"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
feet,

This song to myself did I oftentimes repeat;
And it seemed, as I retraced the ballad line by line,
That but half of it was hers, and one half of it
was mine.

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
In such clear water, that thy boat

May rather seem

To brood on air than on an earthly stream;
Suspended in a stream as clear as sky,

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,
Preserve for thee, by individual right,

A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks.
What hast thou to do with sorrow,

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
Slips in a moment out of life.

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!
Thou Soul, that art the Eternity of thought!
And giv'st to forms and images a breath
And everlasting motion! not in vain,

By day or star-light, thus from my first dawn
Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me
The passions that build up our human soul;
Not with the mean and vulgar works of Man ;
But with high objects, with enduring things,
With life and nature; purifying thus
The elements of feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying by such discipline

Both pain and fear, until we recognize
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.

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:
Mine was it in the fields both day and night,
And by the waters, all the summer long.
And in the frosty season, when the sun
Was set, and, visible for many a mile,
The cottage windows through the twilight blazed,
I heeded not the summons: happy time

It was indeed for all of us; for me

It was a time of rapture! Clear and loud
The village-clock tolled six, —I wheeled about,
Proud and exulting like an untired horse
That cares not for his home. All shod with steel,
We hissed along the polished ice, in games
Confederate, imitative of the chase

And woodland pleasures, the resounding horn,
The pack loud-chiming, and the hunted hare.
So through the darkness and the cold we flew,
And not a voice was idle: with the din
Smitten, the precipices rang aloud;
The leafless trees and every icy crag
Tinkled like iron; while far-distant hills
Into the tumult sent an alien sound

Of melancholy, not unnoticed while the stars,
Eastward, were sparkling clear, and in the west
The orange sky of evening died away.

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;