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; The tiller's hand, a hermit might have chosen, Far forth to send his wandering eye o'er land 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, 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, High o'er the rushy springs of Don The stormy gloom is roll'd; His purple, green, and gold. But here the titling* spreads his wing, And here the sunflowert of the Spring 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), Motley accoutrement-of power to smile At thorns, and brakes, and brambles, and, in truth, 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, 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 And--with my cheek on one of those green stones And dragged to earth both branch and bough, with crash Of hazels, and the green and mossy bower, Their quiet being: and, unless I now |