XIX.

Mock I thee, in wishing weal?

Tears are in my eyes to feel

Thou art made so straightly,

Blessing needs must straighten too,—

Little canst thou joy or do,

Thou who lovest greatly.

XX.

Yet be blessed to the height
Of all good and all delight
Pervious to thy nature,

Only loved beyond that line,
With a love that answers thine,

Loving fellow-creature!

THE LOST BOWER.

I.

IN the pleasant orchard closes,

'God bless all our gains,' say we ;

6

But May God bless all our losses,'

Better suits with our degree.—

Listen, gentle-ay, and simple! Listen, children on the knee!

II.

Green the land is where my daily
Steps in jocund childhood played—

Dimpled close with hill and valley,

Dappled very close with shade;

Summer-snow of apple blossoms, running up from glade to glade.

III.

There is one hiil I see nearer

In my vision of the rest;

And a little wood seems clearer,

As it climbeth from the west,

Sideway from the tree-locked valley, to the airy upland

crest.

IV.

Small the wood is, green with hazels,

And, completing the ascent,

Where the wind blows and sun dazzles,

Thrills in leafy tremblement,

Like a heart that, after climbing, beateth quickly through

content.

V.

Not a step the wood advances

O'er the open hill-top's bound:

There, in green arrest, the branches

See their image on the ground:

You may walk beneath them smiling, glad with sight and glad with sound.

VI.

For you hearken on your right hand,
How the birds do leap and call

In the greenwood, out of sight and

Out of reach and fear of all,

And the squirrels crack the filberts through their cheerful madrigal.

VII.

On your left, the sheep are cropping
The slant grass and daisies pale;
And five apple-trees stand dropping
Separate shadows toward the vale,

Over which, in choral silence, the hills look you their

'All hail!'

VIII.

Far out, kindled by each other,

Shining hills on hills arise,

Close as brother leans to brother

When they press beneath the eyes

Of some father praying blessings from the gifts of

paradise.

IX.

While beyond, above them mounted,

And above their woods alsò,

Malvern hills, for mountains counted

Not unduly, loom a-row

Keepers of Piers Plowman's visions through the sun

shine and the snow.

X.

*

Yet, in childhood, little prized I
That fair walk and far survey:

'Twas a straight walk unadvised by

* The Malvern Hills of Worcestershire are the scene of Langlande's visions, and thus present the earliest classic ground of English poetry.

The least mischief worth a nay—

Up and down—as dull as grammar on the eve of holiday.

ΧΙ.

But the wood, all close and clenching
Bough in bough and root in root,-
No more sky (for over-branching)

At your head than at your foot,—

Oh, the wood drew me within it, by a glamour past dispute.

XII.

Few and broken paths showed through it,

Where the sheep had tried to run,—

Round the thickets, when anon

They, with silly thorn-pricked noses, bleated back into

the sun.

XIII.

But

my childish heart beat stronger Than those thickets dared to grow:

I could pierce them! I could longer

Travel on, methought, than so.

Sheep for sheep-paths! braver children climb and creep where they would go.

XIV.

And the poets wander, said I,

Over places all as rude!