TO THE SAME FLOWER.

PLEASURES newly found are sweet
When they lie about our feet:
February last, my heart

First at sight of thee was glad ;

All unheard of as thou art,

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Thou must needs, I think, have had,
Celandine! and long ago,

Praise of which I nothing know.

I have not a doubt but he,
Whosoe'er the man might be,
Who the first with pointed rays
(Workman worthy to be sainted)
Set the sign-board in a blaze,
When the rising sun he painted,
Took the fancy from a glance
At thy glittering countenance.

Soon as gentle breezes bring
News of winter's vanishing,

And the children build their bowers,
Sticking 'kerchief-plots of mould
All about with full-blown flowers,
Thick as sheep in shepherd's fold!
With the proudest thou art there,
Mantling in the tiny square.

Often have I sighed to measure
By myself a lonely pleasure,
Sighed to think, I read a book
Only read, perhaps, by me;
Yet I long could overlook
Thy bright coronet and Thee,

RESOLUTION AND INDEPENDENCE.

I.

THERE was a roaring in the wind all night ;
The rain came heavily and fell in floods;
But now the sun is rising calm and bright;
The birds are singing in the distant woods;

Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods;
The Jay makes answer as the Magpie chatters;
And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.

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II.

on the moors

ΙΟ

All things that love the sun are out of doors;
The sky rejoices in the morning's birth;
The grass is bright with rain-drops;
The hare is running races in her mirth ;
And with her feet she from the plashy earth
Raises a mist, that, glittering in the sun,

Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run.

III.

I was a Traveller then upon the moor,

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I saw the hare that raced about with joy;

I heard the woods and distant waters roar;

Or heard them not, as happy as a boy :
The pleasant season did my heart employ :
My old remembrances went from me wholly ;
And all the ways of men, so vain and melancholy.

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IV.

But, as it sometimes chanceth, from the might
Of joy in minds that can no further go,

As high as we have mounted in delight

In our dejection do we sink as low;

To me that morning did it happen so;

And fears and fancies thick upon me came;

Dim sadness—and blind thoughts, I knew not, nor could

name.

V.

I heard the sky-lark warbling in the sky;
And I bethought me of the playful hare :
Even such a happy Child of earth am I;
Even as these blissful creatures do I fare;
Far from the world I walk, and from all care;
But there may come another day to me
Solitude, pain of heart, distress, and poverty.

VI.

My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought,
As if life's business were a summer mood;
As if all needful things would come unsought
To genial faith, still rich in genial good;
But how can He expect that others should

Build for him, sow for him, and at his call

Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all?

VII.

I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy,

The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride;
Of Him who walked in glory and in joy

Following his plough, along the mountain-side:
By our own spirits are we deified:

We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;

But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.

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VIII.

Now, whether it were by peculiar grace,

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A leading from above, a something given,

Yet it befell, that, in this lonely place,

When I with these untoward thoughts had striven,
Beside a pool bare to the eye of heaven

I saw a Man before me unawares :

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The oldest man he seemed that ever wore grey hairs.

IX.

As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie

Couched on the bald top of an eminence;

Wonder to all who do the same espy,

By what means it could thither come, and whence;
So that it seems a thing endued with sense :
Like a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a shelf
Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun itself;

X.

Such seemed this Man, not all alive nor dead,

Nor all asleep in his extreme old age:

His body was bent double, feet and head
Coming together in life's pilgrimage;
As if some dire constraint of pain, or rage
Of sickness felt by him in times long past,

A more than human weight upon his frame had cast.

XI.

Himself he propped, limbs, body, and pale face,
Upon a long grey staff of shaven wood:
And, still as I drew near with gentle pace,
Upon the margin of that moorish flood

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Motionless as a cloud the old Man stood,

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