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For she looked with such a look, and she spake with such a tone,

That I almost received her heart into my own."

1800.

XV.
TO Н. С.

SIX YEARS OLD.

O THOU! whose fancies from afar are brought;

Who of thy words dost make a mock apparel,

And fittest to unutterable thought

The breeze-like motion and the self-born carol;

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Thou faery voyager! that dost float

In such clear water, that thy boat

May rather seem

To brood on air than on an earthly stream;

Suspended in a stream as clear as sky,

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Where earth and heaven do make one imagery;

O blessed vision! happy child!

Thou art so exquisitely wild,

I think of thee with many fears

For what may be thy lot in future years.

I thought of times when Pain might be thy

guest,

Lord of thy house and hospitality;

And Grief, uneasy lover! never rest

But when she sate within the touch of thee.

O too industrious folly!

O vain and causeless melancholy!

Nature will either end thee quite;
Or, lengthening out thy season of delight,

Preserve for thee, by individual right,

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A young lamb's heart among the full-grown

flocks.

What hast thou to do with sorrow,

Or the injuries of to-morrow?

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Thou art a dew-drop, which the morn brings

forth,

Ill fitted to sustain unkindly shocks,

Or to be trailed along the soiling earth;

A gem that glitters while it lives,

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And no forewarning gives;

But, at the touch of wrong, without a strife

Slips in a moment out of life.

1802.

XVI.

INFLUENCE OF NATURAL OBJECTS

IN CALLING FORTH AND STRENGTHENING THE IMAGINATION IN BOYHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH.

FROM AN UNPUBLISHED POEM.

[This extract is reprinted from "The Friend."]

WISDOM and Spirit of the universe!
Thou Soul, that art the Eternity of thought!
And giv'st to forms and images a breath
And everlasting motion! not in vain,

By day or star-light, thus from my first dawn 5
Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me
The passions that build up our human soul;
Not with the mean and vulgar works of Man ;
But with high objects, with enduring things,

With life and nature; purifying thus

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The elements of feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying by such discipline
Both pain and fear, -until we recognise
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.

Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me 15 With stinted kindness. In November days, When vapours rolling down the valleys made A lonely scene more lonesome; among woods At noon; and 'mid the calm of summer nights, When, by the margin of the trembling lake, 20 Beneath the gloomy hills, homeward I went In solitude, such intercourse was mine: Mine was it in the fields both day and night, And by the waters, all the summer long. And in the frosty season, when the sun Was set, and, visible for many a mile, The cottage-windows through the twilight

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blazed,

I heeded not the summons: happy time
It was indeed for all of us; for me

It was a time of rapture! Clear and loud
The village-clock tolled six-I wheeled about,
Proud and exulting like an untired horse
That cares not for his home. - All shod with

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steel

We hissed along the polished ice, in games
Confederate, imitative of the chase

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And woodland pleasures, - the resounding horn, The pack loud-chiming, and the hunted hare. So through the darkness and the cold we flew, And not a voice was idle with the din

Smitten, the precipices rang aloud;

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The leafless trees and every icy crag
Tinkled like iron; while far-distant hills

Into the tumult sent an alien sound

Of melancholy, not unnoticed while the stars,

Eastward, were sparkling clear, and in the west The orange sky of evening died away.

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Not seldom from the uproar I retired

Into a silent bay, or sportively
Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng,
To cut across the reflex of a star;

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Image that, flying still before me, gleamed
Upon the glassy plain: and oftentimes,
When we had given our bodies to the wind,
And all the shadowy banks on either side
Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning

still

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The rapid line of motion, then at once
Have I, reclining back upon my heels,
Stopped short; yet still the solitary cliffs
Wheeled by me even as if the earth had rolled
With visible motion her diurnal round!
Behind me did they stretch in solemn train,
Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watched
Till all was tranquil as a summer sea.

1799.

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XVII.

THE LONGEST DAY.

ADDRESSED TO MY DAUGHTER, DORA.

LET us quit the leafy arbour,
And the torrent murmuring by;
For the sun is in his harbour,
Weary of the open sky.

Evening now unbinds the fetters
Fashioned by the glowing light;

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All that breathe are thankful debtors
To the harbinger of night.

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Dora! sport, as now thou sportest,
On this platform, light and free ;
Take thy bliss, while longest, shortest, 15

Are indifferent to thee!

Who would check the happy feeling

That inspires the linnet's song?
Who would stop the swallow, wheeling

On her pinions swift and strong?

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Yet, at this impressive season,

Words which tenderness can speak
From the truths of homely reason

Might exalt the loveliest cheek;

And, while shades to shades succeeding 25

Steal the landscape from the sight,

I would urge this moral pleading,

Last forerunner of "Good night!"

SUMMER ebbs; - each day that follows
Is a reflux from on high,
Tending to the darksome hollows
Where the frosts of winter lie.

He who governs the creation,
In his providence, assigned
Such a gradual declination
To the life of human kind.

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