There healthy as a shepherd-boy,
And treading among flowers of joy
Which at no season fade,

Thou, while thy babes around thee cling,'
Shalt show us how divine a thing
A woman may be made.

Thy thoughts and feelings shall not die,
Nor leave thee, when gray hairs are nigh,
A melancholy slave;

But an old age serene and bright,
And lovely as a Lapland night,
Shall lead thee to thy grave.

IV.

FROM THE TABLES TURNED.

SWEET is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect

Misshapes the beauteous forms of things:
We murder to dissect.

Enough of science and of art;

Close up these barren leaves:

Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.

V.

FROM EXPOSTULATION AND REPLY.

THE eye, it cannot choose but see;
We cannot bid the ear be still;
Our bodies feel, where'er they be,
Against or with our will.

Nor less I deem that there are powers

Which of themselves our minds impress;

That we can feed this mind of ours

In a wise passiveness.

Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum
Of things forever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come,
But we must still be seeking?

1805.

1798.

OF

་

Then ask not wherefore, here, alone,

Conversing as I may,

I sit upon this old gray stone

And dream my time away.

VI.

TO LADY FLEMING.

LIVES there a man whose sole delights
Are trivial pomp and city noise,
Hardening a heart that loathes or slights
What every natural heart enjoys?
Who never caught a noontide dream
From murmur of a running stream;

Could strip, for aught the prospects yields

To him, their verdure from the fields;
And take the radiance from the clouds
In which the sun his setting shrouds.

A soul so pitiably forlorn

If such do on this earth abide,
May season apathy with scorn,

May turn indifference to pride;
And still be not unblest, compared
With him who grovels, self-debarred
From all that lies within the scope
Of holy faith and Christian hope;
Yea, strives for others to bedim
The glorious light too pure for him.

VII.

SONG FOR THE SPINNING WHEEL.

SWIFTLY turn the murmuring wheel!
Night has brought the welcome hour,
When the weary fingers feel

Help, as if from faery power;

Dewy night o'ershades the ground:

Turn the swift wheel round and round!

Now, beneath the starry sky,

Couch the widely-scattered sheep ;—

Ply the pleasant labour, ply!

For the spindle, while they sleep,
Runs with speed more smooth and fine,
Gathering up a trustier line.

1798.

1823.

Short-lived likings may be bred
By a glance from fickle eyes;
But true love is like the thread
Which the kindly wool supplies,
When the flocks are all at rest
Sleeping on the mountain's breast.

1812.

VIII.

A NIGHT-PIECE.

THE sky is overcast

With a continuous cloud of texture close,
Heavy and wan, all whitened by the moon,
Which through that vale is indistinctly seen,
A dull contracted circle, yielding light
So feebly spread that not a shadow falls,

Chequering the ground, from rock, plant, tree or tower.
At length a pleasant instantaneous gleam
Startles the pensive traveller while he treads
His lonesome path, with unobserving eye

Bent earthwards; he looks up,—the clouds are split
Asunder, and above his head he sees

The clear moon, and the glory of the heavens.
There, in a black-blue vault she sails along,
Followed by multitudes of stars, that, small,
And sharp, and bright, along the dark abyss
Drives as she drives: how fast they wheel away,
Yet vanish not!--the wind is in the tree,
But they are silent; still they roll along
Immeasurably distant; and the vault,

Built round by those white clouds, enormous clouds,
Still deepens its unfathomable depth.

At length the vision closes; and the mind,
Not undisturb'd by the delight it feels,
Which slowly settles into peaceful calm,
Is left to muse upon the solemn scene.

IX.

THE MOON.

YES, lovely moon! if thou so mildly bright
Dost rouse, yet surely in thy own despite,
To fiercer mood the phrensy-stricken brain,
Let me a compensating faith maintain,

1798.