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Nor is it I who play the part,

But a shy spirit in my heart,

That comes and goes - will sometimes leap
From hiding-places ten years deep;

Or haunts me with familiar face-
Returning, like a ghost unlaid,
Until the debt I owe be paid.
Forgive me, then; for I had been
On friendly terms with this Machine:

In him, while he was wont to trace

Our roads, through many a long year's space,
A living Almanack had we;

We had a speaking Diary,
That, in this uneventful place,

Gave to the days a mark and name

By which we knew them when they came.
-Yes, I, and all about me here,

Through all the changes of the year,
Had seen him through the mountains go,
In pomp of mist or pomp of snow,
Majestically huge and slow:

Or, with milder grace adorning

The Landscape of a summer's morning;
While Grasmere smoothed her liquid plain
The moving image to detain;

And mighty Fairfield, with a chime
Of echoes, to his march kept time;
When little other business stirred,
And little other sound was heard;
In that delicious hour of balm,
Stillness, solitude, and calm,
While yet the Valley is arrayed,
On this side with a sober shade;
On that is prodigally bright-

Crag, lawn, and wood- with rosy light.-
But most of all, thou lordly Wain!

I wish to have thee here again,
When windows flap and chimney roars,
And all is dismal out of doors;

And, sitting by my fire, I see
Eight sorry Carts, no less a train!
Unworthy Successors of thee,

Come straggling through the wind and rain;
And oft, as they passed slowly on,
Beneath my window-one by one
See, perched upon the naked height,
The summit of a cumbrous freight,
A single Traveller-and there
Another then perhaps a Pair —
The lame, the sickly, and the old;
Men, Women, heartless with the cold;
And Babes in wet and starveling plight;
Which once, be weather as it might,
Had still a nest within a nest,

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This poem, and two others to the same Flower, were written in the year 1802; which is mentioned, because in some of the ideas, though not in the manner in which those ideas are connected, and likewise even in some of the expressions, there is a resemblance to passages in a Poem (lately published) of Mr. Montgomery's, entitled, a Field Flower. This being said, Mr. Montgomery will not think any apology due to him; I cannot, however, help addressing him in the words of the Father of English Poets.

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But Benjamin in his vexation,
Possesses inward consolation;

He knows his ground, and hopes to find
A spot with all things to his mind,
An upright mural block of stone,
Moist with pure water trickling down.
A slender spring; but kind to man
It is a true Samaritan;

Close to the highway, pouring out
Its offering from a chink or spout;
Whence all, howe'er athirst, or drooping
With toil, may drink, and without stooping.

Cries Benjamin "Where is it, where? Voice it hath none, but must be near." -A star declining towards the west, Upon the watery surface threw

Its image tremulously imprest,

That just marked out the object and withdrew: Right welcome service!

ROCK OF NAMES!

Light is the strain, but not unjust To Thee and thy memorial-trust That once seemed only to express Love that was love in idleness; Tokens, as year hath followed year How changed, alas, in character! For they were graven on thy smooth breast By hands of those my soul loved best; Meek women, men as true and brave As ever went to a hopeful grave: Their hands and mine, when side by side With kindred zeal and mutual pride, We worked until the Initials took Shapes that defied a scornful look.— Long as for us a genial feeling Survives, or one in need of healing, The power, dear Rock, around thee cast, Thy monumental power, shall last For me and mine! O thought of pain, That would impair it or profane! Take all in kindness then, as said With a staid heart but playful head; And fail not Thou, loved Rock! to keep Thy charge when we are laid asleep.'

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POEMS OF THE IMAGINATION.'

THERE was a Boy; ye knew him well, ye Cliffs

And islands of Winander!-many a time,
At evening, when the earliest stars began
To move along the edges of the hills,
Rising or setting, would he stand alone,
Beneath the trees, or by the glimmering lake;
And there, with fingers interwoven, both hands
Pressed closely palm to palm and to his mouth
Uplifted, he, as through an instrument,

Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls,

That they might answer him. And they would shout
Across the watery vale, and shout again,
Responsive to his call, with quivering peals,
And long halloos, and screams, and echoes loud
Redoubled and redoubled; concourse wild
Of mirth and jocund din! And, when it chanced
That pauses of deep silence mocked his skill,
Then, sometimes, in that silence, while he hung
Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise
Has carried far into his heart the voice

Of mountain torrents; or the visible scene
Would enter unawares into his mind

With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,

Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received
Into the bosom of the steady lake.

This Boy was taken from his Mates, and died In childhood, ere he was full twelve years old. Fair is the spot, most beautiful the Vale

Where he was born: the grassy Church-yard hangs Upon a slope above the village-school;

And, through that Church-yard when my way has led
At evening, I believe, that oftentimes

A long half-hour together I have stood
Mute-looking at the grave in which he lies!

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TO

ON HER FIRST ASCENT TO THE SUMMIT OF

HELVELLYN.

INMATE of a mountain Dwelling, Thou hast clomb aloft, and gazed, From the watch-towers of Helvellyn; Awed, delighted, and amazed!

TO THE CUCKOO.

O BLITHE New-comer! I have heard,

I hear thee and rejoice.

O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird,

Or but a wandering Voice?

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While I am lying on the grass
Thy twofold shout I hear,

That seems to fill the whole air's space,
As loud far off as near.

Though babbling only, to the Vale, Of sunshine and of flowers,

Thou bringest unto me a tale

Of visionary hours.

Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring! Even yet thou art to me

No Bird: but an invisible Thing,

A voice, a mystery;

The same whom in my School-boy days I listened to; that Cry

Which made me look a thousand ways In bush, and tree, and sky.

To seek thee did I often rove Through woods and on the green; And thou wert still a hope, a love; Still longed for, never seen.

And I can listen to thee yet;

Can lie upon the plain

And listen, till I do beget
That golden time again.

O blessed Bird! the earth we pace

Again appears to be

An unsubstantial, faery place;
That is fit home for Thee!

A NIGHT-PIECE.

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Built round by those white clouds, enormous clouds,
Still deepens its unfathomable depth.

At length the Vision closes; and the mind,
Not undisturbed by the delight it feels,
Which slowly settles into peaceful calm,
Is left to muse upon the solemn scene.

WATER-FOWL

"Let me be allowed the aid of verse to describe the evolu tions which these visitants sometimes perform, on a fine day towards the close of winter."-Extract from the Author's Book on the Lakes.

MARK how the feathered tenants of the flood,
With grace
of motion that might scarcely seem
Inferior to angelical, prolong

Their curious pastime ! shaping in mid air
(And sometimes with ambitious wing that soars
High as the level of the mountain tops)
A circuit ampler than the lake beneath,
Their own domain; - but ever, while intent
On tracing and retracing that large round,
Their jubilant activity evolves
Hundreds of curves and circlets, to and fro,
Upward and downward, progress intricate
Yet unperplexed, as if one spirit swayed
Their indefatigable flight.-'T is done-
Ten times, or more, I fancied it had ceased;
But lo! the vanished company again
Ascending;

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- they approach - I hear their wings sound Faint, faint at first; and then an eager

Past in a moment - and as faint again!
They tempt the sun to sport amid their plumes;
They tempt the water, or the gleaming ice,
To show them a fair image; —'tis themselves,
Their own fair forms, upon the glimmering plain,
Painted more soft and fair as they descend
Almost to touch ;- then up again aloft,
Up with a sally and a flash of speed,
As if they scorned both resting-place and rest!

-

YEW-TREES.

THERE is a Yew-tree, pride of Lorton Vale,
Which to this day stands single, in the midst
Of its own darkness, as it stood of yore,
Not loth to furnish weapons for the Bands
Of Umfraville or Percy ere they marched
To Scotland's Heaths; or those that crossed the Sea
And drew their sounding bows at Azincour,
Perhaps at earlier Crecy, or Poictiers.
Of vast circumference and gloom profound
This solitary Tree! - a living thing
Produced too slowly ever to decay;

Of form and aspect too magnificent

To be destroyed. But worthier still of note
Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale,
Joined in one solemn and capacious grove;

Huge trunks!—and each particular trunk a growth
Of intertwisted fibres serpentine
Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved,-
Nor uninformed with Phantasy, and looks

That threaten the profane; -a pillared shade,
Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue,
By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged
Perennially-beneath whose sable roof
Of boughs, as if for festal purpose, decked
With unrejoicing berries, ghostly Shapes

May meet at noontide-Fear and trembling Hope,

Slence and Foresight — Death the Skeleton
And Time the Shadow, -there to celebrate,

As in a natural temple scattered o'er
With altars undisturbed of mossy stone,
United worship; or in mute repose
To lie, and listen to the mountain flood
Marmaring from Glaramara's inmost caves.

VIEW FROM THE TOP OF BLACK COMB*.

THIS Height a ministering Angel might select:
For from the summit of BLACK COMB (dread name
Derived from clouds and storms!) the amplest range
Of unobstructed prospect may be seen

That British ground commands: - low dusky tracts,
Where Trent is nursed, far southward! Cambrian
Hills

To the south-west, a multitudinous show;

And, in a line of eye-sight linked with these,
The hoary Peaks of Scotland that give birth
To Tiviot's Stream, to Annan, Tweed, and Clyde ;-
Crowding the quarter whence the sun comes forth
Gigantic Mountains rough with crags; beneath,
Right at the imperial Station's western base,
Main Ocean, breaking audibly, and stretched
Far into silent regions blue and pale; –
And visibly engirding Mona's Isle

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That, as we left the Plain, before our sight Stood like a lofty Mount, uplifting slowly Above the convex of the watery globe) Into clear view the cultured fields that streak Her habitable shores; but now appears A dwindled object, and submits to lie At the Spectator's feet. -Yon azure Ridge, Is it a perishable cloud? Or, there Do we behold the line of Erin's Coast?

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(I speak of one from many singled out)
One of those heavenly days which cannot die;
When, in the eagerness of boyish hope,
I left our Cottage-threshold, sallying forth
With a huge wallet o'er my shoulders slang,
A nutting-crook in hand, and turned my steps
Toward the distant woods, a Figure quaint,
Tricked out in proud disguise of cast-off weeds
Which for that service had been husbanded,
By exhortation of my frugal Dame;

Motley accoutrement, of power to smile

At thorns, and brakes, and brambles, — and, in truth,
More ragged than need was! Among the woods,
And o'er the pathless rocks, I forced my way
Until, at length, I came to one dear nook
Unvisited, where not a broken bough
Drooped with its withered leaves, ungracious sign
Of devastation, but the hazels rose

Tall and erect, with milk-white clusters hung,
A virgin scene! A little while I stood,
Breathing with such suppression of the heart
As joy delights in; and, with wise restraint
Voluptuous, fearless of a rival, eyed
The banquet, -
-or beneath the trees I sate
Among the flowers, and with the flowers I played;
A temper known to those, who, after long
And weary expectation, have been blest
With sudden happiness beyond all hope. -
Perhaps it was a bower beneath whose leaves
The violets of five seasons re-appear
And fade, unseen by any human eye;
Where fairy water-breaks do murmur on
For ever, and I saw the sparkling foam,
And with my cheek on one of those green stones
That, fleeced with moss, beneath the shady trees,
Lay round me, scattered like a flock of sheep,
I heard the murmur and the murmuring sound,
In that sweet mood when pleasure loves to pay
The heart luxuriates with indifferent things,
Tribute to ease; and, of its joy secure,
Wasting its kindliness on stocks and stones,

Black Comb stands at the southern extremity of Cumberbaby its base covers a much greater extent of ground than any other mountain in these parts; and, from its situation, the summit commands a more extensive view than any other point in And on the vacant air. Then up I rose,

Britain

And dragged to earth both branch and bough, with crash

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