With suit that I would speak in verse of that sequestered child

Whom, one bleak winter's day, she met upon the dreary Wild.

His flock, along the woodland's edge with relics sprinkled o'er

Of last night's snow, beneath a sky threatening the fall of more,

Where tufts of herbage tempted each, were busy at their feed,

And the poor Boy was busier still, with work of anxious heed.

There was he, where of branches rent and withered and decayed,

For covert from the keen north wind, his hands a hut had made.

A tiny tenement, forsooth, and frail, as needs must be A thing of such materials framed, by a builder such as he.

The hut stood finished by his pains, nor seemingly lacked aught

That skill or means of his could add, but the architect had wrought

Some limber twigs into a Cross, well-shaped with

fingers nice,

To be engrafted on the top of his small edifice.

That Cross he now was fastening there, as the surest

power and best

For supplying all deficiencies, all wants of the rude

nest

In which, from burning heat, or tempest driving far and wide,

The innocent Boy, else shelterless, his lonely head

must hide.

That Cross belike he also raised as a standard for the true

It came with sleep and showed the Boy, no cherub, not transformed,

And faithful service of his heart in the worst that But the poor ragged Thing whose ways my human might ensue

Of hardship and distressful fear, amid the houseless waste

Where he, in his poor self so weak, by Providence was placed.

-Here, Lady! might I cease; but nay, let us before we part

heart had warmed.

Me had the dream equipped with wings, so I took him in my arms,

And lifted from the grassy floor, stilling his faint alarms,

And bore him high through yielding air my debt of love to pay,

With this dear holy shepherd-boy breathe a prayer By giving him, for both our sakes, an hour of

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