At distance still the same. Poor Traveller! His staff trails with him; scarcely do his feet Disturb the summer dust; he is so still In look and motion, that the cottage curs, Ere he has passed the door, will turn away, Weary of barking at him. Boys and girls, The vacant and the busy, maids and youths, And urchins newly breeched-all pass him by: Him even the slow-paced waggon leaves behind.
But deem not this Man useless.-Statesmen! ye Who are so restless in your wisdom, ye
Who have a broom still ready in your hands To rid the world of nuisances; ye proud, Heart-swoln, while in your pride ye contemplate Your talents, power, or wisdom, deem him not A burthen of the earth! 'Tis Nature's law That none, the meanest of created things, Of forms created the most vile and brute, The dullest or most noxious, should exist Divorced from good-a spirit and pulse of good, A life and soul, to every mode of being Inseparably linked. Then be assured
That least of all can aught-that ever owned The heaven-regarding eye and front sublime Which man is born to-sink, howe'er depressed, So low as to be scorned without a sin; Without offence to God cast out of view; Like the dry remnant of a garden-flower Whose seeds are shed, or as an implement
Worn out and worthless. While from door to door, This old Man creeps, the villagers in him Behold a record which together binds Past deeds and offices of charity,
Else unremembered, and so keeps alive
The kindly mood in hearts which lapse of years, And that half-wisdom half-experience gives,
Make slow to feel, and by sure steps resign To selfishness and cold oblivious cares.
Among the farms and solitary huts, Hamlets and thinly-scattered villages,
Where'er the aged Beggar takes his rounds, The mild necessity of use compels
To acts of love; and habit does the work Of reason; yet prepares that after-joy Which reason cherishes. And thus the soul, By that sweet taste of pleasure unpursued, Doth find herself insensibly disposed
To virtue and true goodness.
By their good works exalted, lofty minds, And meditative, authors of delight
And happiness, which to the end of time.
Will live, and spread, and kindle: even such minds In childhood, from this solitary Being, Or from like wanderer, haply have received (A thing more precious far than all that books Or the solicitudes of love can do!)
That first mild touch of sympathy and thought, In which they found their kindred with a world Where want and sorrow were. The easy man Who sits at his own door,-and, like the pear That overhangs his head from the green wall, Feeds in the sunshine; the robust and young, The prosperous and unthinking, they who live Sheltered, and flourish in a little grove Of their own kindred;-all behold in him A silent monitor, which on their minds Must needs impress a transitory thought Of self-congratulation, to the heart Of each recalling his peculiar boons,
His charters and exemptions; and, perchance, Though he to no one give the fortitude And circumspection needful to preserve His present blessings, and to husband up The respite of the season, he, at least, And 'tis no vulgar service, makes them felt.
Yet further.Many, I believe, there are Who live a life of virtuous decency,
Men who can hear the Decalogue and feel No self-reproach; who of the moral law
Established in the land where they abide Are strict observers; and not negligent In acts of love to those with whom they dwell, Their kindred, and the children of their blood. Praise be to such, and to their slumbers peace! -But of the poor man ask, the abject poor; Go, and demand of him, if there be here In this cold abstinence from evil deeds, And these inevitable charities,
Wherewith to satisfy the human soul? No-man is dear to man; the poorest poor Long for some moments in a weary life When they can know and feel that they have been, Themselves, the fathers and the dealers-out Of some small blessings; have been kind to such As needed kindness, for this single cause, That we have all of us one human heart. -Such pleasure is to one kind Being known, My neighbour, when with punctual care, each week, Duly as Friday comes, though pressed
By her own wants, she from her store of meal Takes one unsparing handful for the scrip Of this old Mendicant, and, from her door Returning with exhilarated heart,
Sits by her fire, and builds her hope in heaven.
Then let him pass, a blessing on his head! And while in that vast solitude to which The tide of things has borne him, he appears To breathe and live but for himself alone, Unblamed, uninjured, let him bear about The good which the benignant law of Heaven Has hung around him: and, while life is his, Still let him prompt the unlettered villagers To tender offices and pensive thoughts. -Then let him pass, a blessing on his head! And, long as he can wander, let him breathe The freshness of the valleys; let his blood Struggle with frosty air and winter snows; And let the chartered wind that sweeps the heath Beat his grey locks against his withered face.
Reverence the hope whose vital anxiousness Gives the last human interest to his heart. May never House, misnamed of Industry, Make him a captive!-for that pent-up din, Those life-consuming sounds that clog the air, Be his the natural silence of old age! Let him be free of mountain solitudes; And have around him, whether heard or not, The pleasant melody of woodland birds. Few are his pleasures: if his eyes have now Been doomed so long to settle upon earth That not without some effort they behold The countenance of the horizontal sun, Rising or setting, let the light at least Find a free entrance to their languid orbs, And let him, where and when he will, sit down Beneath the trees, or on a grassy bank Of highway side, and with the little birds Share his chance-gathered meal; and, finally, As in the eye of Nature he has lived, So in the eye of Nature let him die!
ANIMAL TRANQUILLITY AND DECAY
[Composed 1798 (? 1797).-Published 1798.]
The little hedgerow birds,
That peck along the road, regard him not. He travels on, and in his face, his step, His gait, is one expression: every limb, His look and bending figure, all bespeak A man who does not move with pain, but moves With thought.-He is insensibly subdued To settled quiet: he is one by whom All effort seems forgotten; one to whom Long patience hath such mild composure given, That patience now doth seem a thing of which He hath no need. He is by nature led To peace so perfect that the young behold With envy, what the Old Man hardly feels.
THE REVERIE OF POOR SUSAN
[Composed 1797.-Published 1800.]
At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears, Hangs a Thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years: Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard In the silence of morning the song of the Bird.
'Tis a note of enchantment; what ails her? She sees A mountain ascending, a vision of trees;
Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide, And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside.
Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale, Down which she so often has tripped with her pail; And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's, The one only dwelling on earth that she loves.
She looks, and her heart is in heaven; but they fade, The mist and the river, the hill and the shade; The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise, And the colours have all passed away from her eyes!
[Composed January 25, 1798.-Published 1815.]
With a continuous cloud of texture close, Heavy and wan, all whitened by the Moon, Which through that veil is indistinctly seen, A dull, contracted circle, yielding light So feebly spread that not a shadow falls,
Chequering the ground-from rock, plant, tree, or tower. At length a pleasant instantaneous gleam
Startles the pensive traveller while he treads
His lonesome path, with unobserving eye
Bent earthwards; he looks up-the clouds are split Asunder, and above his head he sees
The clear Moon, and the glory of the heavens. There in a black-blue vault she sails along,
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