"Before me shone a glorious world, Fresh as a banner bright, unfurled To music suddenly :

I looked upon those hills and plains,
And seemed as if let loose from chains,
To live at liberty.

"No more of this; for now, by thee,
Dear Ruth! more happily set free,
With nobler zeal I burn;

My soul from darkness is released,
Like the whole sky when to the east
The morning doth return."

Full soon that better mind was gone;
No hope, no wish remained, not one,
They stirred him now no more;
New objects did new pleasure give,
And once again he wished to live
As lawless as before.

Meanwhile, as thus with him it fared,
They for the voyage were prepared,
And went to the sea-shore;

But when they thither came, the Youth
Deserted his poor Bride, and Ruth

Could never find him more.

That she in half a year was mad,
And in a prison housed;

And there, with many a doleful song
Made of wild words, her cup of wrong
She fearfully caroused.

Yet sometimes milder hours she knew,
Nor wanted sun, nor rain, nor dew,
Nor pastimes of the May;

They all were with her in her cell;

And a clear brook with cheerful knell
Did o'er the pebbles play.

When Ruth three seasons thus had lain,
There came a respite to her pain;
She from her prison fled;

But of the Vagrant none took thought;
And where it liked her best she sought

Her shelter and her bread.

Among the fields she breathed again:
The master-current of her brain
Ran permanent and free;

And, coming to the Banks of Tone,
There did she rest, and dwell alone
Under the greenwood tree.

The engines of her pain, the tools

That shaped her sorrow, rocks and pools, And airs that gently stir

The vernal leaves,

she loved them still;

Nor ever taxed them with the ill

Which had been done to her.

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 tree,

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.

1799.

XXII.

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.

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;