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A Barn her winter bed supplies;

But till the warmth of summer skies
And summer days is gone,

(And all do in this tale agree,)

She sleeps beneath the greenwood trec,

And other home hath none.

An innocent life, yet far astray!

And Ruth will, long before her day,

Be broken down and old:

Sore aches she needs must have! but less Of mind than body's wretchedness,

From damp, and rain, and cold.

If she is prest by want of food,
She from her dwelling in the wood
Repairs to a road-side ;

And there she begs at one steep place
Where up and down, with easy pace,
The horseman-travellers ride.

That oaten pipe of hers is mute,
Or thrown away; but with a flute
Her loneliness she cheers:

This flute, made of a hemlock stalk,
At evening in his homeward walk
The Quantock woodman hears.

I, too, have passed her on the hills
Setting her little water-mills
By spouts and fountains wild,

Such small machinery as she turned

Ere she had wept, ere she had mourned,
A young and happy Child!

Farewell! and when thy days are told,
Ill-fated Ruth, in hallowed mould
Thy corpse shall buried be,

For thee a funeral bell shall ring,
And all the congregation sing
A Christian psalm for thee.

XXII.

RESOLUTION AND INDEPENDENCE.

1799.

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.

II.

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; - on the moors
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;
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.

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 skylark 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 all from 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 we are deified:

We Poets in our youth begin in gladness; But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.

VIII.

Now, whether it were by peculiar grace,
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:

The oldest man he seemed that ever wore gray 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; -

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--

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 gray staff of shaven wood:

And, still as I drew near with gentle pace,
Upon the margin of that moorish flood
Motionless as a cloud the old Man stood,

That heareth not the loud winds when they call,
And moveth all together, if it move at all.

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