She looks, and her heart is in heaven: but they fade, SIMON LEE THE OLD HUNTSMAN IN the sweet shire of Cardigan, Full five-and-thirty years he lived No man like him the horn could sound, In those proud days he little cared For husbandry or tillage; To blither tasks did Simon rouse The sleepers of the village. He all the country could outrun, Could leave both man and horse behind; And often, ere the chase was done, He reel'd and was stone-blind. And still there's something in the world For when the chiming hounds are out, But oh the heavy change!-bereft Of health, strength, friends and kindred, see! Old Simon to the world is left In liveried poverty:— His master's dead, and no one now Men, dogs, and horses, all are dead; He is the sole survivor. And he is lean and he is sick, Rests upon ankles swoln and thick; One prop he has, and only one,— His wife, an aged woman, Lives with him, near the waterfall, Beside their moss-grown hut of clay, This scrap of land he from the heath Oft, working by her husband's side, And, though you with your utmost skill From labour could not wean them, 'Tis little, very little, all That they can do between them. Few months of life has he in store For still, the more he works, the more My gentle Reader, I perceive O Reader! had you in your mind A tale in everything. What more I have to say is short, One summer-day I chanced to see The mattock totter'd in his hand; So vain was his endeavour 'You're overtask'd, good Simon Lee, I struck, and with a single blow The tears into his eyes were brought, -I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deed Alas! the gratitude of men Hath oftener left me mourning. W. Wordsworth. STANZAS WRITTEN IN DEJECTION NEAR NAPLES THE sun is warm, the sky is clear, Like many a voice of one delight— The winds', the birds', the ocean-floods'- I see the deep's untrampled floor With green and purple sea-weeds strown; Like light dissolved in star-showers thrown: The lightning of the noon-tide ocean Is flashing round me, and a tone Arises from its measured motion How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion. Alas! I have nor hope nor health, And walk'd with inward glory crown'd— Smiling they live, and call life pleasure; Yet now despair itself is mild Even as the winds and waters are; My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea A DREAM OF THE UNKNOWN I DREAM'D that as I wander'd by the way Mix'd with a sound of waters murmuring Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling Its green arms round the bosom of the stream, But kiss'd it and then fled, as Thou mightest in dream. There grew pied wind-flowers and violets, Daisies, those pearl'd Arcturi of the earth, The constellated flower that never sets; Faint oxlips; tender blue-bells, at whose birth When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears. |