And green savannahs, she should share His board with lawful joy, and bear His name in the wild woods.

But, as you have before been told, This Stripling, sportive, gay, and bold, And with his dancing crest

So beautiful, through savage lands Had roamed about with vagrant bands Of Indians in the West.

The wind, the tempest roaring high,
The tumult of a tropic sky,
Might well be dangerous food
For him, a Youth to whom was given
So much of earth so much of heaven,
And such impetuous blood.

Whatever in those Climes he found
Irregular in sight or sound
Did to his mind impart

A kindred impulse, seemed allied
To his own powers, and justified
The workings of his heart.

Nor less to feed voluptuous thought

The beauteous forms of nature wrought, Fair trees and lovely flowers:

The breezes their own languor lent:

The stars had feelings, which they sent Into those gorgeous bowers.

Yet, in his worst pursuits, I ween
That sometimes there did intervene
Pure hopes of high intent;

For passions linked to forms so fair
And stately needs must have their share
Of noble sentiment.

But ill he lived, much evil saw
With men to whom no better law
Nor better life was known:
Deliberately and undeceived
Those wild men's vices he received,
And gave them back his own.

His genius and his moral frame Were thus impaired, and he became The slave of low desires:

A Man who without self-control Would seek what the degraded soul Unworthily admires.

And yet he with no feigned delight Had wooed the maiden, day and night Had loved her, night and morn:

That she in half a year was mad
And in a prison housed;

And there, exulting in her wrongs,
Among the music of her songs
She fearfully caroused.

Yet sometimes milder hours she knew
Nor wanted sun, nor rain, nor dew,

Nor pastimes of the May;

They all were with her in her cell;
And a wild brook with cheerful knell
Did o'er the pebbles play.

When Ruth three seasons thus had lain
There came a respite to her pain,
She from her prison fled;

But of the Vagrant none took thought;
And where it liked her best she sought
Her shelter and her bread.

Among the fields she breathed again:
The master-current of her brain
Ran permanent and free;

And, coming to the banks of Tone,
There did she rest, and dwell alone
Under the greenwood-tree.

The engines of her pain, the tools
That shaped her sorrow, rocks and pools,
And airs that gently stir

The vernal leaves, she loved them still,
Nor ever taxed them with the ill
Which had been done to her.

A barn her winter-bed supplies;
But till the warmth of summer-skies
And summer-days is gone,

(And all do in this tale agree)

She sleeps beneath the greenwood-tree, And other home hath none.

When some proud son of man returns to earth,
Unknown to glory, but upheld by birth,
The sculptor's art exhausts the pomp of woe,
And storied urns record who rests below;
When all is done, upon the tomb is seen,
Not what he was, but what he should have been:
But the poor dog, in life the firmest friend,
The first to welcome, foremost to defend,
Whose honest heart is still his master's own,
Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him
alone,

Unhonour'd falls, unnoticed all his worth,
Denied in heaven the soul he held on earth:
While man, vain insect! hopes to be forgiven,
And claims himself a sole exclusive heaven.
Oh, man! thou feeble tenant of an hour,
Debas'd by slavery, or corrupt by power,
Who knows thee well must quit thee with disgust,
Degraded mass of animated dust!

Thy love is lust, thy friendship all a cheat,
Thy smiles hypocrisy, thy words deceit!
By nature vile, ennobled but by name,

A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh. I would recal a vision which I dream'd Perchance in sleep, for in itself a thought, A slumbering thought, is capable of years, And curdles a long life into one hour.

and

Arising from such rustic roofs; the hill
Was crown'd with a peculiar diadem
Of trees, in circular array, so fix'd,
Not by the sport of nature, but of man:
These two, a maiden and a youth, were there
Gazing; the one, on all that was beneath
Fair as herself but the boy gazed on her:
And both were young, and one was beautiful;
And both were young, yet not alike in youth.
As the sweet moon on the horizon's verge,
The maid was on the eve of womanhood;
The boy had fewer summers, but his heart
Had far outgrown his years; and, to his eye,
There was but one beloved face on earth
And that was shining on him: he had look'd
Upon it till it could not pass away;
He had no breath, no being, but in hers:
She was his voice; he did not speak to her,
But trembled on her words: she was his sight,
For his eye follow'd hers, and saw with hers,
Which colour'd all his objects; he had ceased
To live within himself; she was his life,
The ocean to the river of his thoughts,
Which terminated all! upon a tone,