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With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain

       And strange calamity! Ah! slowly sink

       Behind the western ridge, thou glorious Sun!

       Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb,

       Ye purple heath-flowers! richlier burn, ye clouds!

       Live in the yellow light, ye distant groves!

       And kindle, thou blue Ocean! So my friend

       Struck with deep joy may stand, as I have stood,

       Silent with swimming sense; yea, gazing round

       On the wide landscape, gaze till all doth seem

       Less gross than bodily; and of such hues

       As veil the Almighty Spirit, when yet he makes

       Spirits perceive his presence.

      A delight

       Comes sudden on my heart, and I am glad

       As I myself were there! Nor in this bower,

       This little lime-tree bower, have I not mark’d

       Much that has sooth’d me. Pale beneath the blaze

       Hung the transparent foliage; and I watch’d

       Some broad and sunny leaf, and lov’d to see

       The shadow of the leaf and stem above

       Dappling its sunshine! And that walnut-tree

       Was richly ting’d, and a deep radiance lay

       Full on the ancient ivy, which usurps

       Those fronting elms, and now, with blackest mass

       Makes their dark branches gleam a lighter hue

       Through the late twilight: and though now the bat

       Wheels silent by, and not a swallow twitters,

       Yet still the solitary humble-bee

       Sings in the bean-flower! Henceforth I shall know

       That Nature ne’er deserts the wise and pure;

       No plot so narrow, be but Nature there,

       No waste so vacant, but may well employ

       Each faculty of sense, and keep the heart

       Awake to Love and Beauty! and sometimes

       ‘Tis well to be bereft of promis’d good,

       That we may lift the soul, and contemplate

       With lively joy the joys we cannot share.

       My gentle-hearted Charles! when the last rook

       Beat its straight path along the dusky air

       Homewards, I blest it! deeming its black wing

       (Now a dim speck, now vanishing in light)

       Had cross’d the mighty Orb’s dilated glory,

       While thou stood’st gazing; or, when all was still,

       Flew creeking o’er thy head, and had a charm

       For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom

       No sound is dissonant which tells of Life.

Frost at Midnight

       Table of Contents

      The frost performs its secret ministry,

      Unhelped by any wind. The owlet’s cry

      Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before.

      The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,

      Have left me to that solitude, which suits

      Abstruser musings: save that at my side

      My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.

      ‘Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs

      And vexes meditation with its strange

      And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,

      This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,

      With all the numberless goings-on of life,

      Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame

      Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;

      Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,

      Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.

      Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature

      Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,

      Making it a companionable form,

      Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit

      By its own moods interprets, everywhere

      Echo or mirror seeking of itself,

      And makes a toy of Thought.

      But O! how oft,

      How oft, at school, with most believing mind,

      Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,

      To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft

      With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt

      Of my sweet birthplace, and the old church-tower,

      Whose bells, the poor man’s only music, rang

      From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,

      So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me

      With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear

      Most like articulate sounds of things to come!

      So gazed I, till the soothing things I dreamt

      Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!

      And so I brooded all the following morn,

      Awed by the stern preceptor’s face, mine eye

      Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:

      Save if the door half opened, and I snatched

      A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,

      For still I hoped to see the stranger’s face,

      Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,

      My playmate when we both were clothed alike!

      Dear babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,

      Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,

      Fill up the interspersed vacancies

      And momentary pauses of the thought!

      My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart

      With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,

      And think that thou shalt learn far other lore

      And in far other scenes! For I was reared

      In the great city, pent ‘mid cloisters dim,

      And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.

      But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze

      By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags

      Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,

      Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores

      And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear

      The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible

      Of that eternal language, which thy God

      Utters, who fro eternity doth teach

      Himself in all, and all things in himself.

      Great universal Teacher! he shall mould

      They spirit, and by giving make it ask.

      Therefore

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