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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 my windows, one by one,

See, perched upon the naked height
The summit of a cumbrous freight,
A single traveller-and there
Another; then perhaps a pair-
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

1805.

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1.

THERE WAS A BOY.

THERE was a Boy; ye knew him well, ye cliffs
And islands of Winander !-many a time,
At evening, when the earliest stars began
To move along the edges of the hills,
Rising or setting, would he stand alone,
Beneath the trees, or by the glimmering lake;
And there, with fingers interwoven, both hands
Pressed closely palm to palm and to his mouth
Uplifted, he, as through an instrument,
Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls,
That they might answer him.-And they would
shout

Across the watery vale, and shout again,
Responsive to his call,- with quivering peals,
And long halloos, and screams, and echoes loud
Redoubled and redoubled: concourse wild
Of jocund din! And, when there came a pause
Of silence such as baffled his best skill:
Then, sometimes, in that silence, while he hung
Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise
Has carried far into his heart the voice
Of mountain-torrents; or the visible scene
Would enter unawares into his mind
With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,

Its woods, and that uncertain heaven received
Into the bosom of the steady lake.

This boy was taken from his mates, and died In childhood, ere he was full twelve years old. Pre-eminent in beauty is the vale

Where he was born and bred: the church-yard hangs

Upon a slope above the village-school;
And, through that church-yard when my way
has led

On summer-evenings, I believe, that there
A long half-hour together I have stood
Mute-looking at the grave in which he lies!

1799.

11.

TO THE CUCKOO.

O BLITHE New-comer! I have heard,

I hear thee and rejoice.

O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird,
Or put a wandering Voice?

While I am lying on the grass
Thy twofold shout I hear,
From hill to hill it seems to pass,
At once far off, and near.

Though babbling only to the Vale,
Of sunshine and of flowers,

Thou bringest unto me a tale
Of visionary hours.

Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring!
Even yet thou art to me

No bird, but an invisible thing,
A voice, a mystery;

The same whom in my school-boy days
I listened to; that Cry

Which made me look a thousand ways
In bush, and tree, and sky.
To seek thee did I often rove
Through woods and on the green;
And thou wert still a hope, a love;
Still longed for, never seen.
And I can listen to thee yet:
Can he upon the plain

And listen, till I do beget

That golden time again.

O blessed Bird! the earth we pace
Again appears to be

An unsubstantial, faery place:

That is fit home for Thee!

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