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LIX.-ADMONITION.

Intended more particularly for the Perusal of those who may have happened to be enamoured of some beautiful Place of Retreat, in the Country of the Lakes.

YES, there is holy pleasure in thine eye!

-The lovely Cottage in the guardian nook

Hath stirred thee deeply; with its own dear brook,

Its own small pasture, almost its own sky!

But covet not the Abode ;-forbear to sigh,

As many do, repining while they look;

Intruders-who would tear from Nature's book

This precious leaf, with harsh impiety.

Think what the Home must be if it were thine,

Even thine, though few thy wants !-Roof, window, door, The very flowers are sacred to the Poor ;

The roses to the porch which they entwine.

Yea, all, that now enchants thee, from the day

On which it should be touched, would melt away.

LX.

WANSFELL!' this Household has a favoured lot,
Living with liberty on thee to gaze,

To watch while Morn first crowns thee with her rays,

Or when along thy breast serenely float

Evening's angelic clouds. Yet ne'er a note
Hath sounded (shame upon the Bard!) thy praise
For all that thou, as if from heaven, hast brought
Of glory lavished on our quiet days.
Bountiful Son of Earth! when we are gone
From every object dear to mortal sight,

As soon we shall be, may these words attest
How oft, to elevate our spirits, shone
Thy visionary majesties of light,

How in thy pensive glooms our hearts found rest.

1 The Hill that rises to the south-east, above Ambleside.

REFLECTIVE AND ELEGIAC

POEMS

"IF THOU INDEED."

IF Thou indeed derive thy light from Heaven,
Shine, Poet, in thy place, and be content!
The Star that from the zenith darts its beams,

Visible though it be to half the Earth,

Though half a sphere be conscious of its brightness,

Is yet of no diviner origin,

No purer essence, than the One that burns,

Like an untended watch-fire, on the ridge

Of some dark mountain; or than those which seem Humbly to hang, like twinkling winter lamps, Among the branches of the leafless trees.

INFLUENCE OF NATURAL OBJECTS

IN CALLING FORTH AND STRENGTHENING THE IMAGINATION IN BOYHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH.

WISDOM and Spirit of the Universe!

Thou Soul, that art the Eternity of thought!
And givest 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 recognise
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.
Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me
With stinted kindness. In November days,
When vapours 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, I homeward went
In solitude, such intercourse was mine:

'Twas mine among 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-bellowing, and the hunted hare.
So through the darkness and the cold we flew,
And not a voice was idle: with the din
Meanwhile the precipices rang aloud;
The leafless trees and every icy crag
Tinkled like iron; while the 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

-or sportively

Into a silent bay,—

Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng, To cut across the reflex of a Star;

Image, that, flying still before me, gleamed

Upon the glassy plain: and oftentimes,

When we had given our bodies to the wind,

And all the shadowy banks on either side

Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still The rapid line of motion, then at once

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