VOL. II. Sometimes, most earnestly, he said, 66 O Ruth! I have been worse than dead; False thoughts, thoughts bold and vain, When I, in confidence and pride, Before me shone a glorious world— I looked upon those hills and plains, No more of this; for now, by thee My soul from darkness is released, Full soon that better mind was gone; Meanwhile, as thus with him it fared, But, when they thither came the Youth Could never find him more. K God help thee, Ruth!-Such pains she had, That she in half a year was mad, And in a prison housed; And there, with many a doleful song Yet sometimes milder hours she knew, -They all were with her in her cell; When Ruth three seasons thus had lain, But of the Vagrant none took thought; Her shelter and her bread. Among the fields she breathed again: Ran permanent and free; And, coming to the Banks of Tone, The engines of her pain, the tools The vernal leaves-she loved them still; Which had been done to her. A Barn her winter bed supplics; But, till the warmth of summer skies (And all do in this tale agree) She sleeps beneath the greenwood tree, And other home hath none. An innocent life, yet far astray! And Ruth will, long before her day, Be broken down and old: Sore aches she needs must have! but less Of mind, than body's wretchedness, From damp, and rain, and cold. If she is prest by want of food, She from her dwelling in the wood And there she begs at one steep place The horsemen-travellers ride. That oaten pipe of hers is mute, This flute, made of a hemlock stalk, I, too, have passed her on the hills Farewell! and when thy days are told, 1799. XXII. RESOLUTION AND INDEPENDENCE. [WRITTEN at Town-end, Grasmere. This old Man I met a few hundred yards from my cottage; and the account of him is taken from his own mouth. I was in the state of feeling described in the beginning of the poem, while crossing over Barton Fell from Mr. Clarkson's, at the foot of Ullswater, towards Askham. The image of the hare I then observed on the ridge of the Fell.] I. THERE was a roaring in the wind all night; II. All things that love the sun are out of doors; The sky rejoices in the morning's birth; The grass is bright with rain-drops;—on the moors The hare is running races in her mirth; And with her feet she from the plashy earth Raises a mist, that, glittering in the sun, Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run. III. I was a Traveller then upon the moor, I saw the hare that raced about with joy; IV. But, as it sometimes chanceth, from the might In our dejection do we sink as low; To me that morning did it happen so; And fears and fancies thick upon me came; Dim sadness-and blind thoughts, I knew not, nor could name. V. I heard the sky-lark warbling in the sky; VI. My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought, |