exquisite fragment by those who object to the explanatory preamble, and to the moralising sequel. The intermediate stanzas suggest Burns'

Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon,

How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair!
How can ye chant ye little birds,

An' I sae weary, fu' o' care!

-a mood of mind which Wordsworth appreciated as fully as the opposite or complementary feeling, which finds expression in the "Ode on Immortality,"

No more shall grief of mine the Season wrong.

The allusion in the last stanza of this Poem is to his Sister Dorothy.ED.

THE CHILDLESS FATHER.

Comp. 1800.

Pub. 1800.

[Written at Town-end, Grasmere. When I was a child at Cockermouth, no funeral took place without a basin filled with sprigs of boxwood being placed upon a table covered with a white cloth in front of the house. The huntings on foot, in which the old man is supposed to join as here described, were of common, almost habitual, occurrence in our vales when I was a boy, and the people took much delight in them. They are now less frequent.]

"UP, Timothy, up with your staff and away!
Not a soul in the village this morning will stay;
The hare has just started from Hamilton's grounds,
And Skiddaw is glad with the cry of the hounds."

Of coats and of jackets grey, scarlet, and green,1
On the slopes of the pastures all colours were seen;
With their comely blue aprons, and caps white as snow,
The girls on the hills made a holiday show.

1 1802.

both grey, red, and green

1800.

Fresh sprigs of green box-wood, not six months before,
Filled the funeral basin* at Timothy's door;1

A coffin through Timothy's threshold had past;
One Child did it bear, and that Child was his last.

Now fast up the dell came the noise and the fray,
The horse and the horn, and the hark! hark away!
Old Timothy took up his staff, and he shut
With a leisurely motion the door of his hut.

Perhaps to himself at that moment he said:
"The key I must take, for my Ellen is dead."
But of this in my ears not a word did he speak ;
And he went to the chase with a tear on his cheek.

SONG FOR THE WANDERING JEW.

Comp. 1800.

Pub. 1800.

THOUGH the torrents from their fountains

Roar down many a craggy steep,
Yet they find among the mountains
Resting-places calm and deep.

The basin of boxwood, just six months before,
Had stood on the table at Timothy's door

1800.

The basin had offered, just six months before,
Fresh sprigs of green boxwood at Timothy's door; 1820.

Fresh sprigs of green boxwood, just six months before,
Filled the funeral basin at Timothy's door;

1832.

* In several parts of the North of England, when a funeral takes place, a basin full of sprigs of box-wood is placed at the door of the house from which the coffin is taken up, and each person who attends the funeral ordinarily takes a sprig of this box-wood, and throws it into the grave of the deceased. 1800.

Clouds that love through air to hasten,

Ere the storm its fury stills,
Helmet-like themselves will fasten

On the heads of towering hills.

What, if through the frozen centre
Of the Alps the Chamois bound,
Yet he has a home to enter

In some nook of chosen ground:

And the Sea-horse, though the ocean Yield him no domestic cave, Slumbers without sense of motion, Couched upon the rocking wave.

If on windy days the Raven
Gambol like a dancing skiff,

Not the less she loves her haven

In the bosom of the cliff.

The fleet Ostrich, till day closes,

Vagrant over desert sands,

Brooding on her eggs reposes

When chill night that care demands.

Day and night my toils redouble,

Never nearer to the goal;

Night and day, I feel the trouble

Of the Wanderer in my soul.

[Written at Town-end, Grasmere. These structures, as every one knows, are common amongst our hills, being built by shepherds, as conspicuous marks, and occasionally by boys in sport.]

THERE'S George Fisher, Charles Fleming, and Reginald Shore,
Three rosy-cheeked school-boys, the highest not more
Than the height of a counsellor's bag;

To the top of GREAT HOW * did it please them to climb:
And there they built up, without mortar or lime,
A Man on the peak of the crag.

They built him of stones gathered up as they lay:
They built him and christened him all in one day,
An urchin both vigorous and hale;

And so without scruple they called him Ralph Jones.
Now Ralph is renowned for the length of his bones;
The Magog of Legberthwaite dale.

Just half a week after, the wind sallied forth,
And, in anger or merriment, out of the north,

Coming on with a terrible pother,

From the peak of the crag blew the giant away.

And what did these school-boys?—The very next day
They went and they built up another.

-Some little I've seen of blind boisterous works By Christian disturbers more savage than Turks,1

*

1 1820.

In Paris and London, 'mong Christians and Turks, 1800.

Great How is a single and conspicuous hill, which rises towards the foot of Thirlmere, on the western side of the beautiful dale of Legberth. waite, along the high road between Keswick and Ambleside. 1800.

Spirits busy to do and undo:

At remembrance whereof my blood sometimes will flag;
Then, light-hearted Boys, to the top of the crag;

And I'll build up a giant with you.

The editions 1836, 1842, and 1845, and the Fenwick note, assign this poem to the year 1801. It must, however, have been composed during the previous year, because it was published in the Lyrical Ballads of 1800. The last stanza was omitted in edd. 1805 and 1815. The locality referred to, which is also associated with The Waggoner, is very easily identified.-Ed.

[It may be worth while to observe that as there are Scotch Poems on this subject, in simple ballad strain, I thought it would be both presumptuous and superfluous to attempt treating it in the same way; and, accordingly, I chose a construction of stanza quite new in our language; in fact, the same as that of Bürgher's Leonora, except that the first and third lines do not, in my stanzas, rhyme. At the outset I threw out a classical image to prepare the reader for the style in which I meant to treat the story, and so to preclude all comparison.]

FAIR Ellen Irwin, when she sate

Upon the braes of Kirtle,
Was lovely as a Grecian maid

Adorned with wreaths of myrtle;
Young Adam Bruce beside her lay,
And there did they beguile the day
With love and gentle speeches,
Beneath the budding beeches.

From many knights and many squires
The Bruce had been selected;

And Gordon, fairest of them all,

By Ellen was rejected.

The Kirtle is a river in the southern part of Scotland, on the banks of which the events here related took place. 1800.