"Thou know'st that twice a day I have brought thee in this can Fresh water from the brook, as clear as ever ran; And twice in the day, when the ground is wet with dew, warm milk it is I bring thee draughts of milk, — and new. 66 Thy limbs will shortly be twice as stout as they are now, Then I'll yoke thee to my cart like a pony in the plough; My playmate thou shalt be; and when the wind is cold, Our hearth shall be thy bed, our house shall be thy fold. "It will not, will not rest!-Poor creature, can it be That 't is thy mother's heart which is working so in thee? Things that I know not of belike to thee are dear, And dreams of things which thou canst neither see nor hear. "Alas, the mountain-tops that look so green and fair! I've heard of fearful winds and darkness that come there; The little brooks that seem all pastime and all play, When they are angry, roar like lions for their prey. "Here thou need'st not dread the raven in the sky; Night and day thou art safe, our cottage is hard by. Why bleat so after me? Why pull so at thy chain? Sleep, and at break of day I will come to thee again!" As homeward through the lane I went with lazy This song to myself did I oftentimes repeat; Again, and once again, did I repeat the song; "Nay," said I, "more than half to the damsel must belong, For she looked with such a look, and she spake with such a tone, That I almost received her heart into my own." 1800. 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 May rather seem To brood on air than on an earthly stream; 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 sat 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, A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks. 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 XVI. 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! By day or star-light, thus from my first dawn Both pain and fear, until we recognize Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me With stinted kindness. In November days, When vapors rolling down the valleys made A lonely scene more lonesome; among woods At noon; and 'mid the calm of summer nights, When, by the margin of the trembling lake, Beneath the gloomy hills, homeward I went In solitude, such intercourse was mine: It was indeed for all of us; for me It was a time of rapture! Clear and loud And woodland pleasures, the resounding horn, Of melancholy, not unnoticed while the stars, Not seldom from the uproar I retired Into a silent bay, or sportively Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng, To cut across the reflex of a star; |