Yes, I, and all about me here,

Through all the changes of the year,

Had seen him through the mountains go, of mist or pomp of snow,

In

pomp

Majestically huge and slow:

Or, with a milder grace adorning

The Landscape of a summer's morning;
While Grasmere smoothed her liquid plain
The moving image to detain;

And mighty Fairfield, with a chime
Of echoes, to his march kept time;
When little other business stirred,
And little other sound was heard;
In that delicious hour of balm,
Stillness, solitude, and calm,
While yet the Valley is arrayed,
On this side with a sober shade;
On that is prodigally bright —

Crag, lawn, and wood-with rosy light.-
But most of all, thou lordly Wain!

I wish to have thee here again,

When windows flap and chimney roars,

And all is dismal out of doors;

And, sitting by my fire, I see

Eight sorry Carts, no less a train !
Unworthy Successors of thee,

Come straggling through the wind and rain:
And oft, as they pass slowly on,

Beneath

window my

one by one

See, perched upon the naked height
The summit of a cumbrous freight,

A single Traveller — and there

The lame, the sickly, and the old;
Men, Women, heartless with the cold;
And Babes in wet and starveling plight;
Which once, be weather as it might,
Had still a nest within a nest,

Thy shelter - and their Mother's breast!

Then most of all, then far the most,

Do I regret what we have lost;
Am grieved for that unhappy sin
Which robbed us of good Benjamin ;-
And of his stately Charge, which none
Could keep alive when he was gone!

VOL. I.

POEMS

OF THE FANCY.

P

I.

A MORNING EXERCISE.

FANCY, who leads the pastimes of the glad,
Full oft is pleased a wayward dart to throw;
Sending sad shadows after things not sad,
Peopling the harmless fields with signs of woe:
Beneath her sway, a simple forest cry

Becomes an echo of Man's misery.

Blithe Ravens croak of death; and when the Owl Tries his two voices for a favourite strain

Tu-whit Tu-whoo! the unsuspecting fowl

Forebodes mishap, or seems but to complain;
Fancy, intent to harass and annoy,

Can thus pervert the evidence of joy.

Through border wilds where naked Indians stray, Myriads of notes attest her subtle skill;

A feathered Task-master cries" WORK AWAY!"
And, in thy iteration, " WHIP Poor Will,”*
Is heard the Spirit of a toil-worn Slave,
Lashed out of life, not quiet in the grave!

* See Waterton's Wanderings in South America.