"Roll back, sweet Rill! back to thy mountain-bounds,

And there for ever be thy waters chained! For thou dost haunt the air with sounds 31 That cannot be sustained;

If still beneath that pine-tree's ragged bough

Headlong yon waterfall must come,
Oh let it then be dumb!

Be anything, sweet Rill, but that which thou art now.

"Thou Eglantine, so bright with sunny showers,

Proud as a rainbow spanning half the vale,
Thou one fair shrub, oh! shed thy flowers,
And stir not in the gale.

For thus to see thee nodding in the air,
To see thy arch thus stretch and bend,
Thus rise and thus descend,

40

Disturbs me till the sight is more than I can bear."

Written at Town-end, Grasmere. When I was a child at Cockermouth, no funeral took place without a basin filled with sprigs of boxwood being placed upon a table covered with a white cloth in front of the house. The huntings on foot, in which the old man is supposed to join as here described, were of common, almost habitual, occurrence in our vales when I was a boy; and the people took much delight in them. They are now less frequent.

"UP, Timothy, up with your staff and away! Not a soul in the village this morning will stay;

The hare has just started from Hamilton's grounds,

And Skiddaw is glad with the cry of the hounds."

Perhaps to himself at that moment he said; "The key I must take, for my Ellen is dead." But of this in my ears not a word did he speak;

And he went to the chase with a tear on his cheek.

SONG

FOR THE WANDERING JEW

1800. 1800

THOUGH the torrents from their fountains
Roar down many a craggy steep,
Yet they find among the mountains
Resting-places calm and deep.

Clouds that love through air to hasten,
Ere the storm its fury stills,
Helmet-like themselves will fasten
On the heads of towering hills.

What, if through the frozen centre
Of the Alps the Chamois bound,
Yet he has a home to enter
In some nook of chosen ground:

And the Sea-horse, though the ocean
Yield him no domestic cave,
Slumbers without sense of motion,
Couched upon the rocking wave.

If on windy days the Raven
Gambol like a dancing skiff,
Not the less she loves her haven
In the bosom of the cliff.

The fleet Ostrich, till day closes,
Vagrant over desert sands,
Brooding on her eggs reposes
When chill night that care demands.

Day and night my toils redouble,
Never nearer to the goal;
Night and day, I feel the trouble
Of the Wanderer in my soul.

RURAL ARCHITECTURE

1800. 1800

Written at Town-end, Grasmere. These structures, as every one knows, are common amongst our hills, being built by shepherds, as conspicuous marks, and occasionally by boys in sport.

And hence I said, that Andrew's boys
Will all be trained to waste and pillage;
And wished the press-gang, or the drum
With its tantara sound, would come
And sweep him from the village.

THE TWO THIEVES

OR, THE LAST STAGE OF AVARICE

1800. 1800

This is described from the life, as I was in the habit of observing when a boy at Hawkshead School. Daniel was more than eighty years older than myself when he was daily, thus occupied, under my notice. No book could have so early taught me to think of the changes to which human life is subject; and while looking at him I could not but say to myself we may, one of us, I or the happiest of my playmates, live to become still more the object of pity than this old man, this half-doating pilferer!

O NOW that the genius of Bewick were mine, And the skill which he learned on the banks of the Tyne.

Then the Muses might deal with me just as they chose,

For I'd take my last leave both of verse and of prose.

What feats would I work with my magical hand!

Book-learning and books should be banished the land:

And, for hunger and thirst and such troublesome calls,

Every ale-house should then have a feast on its walls.