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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 'tis 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.

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When they are angry, roar like lions for their

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"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 lazv

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.

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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.

THE BROTHERS.

'THESE Tourists, Heaven preserve us! needs must live

A profitable life: some glance along,
Rapid and gay, as if the earth were air,
And they were butterflies to wheel about
Long as the summer lasted: some, as wise,
Perched on the forehead of a jutting crag,
Pencil in hand and book upon the knee,
Will look and scribble, scribble on and look,
Until a man might travel twelve stout miles,
Or reap an acre of his neighbour's corn.
But, for that moping Son of Idleness,

Why can he tarry yonder?-In our church-yard
Is neither epitaph nor monument,

Tombstone nor name-only the turf we tread And a few natural graves."

To Jane, his wife, Thus spake the homely Priest of Ennerdale. It was a July evening; and he sate Upon the long stone-seat beneath the eaves Of his old cottage, as it chanced, that day,

Employed in winter's work. Upon the stone
His Wife sate near him, teasing matted wool,
While, from the twin cards toothed with glitter-
ing wire,

He fed the spindle of his youngest child,
Who, in the open air, with due accord
Of busy hands and back and forward steps,
Her large round wheel was turning. Towards
the field

In which the Parish Chapel stood alone,
Girt round with a bare ring of mossy wall,
While half an hour went by, the Priest had sent
Many a long look of wonder: and at last,
Risen from his seat, beside the snow-white
ridge

Of carded wool which the old man had piled
He laid his implements with gentle care,
Each in the other locked; and, down the path
That from his cottage to the church-yard led,
He took his way, impatient to accost

The Stranger, whom he still saw lingering
there.

'Twas one well known to him in former days,
A Shepherd-lad ;-who ere his sixteenth year
Had left that calling, tempted to entrust
His expectations to the fickle winds
And perilous waters, -with the mariners
A fellow mariner,-and so had fared

Through twenty seasons; but he had been reared

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Among the mountains, and he in his heart
Was half a shepherd on the stormy seas.
Oft in the piping shrouds had Leonard heard
The tones of waterfalls, and inland sounds
Of caves and trees-and, when the regular
wind

Between the tropics filled the steady sail,
And blew with the same breath through days
and weeks,

Lengthening invisibly its weary line

Along the cloudless Main, he, in those hours
Of tiresome indolence, would often hang
Over the vessel's side, and gaze and gaze;
And, while the broad green wave and sparkling

foam

Flashed round him images and hues that wrought

In union with the employment of his heart,
He, thus by feverish passion overcome,
Even with the organs of his bodily eye,
Below him, in the bosom of the deep,

Saw mountains,-saw the forms of sheep that grazed

On verdant hills-with dwellings among trees, And shepherds clad in the same country grey Which he himself had worn.*

This description of the Calenture is sketched from an imperfect recollection of an admirable one in prose, by Mr. Gilbert, author of The Hurricane.

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