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Here Wisdom might resort, and here Remorse :
Here too the love-lorn man, who, sick in soul,
And of this busy human heart aweary,
Worships the spirit of unconscious life
In tree or wild flower.-Gentle lunatic!
If so he might not wholly cease to be,
He would far rather not be that, he is;
But would be something, that he knows not of,
In winds or waters, or among the rocks.

But hence, fond wretch! breathe not contagion here!

No myrtle-walks are these: these are no groves
Where Love dare loiter! If in sullen mood
He should stray hither, the low stumps shall gore
His dainty feet, the brier and the thorn

Make his plumes haggard. Like a wounded bird
Easily caught, ensnare him, O ye Nymphs,
Ye Oreads chaste, ye dusky Dryades!

that make at morn

And
you, ye Earth-winds! you
The dew-drops quiver on the spiders' webs!
You, O ye wingless Airs! that creep between.
The rigid stems of heath and bitten furze,
Within whose scanty shade, at summer-noon,
The mother-sheep hath worn a hollow-bed-
Ye, that now cool her fleece with dropless damp,
Now pant and murmur with her feeling lamb.
Chase, chase him, all ye Fays, and elfin Gnomes!
With prickles sharper than his darts bemock
His little Godship, making him perforce

Creep through a thorn-bush on yon hedgehog's back.

This is my hour of triumph! I can now my own fancies play the merry fool,

With

And laugh away worse folly, being free
Here will I seat myself, beside this old,
Hollow, and weedy oak, which ivy-twine

Clothes as with net-work: here will I couch my

limbs,

Close by this river, in this silent shade,
As safe and sacred from the step of man
As an invisible world-unheard, unseen,
And listening only to the pebbly brook
That murmurs with a dead, yet tinkling sound;
Or to the bees, that in the neighboring trunk
Make honey-hoards. The breeze, that visits me,
Was never Love's accomplice, never raised
The tendril ringlets from the maiden's brow,
And the blue, delicate veins above her cheek;
Ne'er played the wanton-never half disclosed
The maiden's snowy bosom, scattering thence
Eye-poisons for some love-distempered youth,
Who ne'er henceforth may see an aspen-grove
Shiver in sunshine, but his feeble heart
Shall flow away like a dissolving thing

Sweet breeze! thou only, if I guess aright,
Liftest the feathers of the robin's breast,
That swells its little breast, so full of song,
Singing above me on the mountain ash.
And thou too, desert stream! no pool of thine,
Though clear as lake in latest summer-eve,
Did e'er reflect the stately virgin's robe,
The face, the form divine, the downcast look
Contemplative! Behold! her open palm
Presses her cheek and brow! her elbow rests
On the bare branch of half-uprooted tree,
That leans towards its mirror ! Who erewhile

Had from her countenance turned, or looked by

stealth,

(For fear is true love's cruel nurse), he now
With steadfast gaze and unoffending eye,
Worships the watery idol, dreaming hopes
Delicious to the soul, but fleeting, vain,
E'en as that phantom-world on which he gazed,
But not unheeded gazed! for see,
ah! see,

The sportive tyrant with her left hand plucks
The heads of tall flowers that behind her grow,
Lychnis, and willow-herb, and fox-glove bells;
And suddenly, as one that toys with time,
Scatters them on the pool! Then all the charm
Is broken-all that phantom-world so fair
Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread,
And each mis-shape the other. Stay awhile,
Poor youth, who scarcely dar'st lift up thine eyes!
The stream will soon renew its smoothness, soon
The visions will return! And lo! he stays:
And soon the fragments dim of lovely forms
Come trembling back, unite, and now once more
The pool becomes a mirror; and behold
Each wild-flower on the marge inverted there,
And there the half-uprooted tree-but where
O where the virgin's snowy arm that leaned
On its bare branch? He turns and she is gone!
Homeward she steals through many a woodland

maze

Which he shall seek in vain. Ill-fated youth!
Go, day by day, and waste thy manly prime
In mad love-yearning by the vacant brook,
Till sickly thoughts bewitch thine eyes, and thou
Behold'st her shadow still abiding there,

The Naiad of the mirror!

Not to thee,

O wild and desert stream! belongs this tale:
Gloomy and dark art thou-the crowded firs
Spire from thy shores, and stretch across thy bed,
Making thee doleful as a cavern-well :

Save when the shy king-fishers build their nest On thy steep banks, no loves hast thou, wild stream!

This be my chosen haunt―emancipate From passion's dreams, a freeman, and alone, I rise and trace its devious course. O lead, Lead me to deeper shades and lonelier glooms. Lo! stealing through the canopy of firs, How fair the sunshine spots that mossy rock, Isle of the river, whose disparted waves Dart off asunder with an angry sound, How soon to re-unite! And see! they meet, Each in the other lost and found: and see Placeless, as spirits, one soft water-sun Throbbing within them, heart at once and eye! With its soft neighborhood of filmy clouds, The stains and shadings of forgotten tears, Dimness o'erswum with lustre! Such the hour Of deep enjoyment, following Love's brief feuds; And hark, the noise of a near waterfall! I pass forth into light-I find myself Beneath a weeping birch (most beautiful Of forest-trees, the lady of the woods), Hard by the brink of a tall weedy rock That overbrows the cataract. How bursts The landscape on my sight! Two crescent hills Fold in behind each other, and so make

A circular vale, and land-locked, as might seem,

With brook and bridge, and grey stone cottages,
Half hid by rocks and fruit-trees. At my feet
The whortle-berries are bedewed with spray,
Dashed upwards by the furious waterfall.
How solemnly the pendent ivy-mass
Swings in its winnow; all the air is calm.
The smoke from cottage chimneys, tinged with
light,

But what is this?

Rises in columns; from this house alone,
Close by the waterfall, the column slants,
And feels its ceaseless breeze.
That cottage, with its slanting chimney-smoke,
And close beside its porch a sleeping child,
His dear head pillowed on a sleeping dog-
One arm between its fore-legs, and the hand
Holds loosely its small handful of wild-flowers,
Unfilleted, and of unequal lengths,

A curious picture, with a master's haste—
Sketch'd on a strip of pinky-silver skin,
Peeled from the birchen bark! Divinest maid!
Yon bark her canvass, and those purple berries
Her pencil! See the juice is scarcely dried
On the fine skin! She has been newly here!
And lo! yon patch of heath has been her couch-
The pressure still remains! O blessed couch!
For this may'st thou flower early, and the sun,
Slanting at eve, rest bright, and linger long
Upon thy purple bells! O Isabel!

Daughter of genius! stateliest of our maids!
More beautiful than whom Alcæus wooed-
The Lesbian woman of immortal song!
O child of genius! stately, beautiful,
And full of love to all, save only me,
And not ungentle e'en to me! My heart,

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