A MOUNTAIN DWELLING.

You behold,

High on the breast of yon dark mountain, dark

With stony barrenness, a shining speck

Bright as a sunbeam sleeping, till a shower

Brush it away, or cloud pass over it;

And such it might be deemed a sleeping sunbeam;

But 't is a plot of cultivated ground,

Cut off an island in the dusky waste;
And that attractive brightness is its own.
The lofty site, by nature framed, to tempt,
Amid a wilderness of rocks and stones,

The tiller's hand, a hermit might have chosen,
For opportunity presented thence

Far forth to send his wandering eye o'er land
And ocean, and look down upon the works,
The habitations, and the ways of men,
Himself unseen. But no tradition tells

That ever hermit dipped his maple dish

In the sweet spring that lurks 'mid yon green fields,

And no such visionary views belong

To those who occupy and till the ground,

And on the bosom of the mountain dwell

A wedded pair in childless solitude.

A house of stones collected on the spot,

By rude hands built, with rocky knolls in front,
Backed also by a ledge of rock, whose crest
Of birch-trees waves above the chimney-top;

In shape, in size, and colour, an abode

Such as in unsafe times of border war

Might have been wished for and contrived, to elude

The eye of roving plunderer.

WORDSWORTH

THE WONDERS OF THE LANE.

STRONG climber of the mountain-side,
Though thou the vale disdain,
Yet walk with me where hawthorns hide
The wonders of the lane.

High o'er the rushy springs of Don

The stormy gloom is roll'd;
The moorland hath not yet put on

His purple, green, and gold.

But here the titling* spreads his wing,
Where dewy daisies gleam;

And here the sunflowert of the Spring
Burns bright in morning's beam.
Oh, then, while hums the earliest bee,
Where verdure fires the plain,

Walk thou with me, and stoop to see

The glories of the lane!

NUTTING.

It seems a day

(I speak of one from many singled out),
One of those heavenly days which cannot die;
When forth I sallied from our cottage-door,
With a huge wallet o'er my shoulder slung,
A nutting-crook in hand; and turned my steps
Towards the distant woods, a Figure quaint,
Tricked out in proud disguise of cast-off weeds
Which for that service had been husbanded
By exhortation of my frugal Dame.

Motley accoutrement-of power to smile

At thorns, and brakes, and brambles, and, in truth,
More ragged than need was! Among the woods,
And o'er the pathless rocks, I forced my way,
Until at length I came to one dear nook
Unvisited, where not a broken bough

Drooped with its withered leaves, ungracious sign

Of devastation; but the hazels rose

Tall and erect, with milk-white clusters hung,

A virgin scene! A little while I stood,
Breathing with such suppression of the heart
As joy delights in; and, with wise restraint
Voluptuous, fearless of a rival, eyed

The banquet; or beneath the trees I sat

Among the flowers, and with the flowers I played;

A temper known to those, who, after long

And weary expectation, have been blessed
With sudden happiness beyond all hope.
Perhaps it was a bower beneath whose leaves
The violets of five seasons reappear
And fade, unseen by any human eye;
Where fairy water-breaks do murmur on
For ever; and I saw the sparkling foam,

And--with my cheek on one of those green stones
That, fleeced with moss, beneath the shady trees,
Lay round me, scattered like a flock of sheep--
I heard the murmur and the murmuring sound,
In that sweet mood when pleasure loves to pay
Tribute to ease; and, of its joy secure,
The heart luxuriates with indifferent things,
Wasting its kindliness on stocks and stones,
And on the vacant air. Then up I rose,

And dragged to earth both branch and bough, with crash
And merciless ravage; and the shady nook,

Of hazels, and the green and mossy bower,
Deformed and sullied, patiently gave up

Their quiet being: and, unless I now
Confound my present feelings with the past,