Puslapio vaizdai
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TRANQUILLITY.

TRANQUILLITY! thou better name
Than all the family of Fame!

Thou ne'er wilt leave my riper age

To low intrigue, or factious rage:

For oh! dear child of thoughtful Truth,

To thee I gave my early youth,

And left the bark, and blest the stedfast shore,

Ere yet the Tempest rose and scar'd me with its roar.

Who late and lingering seeks thy shrine,

On him but seldom, power divine,

Thy spirit rests! Satiety

And sloth, poor counterfeits of thee,
Mock the tired worldling. Idle Hope

And dire Remembrance interlope,

To vex the feverish slumbers of the mind:

The bubble floats before, the spectre stalks behind.

But me thy gentle hand will lead

At morning through the accustom'd mead;
And in the sultry summer's heat

Will build me up a mossy seat !

And when the gust of Autumn crowds

And breaks the busy moonlight-clouds,

Thou best the thought canst raise, the heart attune, Light as the busy clouds, calm as the gliding Moon.

The feeling heart, the searching soul,

To thee I dedicate the whole !

And while within myself I trace

The greatness of some future race,

Aloof with hermit-eye I scan

The present works of present man

A wild and dream-like trade of blood and guile,
Too foolish for a tear, too wicked for a smile!

TO A YOUNG FRIEND,

On his proposing to Domesticate with the Author.

Composed in 1796.

A MOUNT, not wearisome and bare and steep,
But a green mountain variously up-piled,
Where o'er the jutting rocks soft mosses creep,
Or color'd lichens with slow oosing weep;

Where cypress and the darker yew start wild;
And 'mid the summer torrent's gentle dash
Dance brighten'd the red clusters of the ash;

Beneath whose boughs, by those still sounds beguil'd,

Calm Pensiveness might muse herself to sleep;

Till haply startled by some fleecy dam,

That rustling on the bushy clift above,

With melancholy bleat of anxious love,

Made meek enquiry for her wandering lamb:

Such a green mountain 'twere most sweet to climb,

E'en while the bosom ach'd with loneliness

How more than sweet, if some dear friend should bless

Th' advent'rous toil, and up the path sublime

Now lead, now follow: the glad landscape round, Wide and more wide, increasing without bound!

O then 'twere loveliest sympathy, to mark
The berries of the half-uprooted ash

Dripping and bright; and list the torrent's dash,—
Beneath the cypress, or the yew more dark,
Seated at ease, on some smooth mossy rock;
In social silence now, and now t'unlock
The treasur'd heart; arm link'd in friendly arm,
Save if the one, his muse's witching charm
Mutt'ring brow-bent, at unwatch'd distance lag;
Till high o'er head his beck'ning friend appears,
And from the forehead of the topmost crag

Shouts eagerly for haply there uprears
That shadowing PINE its old romantic limbs,
Which latest shall detain th' enamoured sight
Seen from below, when eve the valley dims,
Ting'd yellow with the rich departing light;
And haply, bason'd in some unsunn'd cleft,
A beauteous spring, the rock's collected tears,
Sleeps shelter'd there, scarce wrinkled by the gale!
Together thus, the world's vain turmoil left,

Stretch'd on the crag, and shadow'd by the pine,
And bending o'er the clear delicious fount,
Ah! dearest youth! it were a lot divine

To cheat our noons in moralizing mood,

While west-winds fann'd our temples toil-bedew'd: Then downwards slope, oft pausing, from the mount,

To some lone mansion, in some woody dale,

Where smiling with blue eye, DOMEStic bliss
Gives this the Husband's, that the Brother's kiss!

Thus rudely vers'd in allegoric lore,

The Hill of Knowledge I essay'd to trace;
That verd❜rous hill with many a resting-place,
And many a stream, whose warbling waters pour
To glad, and fertilize the subject plains;
That hill with secret springs, and nooks untrod,
And many a fancy-blest and holy sod

Where INSPIRATION, his diviner strains

Low murmuring, lay; and starting from the rocks
Stiff evergreens, whose spreading foliage mocks
Want's barren, soil, and the bleak frosts of age,
And Bigotry's mad fire-invoking rage!

O meek retiring spirit! we will climb,

Cheering and cheer'd, this lovely hill sublime;

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