EXTRACT FROM THE CONCLUSION OF A POEM,
COMPOSED UPON LEAVING SCHOOL.
EAR native regions, I foretell,
From what I feel at this farewell,
That, wherefoc'er my fteps fhall tend,
And whenfoe'er my courfe fhall end,
If in that hour a single tie
Survive of local fympathy,
My foul will caft the backward view,
The longing look alone on you.
Thus, when the fun, prepared for reft,
Hath gained the precincts of the west,
Though his departing radiance fail
To illuminate the hollow vale,
A lingering light he fondly throws
On the dear hills where firft he rofe.
AR from my dearest Friend, 'tis mine to rove
Through bare grey dell, high wood, and paftoral
cove;
His wizard course where hoary Derwent takes, Thro' crags and forest glooms and opening lakes, Staying his filent waves, to hear the roar That ftuns the tremulous cliffs of high Lodore; Where peace to Grafmere's lonely island leads, To willowy hedge-rows, and to emerald meads: Leads to her bridge, rude church, and cottaged grounds, Her rocky sheepwalks, and her woodland bounds; Where, bofom'd deep, the shy Winander peeps 'Mid clustering ifles, and holly-sprinkled steeps : Where twilight glens endear my Efthwaite's fhore, And memory of departed pleasures more.
Fair scenes, erewhile, I taught, a happy child,
The echoes of your rocks my carols wild :
Then did no ebb of cheerfulness demand
Sad tides of joy from melancholy's hand,
In youth's wild eye the livelong day was bright,
The fun at morning, and the ftars at night,
Alike, when firft the vales the bittern fills
Or the first woodcocks roamed the moonlight hills.
In thoughtless gaiety I coursed the plain,
And hope itself was all I knew of pain;
For then, even then, the little heart would beat
At times, while young Content forfook her feat,
And wild Impatience, pointing upward, showed,
Where, tipp'd with gold, the mountain summits glowed.
Alas! the idle tale of man is found
Depicted in the dial's moral round;
With hope reflection blends her focial rays
To gild the total tablet of his days;
Yet ftill, the sport of fome malignant power,
He knows but from its fhade the prefent hour.
But why, ungrateful, dwell on idle pain ?
To fhow her yet fome joys to me remain,
Say, will my Friend, with soft affection's car,
The history of a poet's evening hear?
When, in the south, the wan noon, brooding still,
Breathed a pale fteam around the glaring hill,
And fhades of deep-embattled clouds were seen,
Spotting the northern cliffs with lights between;
Gazing the tempting fhades to them denied,
When ftood the shortened herds amid the tide,
Where from the barren wall's unfheltered end
Long rails into the fhallow lake extend.
When school-boys ftretched their length upon the
green;
And round the humming elm, a glimmering scene,
In the brown park, in flocks the troubled deer
Shook the still-twinkling tail and glancing ear;
When horses in the wall-girt intake stood,
Unshaded, eying far below the flood,
Crowded behind the fwain, in mute diftrefs,
With forward neck the clofing gate to prefs
Then, as I wandered where the huddling rill
Brightens with water-breaks the hollow ghyll,
To where, while thick above the branches close,
In dark brown bafon its wild waves repose,
Inverted fhrubs, and mofs of darkest green,
Cling from the rocks, with pale wood-weeds between;
Save that aloft the fubtile funbeams fhine
On withered briars that o'er the crags recline;
Sole light admitted here, a small cascade,
Illumines with sparkling foam the twilight shade;
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