And send it in a torrent down the vale. Shook waste. And sometimes too a burst of rain, Swept from the black horizon, broad, descends In one continuous flood. Still over head The mingling tempest weaves its gloom, and still The deluge deepens; till the fields around Lie sunk, and flatted, in the sordid wave. Sudden, the ditches swell; the meadows swim. Red, from the hills, innumerable streams Tumultuous roar; and high above its bank The river lift; before whose rushing tide, Herds, flocks, and harvests, cottages, and swains, Roll mingled down: all that the winds had spared, In one wild moment ruined; the big hopes, And well-earned treasures, of the painful year. Fled to some eminence, the husbandman, Helpless, beholds the miserable wreck Driving along; his drowning ox at once Descending, with his labours scattered round, He sees; and instant o'er his shivering thought Comes Winter unprovided, and a train Of Be clamant children dear. Ye masters, then, mindful of the rough laborious hand That sinks you soft in elegance and ease; N or cruelly demand what the deep rains And all-involving winds have swept away. TO HER I LOVE. Tell me, thou soul of her I love, Or dost thou, free, at pleasure, roam Oh! if thou hoverest round my walk, 1 to thy fancied shadow talk, And every tear is full of thee; Should then the weary eye of grief, In slumber find a short relief, Oh! visit thou my soothing dream! FROM THE CASTLE OF INDOLENCE.' BOOK I. In lowly dale, fast by a river's side, With woody hill o'er hill encompassed round, A most enchanting wizard did abide, Than whom a fiend more fell is nowhere found. It was, I ween, a lovely spot of ground; And there a season atween June and May, Half prankt with spring, with summer half imbrowned, A listless climate made, where, sooth to say, No living wight could work, ne carèd even for play. Was nought around but images of rest : That, as they bickered through the sunny glade, Though restless still themselves, a lulling murmur made. Joined to the prattle of the purling rills Were heard the lowing herds along the vale, Where nought but shadowy forms was seen to move, And up the hills, on either side, a wood Of blackening pines, aye waving to and fro, Sent forth a And where this valley winded out, below, sleepy horror through the blood; The murmuring main was heard, and scarcely heard, to flow. A pleasing land of drowsy-head it was, Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye; For ever flushing round a summer-sky: There Instil eke the soft delights, that witchingly And the calm pleasures always hovered nigh; But whate'er smacked of noyance or unrest, Was far, far off expelled from this delicious nest. a wanton sweetness through the breast; Straight of these endless numbers, swarming round, Not one eftsoons in view was to be found, So that to think you dreamt you almost was constrained. As when a shepherd of the Hebrid-Isles, A vast assembly moving to and fro, Then all at once in air dissolves the wondrous show. Near the pavilions where we slept, still ran And hither Morpheus sent his kindest dreams, So fleece with clouds the pure ethereal space; No, fair illusions! artful phantoms, no! Than these same guileful angel-seeming sprights, To number up the thousands dwelling here, With tape-ty'd trash, and suits of fools that ask For place or pension laid in decent row; But these I passen by, with nameless numbers moe. Of all the gentle tenants of the place, There was a man of special grave remark1; A certain tender gloom o'erspread his face, Pensive, not sad; in thought involv'd, not dark; As soot this man could sing as morning lark, And teach the noblest morals of the heart; But these his talents were yburied stark: Of the fine stores he nothing would impart, Which or boon Nature gave, or nature-painting Art. To noontide shades incontinent he ran, Where purls the brook with sleep-inviting sound, Or when Dan Sol to slope his wheels began, Amid the broom he bask'd him on the ground, Where the wild thyme and camomile are found; There would he linger, till the latest ray Of light fate trembling on the welkin's bound, Then homeward thro' the twilight shadows stray, Sauntering and slow: so had he passed many a day. ' William Paterson, Thomson's amanuensis. |