That night he wrote a letter to the Priest, Reminding him of what had passed between them; And adding, with a hope to be forgiven,
That it was from the weakness of his heart
He had not dared to tell him who he was.
This done, he went on fhipboard, and is now A feaman, a grey-headed mariner.
Descriptions of Scenery.
BLO
INFLUENCE OF NATURAL OBJECTS
In calling forth and strengthening the Imagination in Boyhood and Early Youth.
ISDOM and spirit of the universe !
Thou foul, that art the eternity of thought!
And giv'st to forms and images a breath
And everlasting motion! not in vain,
By day or ftar-light, thus from my first dawn
Of childhood didft thou intertwine for me
The paffions that build up our human foul;
Not with the mean and vulgar works of man,-
But with high objects, with enduring things,
With life and nature; purifying thus
The elements of feeling and of thought,
And fanctifying by such discipline
Both pain and fear,-until we recognize
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.
Nor was this fellowship vouchfafed to me With ftinted kindnefs. 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, Beneath the gloomy hills, I homeward went In folitude, fuch intercourfe was mine:
'T'was mine among the fields both day and night, And by the waters all the Summer long.
And in the frosty season, when the sun
Was fet, and, vifible for many a mile,
The cottage windows through the twilight blazed,
I heeded not the fummons:-happy time
It was, indeed, for all of us; for me
It was a time of rapture!-Clear and loud
The village clock tolled fix-I wheeled about,
Proud and exulting like an untired horse
That cares not for its home.-All fhod with steel
We hiffed along the polished ice, in games
Confederate, imitative of the chase
And woodland pleasures,—the refounding horn,
The pack loud-bellowing and the hunted hare.
So through the darkness and the cold we flew,
And not a voice was idle: with the din
Meanwhile the precipices rang aloud;
The leaflefs trees and every icy crag
Tinkled like iron; while the diftant hills
Into the tumult sent an alien found
Of melancholy, not unnoticed, while the stars,
Eastward, were sparkling clear, and in the west
The orange sky of evening died away.
Not feldom from the uproar I retired Into a filent bay, or sportively
Glanced fideway, leaving the tumultuous throng,
To cut across the image of a star,
That gleamed upon the ice; and oftentimes,
When we had given our bodies to the wind,
And all the fhadowy banks on either fide
Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still
The rapid line of motion, then at once
Have I, reclining back upon my heels,
Stopped fhort; yet ftill the folitary cliffs
Wheeled by me-even as if the earth had rolled
With visible motion her diurnal round!
Behind me did they stretch in folemn train,
Feebler and feebler, and I ftood and watched,
Till all was tranquil as a Summer sea.
A SUMMER FORENOON.
'Twas Summer, and the sun had mounted high:
Southward the landscape indistinctly glared
Through a pale fteam; but all the northern downs,
In clearest air ascending, showed far off
A furface dappled o'er with shadows flung
From many a brooding cloud, far as the fight
Could reach, those many shadows lay in spots
Determined and unmoved, with steady beams
Of bright and pleasant sunshine interposed;
Pleasant to him who on the soft cool mofs
Extends his careless limbs along the front
Of fome huge cave, whose rocky ceiling casts
A twilight of its own, an ample shade,
Where the wren warbles, while the dreaming man,
Half conscious of the foothing melody,
With fidelong eye looks out upon the scene,
By that impending covert made more soft,
More low and diftant! Other lot was mine,
Yet with good hope that foon I should obtain
As grateful refting-place and livelier joy.
From "The Excursion," Book 1.
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