I MET Louisa in the shade,

Beside the babbling rills;A careful student he had beenAmong the woods and hills.One winter’s night, when through the treesThe wind was roaring, on his kneesHis youngest born did Andrew hold:And while the rest, a ruddy quire,Were seated round their blazing fire,This Tale the Shepherd told.II‘I saw a crag, a lofty stoneAs ever tempest beat!Out of…

Or slippery even to peril! and each step,As we for most uncertain recompenceMount toward the empire of the fickle clouds,Each weary step, dwarfing the world below,Induces, for its old familiar sights,Unacceptable feelings of contempt,With wonder mixed–that Man could e’er be tied,In anxious bondage, to such nice arrayAnd formal fellowship of petty things!–Oh! ’tis the ‘heart’…

Checked in the very act and deed of blood,With breath suspended, like a listening scout.O Silence! thou wert mother of a shoutThat through the texture of yon azure domeCleaves its glad way, a cry of harvest homeUttered to Heaven in ecstasy devout!The barrier Rhine hath flashed, through battle-smoke,On men who gaze heart-smitten by the view,As…

Dim were my swimming eyes–my pulse beat slow,And my full heart was swell’d to dear delicious pain.Life left my loaded heart, and closing eye;A sigh recall’d the wanderer to my breast;Dear was the pause of life, and dear the sighThat call’d the wanderer home, and home to rest.That tear proclaims–in thee each virtue dwells,And bright…

Albeit labouring for a scanty bandOf white-robed Scholars only–this immenseAnd glorious Work of fine intelligence!Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the loreOf nicely-calculated less or more;So deemed the man who fashioned for the senseThese lofty pillars, spread that branching roofSelf-poised, and scooped into ten thousand cells,Where light and shade repose, where music dwellsLingering–and wandering…

And Ruth, not seven years old,A slighted child, at her own willWent wandering over dale and hill,In thoughtless freedom, bold.And she had made a pipe of straw,And music from that pipe could drawLike sounds of winds and floods;Had built a bower upon the green,As if she from her birth had beenAn infant of the woods.Beneath…