To tend their silent boats and ringing wains, Or strip the bough whose mellow fruit bestrews The ripening corn beneath it. As mine eyes Turn from the fortified and threatening hill, How sweet the prospect of yon watery glade, With its grey rocks clustering in pensive shade, That, shaped like old monastic turrets, rise From the smooth meadow ground, serene and still!

1820.

SKY-PROSPECT.

IV.

FROM THE PLAIN OF
FRANCE.

Lo! in the burning west, the craggy nape
Of a proud Ararat! and, thereupon,
The Ark, her melancholy voyage done!
Yon rampant cloud mimics a lion's shape;
There-combats a huge crocodile-agape
A golden spear to swallow! and that brown
And massy grove, so near yon blazing town,
Stirs and recedes-destruction to escape
Yet all is harmless as the Elysian shades
Where Spirits dwell in undisturbed repose,
Silently disappears, or quickly fades ;-
Meek Nature's evening comment on the shows
That for oblivion take their daily birth
From all the fuming vanities of Earth!

DUDDON * SONNETS.

I.

CHILD of the clouds! remote from every taint Of sordid industry thy lot is cast;

Thine are the honours of the lofty waste;

Not seldom, when with heat the valleys faint,
Thy hand-maid Frost with spangled tissue quaint
Thy cradle decks; to chant thy birth thou hast
No meaner Poet than the whistling Blast,
And Desolation is thy Patron-Saint!

She guards thee, ruthless Power! who would not spare

Those mighty forests, once the bison's screen, Where stalked the huge deer to his shaggy lair

Through paths and alleys roofed with sombre green,

Thousands of years before the silent air

Was pierced by whizzing shaft of hunter keen !

1820.

* A river of the English Lake District.-Ed.

II.

SOLE listener, Duddon! to the breeze that

played

With thy clear voice, I caught the fitful sound
Wafted o'er sullen moss and craggy mound,
Unfruitful solitudes, that seemed to upbraid
The sun in heaven!-but now, to form a shade
For thee, green alders have together wound
Their foliage; ashes flung their arms around;
And birch-trees risen in silver colonnade.
And thou hast also tempted here to rise,
'Mid sheltering pines, this Cottage rude and
grey;

Whose ruddy children, by the mother's eyes Carelessly watched, sport through the summer day,

Thy pleased associates:-light as endless May On Infant bosoms lonely Nature lies.

1820.

III.

FLOWERS.

ERE yet our course was graced with social trees
It lacked not old remains of hawthorn bowers,
Where small birds warbled to their paramours;
And, earlier still, was heard the hum of bees;
I saw them ply their harmless robberies,
And caught the fragrance which the sundry
flowers,

Fed by the stream with soft perpetual showers, Plenteously yielded to the vagrant breeze.

There bloomed the strawberry of the wilderness; The trembling eyebright showed her sapphire blue,

The thyme her purple, like the blush of Even ; And, if the breath of some to no caress

Invited, forth they peeped so fair to view, All kinds alike seemed favourites of Heaven. 1820.

IV.

WHAT aspect bore the Man who roved or fled,
First of his tribe, to this dark dell—who first
In this pellucid Current slaked his thirst?
What hopes came with him? what designs
were spread

Along his path? His unprotected bed
What dreams encompassed?

truder nursed

Was the in

In hideous usages, and rites accursed,

That thinned the living and disturbed the dead? No voice replies ;—the earth, the air is mute; And Thou, blue Streamlet, murmuring yield'st

no more

Than a soft record that whatever fruit

Of ignorance thou mightst witness heretofore, Thy function was to heal and to restore,

To soothe and cleanse, not madden and pollute !

V.

O MOUNTAIN Stream! the Shepherd and his Cct
Are privileged inmates of deep solitude;
Nor would the nicest Anchorite exclude
A field or two of brighter green, or plot
Of tillage-ground, that seemeth like a spot
Of stationary sunshine:-thou hast viewed
These only, Duddon! with their paths renewed
By fits and starts, yet this contents thee not.
Thee hath some awful Spirit impelled to leave,
Utterly to desert, the haunts of men,

Though simple thy companions were and few;
And through this wilderness a passage cleave
Attended but by thy own voice, save when
The clouds and fowls of the air thy way pursue!
1807.

VI.

SEATHWAITE CHAPEL.

SACRED Religion, "mother of form and fear," Dread arbitress of mutable respect,

New rites ordaining, when the old are wrecked,

Or cease to please the fickle worshipper; Mother of Love! (that name best suits thee here) Mother of Love! for this deep vale, protect Truth's holy lamp, pure source of bright effect, Gifted to purge the vapoury atmosphere