LINES Written with a Slate-pencil, upon a Stone, the largest of a heap lying near a deserted Quarry, upon one of the Islands at Rydale. Stranger! this hillock of misshapen stones Nor, as perchance thou rashly deem'st, the Cairn Than the rude embryo of a little Dome Or Pleasure-house, once destined to be built But, as it chanced, Sir William having learned At any hour he chose, the Knight forthwith Desisted, and the quarry and the mound Are monuments of his unfinished task. The block on which these lines are traced, perhaps, Of the intended Pile, which would have been Of thy trim mansion destined soon to blaze Thy fragments to the bramble and the rose; And let the Redbreast hop from stone to stone. In the School of is a Tablet, on which are inscribed, in gilt letters, the names of the several persons who have been Schoolmasters there since the foundation of the School, with the time at which they entered upon and quitted their office. Opposite one of those names the Author wrote the following lines. If Nature, for a favourite Child That every hour thy heart runs wild, Read o'er these lines; and then review This tablet, that thus humbly rears In such diversity of hue Its history of two hundred years. -When through this little wreck of fame, Cypher and syllable! thine eye Has travelled down to Matthew's name, And, if a sleeping tear should wake, Which for himself he had not made. Poor Matthew, all his frolics o'er, Is silent as a standing pool; Far from the chimney's merry roar, The sighs which Matthew heaved were sighs VOL. II. |