Seem from hence ascending fires; The gloomy pine, the poplar blue, The slender fir that taper grows, The sturdy oak with broad-spread boughs. Haunt of Phyllis, queen of love, 65 Lies a long and level lawn, On which a dark hill, steep and high, Holds and charms the wand'ring eye; Deep are his feet in Towy's flood, His sides are clothed with waving wood, 70 'Tis now the raven's bleak abode;. Huge heaps of hoary mouldered walls. And level lays the lofty brow, 80 85 90 Is all the proud and mighty have Between the cradle and the grave. And see the rivers, how they run Through woods and meads, in shade and sun; To disperse our cares away. Ever charming, ever new, When will the landskip tire the view! The fountain's fall, the river's flow, 105 The woody valleys, warm and low, The windy summit, wild and high, See on the mountain's southern side, A step methinks may pass the stream. Clad in colours of the air, Which to those who journey near Barren, brown, and rough appear: Still we tread the same coarse way; And never covet what I see; 130 My passions tamed, my wishes laid: The keener tempests come; and, fuming dun From all the livid east or piercing north, Thick clouds ascend, in whose capacious womb 150 155 A vapoury deluge lies, to snow congealed. Heavy they roll their fleecy world along, 5 And the sky saddens with the gathered storm. Through the hushed air the whitening shower descends At first thin wavering, till at last the flakes Bow their hoar head; and ere the languid sun Is one wild dazzling waste, that buries wide ΙΟ 15 20 25 On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the floor, 30 Eyes all the smiling family askance, And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is, Till, more familiar grown, the table-crumbs Attract his slender feet. The foodless wilds Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare, 35 Though timorous of heart and hard beset By death in various forms-dark snares, and dogs, And more unpitying men,—the garden seeks, 40 45 At one wide waft, and o'er the hapless flocks, As thus the snows arise, and foul and fierce All Winter drives along the darkened air, In his own loose-revolving fields the swain Disastered stands; sees other hills ascend, Of unknown, joyless brow, and other scenes, Of horrid prospect, shag the trackless plain; Nor finds the river nor the forest, hid Beneath the formless wild, but wanders on From hill to dale, still more and more astray, Impatient flouncing through the drifted heaps, Stung with the thoughts of home. The thoughts of home Rush on his nerves, and call their vigour forth In many a vain attempt. How sinks his soul, What black despair, what horror fills his heart, When, for the dusky spot which fancy feigned His tufted cottage rising through the snow, He meets the roughness of the middle waste, Far from the track and blest abode of man, While round him night resistless closes fast, And every tempest, howling o'er his head, Renders the savage wilderness more wild! Then throng the busy shapes into his mind Of covered pits unfathomably deep 50 55 60 65 70 75 (A dire descent!), beyond the power of frost; Of faithless bogs; of precipices huge, Smoothed up with snow; and—what is land unknown, What water-of the still unfrozen spring, 80 In the loose marsh or solitary lake, Where the fresh fountain from the bottom boils. These check his fearful steps; and down he sinks 85 |