Image, that, flying still before me, gleamed With visible motion her diurnal round! Behind me did they stretch in solemn train, 1799. XVII. THE LONGEST DAY. ADDRESSED TO MY DAUGHTER, DORA. LET us quit the leafy arbor, Evening now unbinds the fetters Yet by some grave thoughts attended For the day that now is ended Dora! sport, as now thou sportest, Who would check the happy feeling Yet, at this impressive season, And, while shades to shades succeeding SUMMER ebbs ;- each day that follows Is a reflux from on high, Tending to the darksome hollows Where the frosts of winter lie. He who governs the creation, To the life of human kind. Yet we mark it not; fruits redden, Fresh flowers blow, as flowers have blown, Be thou wiser, youthful Maiden! Now, even now, ere wrapped in slumber, That absorbs time, space, and number; Follow thou the flowing river On whose breast are hither borne Through the year's successive portals; Thus when thou with Time hast travelled And the mazy stream unravelled Think, if thou on beauty leanest, Did not virtue give the meanest 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 And insures those palms of honor 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. |