In fome far region, here, while o'er my head,
At every impulse of the moving breeze,
The fir-grove murmurs with a fea-like sound,
Alone I tread this path ;-for aught I know,
Timing my steps to thine; and, with a store
Of undiftinguishable fympathies,
Mingling moft earnest wishes for the day
When we, and others whom we love, shall meet
A fecond time in Grafmere's happy vale.
HESE ferious words
Closed the preparatory notices
With which my Fellow-traveller had beguiled
The way, while we advanced up that wide vale.
Now, fuddenly diverging, he began
To climb upon its western side a ridge Pathless and smooth, a long and steep afcent, As if the object of his queft had been Some fecret of the mountains, cavern, fall Of water, or fome boaftful eminence Renowned for fplendid prospect far and wide; We clomb, without a track to guide our steps, And on the fummit reached a heathy plain, With a tumultuous wafte of huge hill-tops Before us; favage region! and I walked In weariness when, all at once, behold!
Beneath our feet, a little lowly vale,
A lowly vale, and yet uplifted high
Among the mountains; even as if the spot
Had been from eldest time by wish of theirs
So placed, to be shut out from all the world!
Urn-like it was in shape, deep as an urn;
With rocks encompassed, save that to the south
Was one small opening, where a heath-clad ridge
Supplied a boundary lefs abrupt and close;
A quiet, treeless nook, with two green fields,
A liquid pool that glittered in the fun,
And one bare dwelling; one abode, no more!
It seemed the home of poverty and toil,
Though not of want: the little fields, made green
By husbandry of many thrifty years,
Paid cheerful tribute to the moorland house.
-There crows the cock, single in his domain :
The small birds find in spring no thicket there
To shroud them; only from the neighbouring vales
The cuckoo, ftraggling up to the hill-tops,
Shouteth faint tidings of fome gladder place.
Ah! what a sweet Recefs, thought I, is here!
Inftantly throwing down my limbs at ease
Upon a bed of heath ;-full many a spot
Of hidden beauty have I chanced to espy
Among the mountains; never one like this;
F
So lonesome, and fo perfectly fecure;
Not melancholy-no, for it is green,
And bright, and fertile, furnished in itself
With the few needful things that life requires.
-In rugged arms how foft it seems to lie,
How tenderly protected! Far and near
We have an image of the priftine earth,
The planet in its nakedness: were this
Man's only dwelling, fole appointed feat,
First, laft, and fingle, in the breathing world,
It could not be more quiet: peace is here
Or nowhere; days unruffled by the gale
Of public news or private; years that pass
Forgetfully; uncalled upon to pay
The common penalties of mortal life,
Sickness, or accident, or grief, or pain.
From "The Excurfion," Book II.
In genial mood,
While at our paftoral banquet thus we fate
Fronting the window of that little cell,
I could not, ever and anon, forbear
To glance an upward look on two huge Peaks,
That from fome other vale peered into this.
"Those lufty twins, on which your eyes are caft,"
Exclaimed our hoft, " if here you dwelt, would be
Your prized companions.-Many are the notes
Which, in his tuneful course, the wind draws forth
From rocks, woods, caverns, heaths, and dashing shores;
And well thofe lofty brethren bear their part
In the wild concert-chiefly when the storm
Rides high; then all the upper air they fill
With roaring found, that ceases not to flow,
Like smoke, along the level of the blast,
In mighty current; theirs, too, is the song
Of ftream and headlong flood that seldom fails;
And, in the grim and breathlefs hour of noon,
Methinks that I have heard them echo back
The thunder's greeting. Nor have nature's laws
Left them ungifted with the power to yield
Mufic of finer tone; a harmony,
So do I call it, though it be the hand
Of filence, though there be no voice;-the clouds,
The mift, the fhadows, light of golden funs,
Motions of moonlight, all come thither-touch,
And have an anfwer-thither come, and fhape
A language not unwelcome to fick hearts
And idle fpirits-there the fun himself,
At the calm clofe of fummer's longest day,
Refts his fubftantial orb; between those heights
And on the top of either pinnacle,
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