The manners, customs, policy of all
Pay contribution to the store he gleans;
He sucks intelligence in every clime,
And spreads the honey of his deep research
At his return, a rich repast for me.
He travels, and I too. I tread his deck,
Ascend his topmast, through his peering eyes
Discover countries, with a kindred heart
Suffer his woes, and share in his escapes;
While fancy, like the finger of a clock,
Runs the great circuit, and is still at home.
HO doth not love to follow with his
The winding of a public way? the sight,
Familiar object as it is, hath wrought
On my imagination since the morn
Of childhood, when a disappearing line,
One daily present to my eyes, that crossed
The naked summit of a far-off hill
Beyond the limits that my feet had trod,
Was like an invitation into space
Boundless, or guide into eternity.
Yes, something of the grandeur which invests
The mariner who sails the roaring sea
Through storm and darkness, early in my mind
Surrounded too the wanderers of the earth;
Grandeur as much, and loveliness far more.
WRITTEN AT AN INN AT HENLEY.
To thee, fair Freedom! I retire
From flattery, cards and dice, and din; Nor art thou found in mansions higher Than the low cot or humble Inn.
"Tis here with boundless power I reign;
And every health which I begin
Converts dull port to bright champagne ;
Such freedom crowns it, at an Inn.
I fly from pomp, I fly from plate!
I fly from Falsehood's specious grin!
Freedom I love, and form I hate,
And choose my lodgings at an Inn.
Here, waiter! take my sordid ore,
Which lackeys else might hope to win;
It buys what courts have not in store,
It buys me freedom at an Inn.
Whoe'er has travelled life's dull round,
Where'er his stages may have been,
May sigh to think he still has found
The warmest welcome at an Inn.
William Shenstone.
the heart's album there are treasured faces,
Our household darlings, friends which are our own, And with them favorite haunts and cherished places, So dear, they seem but made for us alone.
Old age remembers over misty distance
The brook the boy once loved; its scent of flowers Comes wafted from it yet with sweet persistence, And builds again for him those vanished hours.
He feels once more his bare feet in the stubble,
His jointed fishing-rod, his bat and ball,
Till, flown from dreary days and thoughts of trouble,
His pulses still sing music through it all.
Later, the sea-shore, haunt of vague emotion,
Where his thoughts travelled on the gleaming wave,
Or rose in flowering hopes, as smitten ocean
Shot jets of thundrous splendor round his cave.
The sacred path, which two once trod enchanted,
And now but one, and he with faltering tread,
Feeling its grassy curves and hollows haunted
By watching eyes, whose light is with the dead.
Then there are favorite nooks of early travel,
Where dreaming idly on the summer grass,
He saw the Swiss cascades their threads unravel,
And evening strike above the shadowy pass.
Clitumnus' oxen wander by the plashing
Of Virgil's sacred river; and the bees
Pillage the heavy flowers in sunlight flashing
While the doves murmur from the ilex-trees.
Here Como's nightingale above the rowing
Sings its lament; and, doubled in the lake,
He sees himself and boat, and softly showing,
The clouds and distant hills a picture make.
Sorrento hangs there, crowned in memory's vision,
Starry with clustered orange, and below
An azure dream-world, soft with indecision,
Where dulse and tangle round mosaics grow.
Such is the album memory fills with treasures,
Hid in the heart, where love doth keep the key;
There in procession pass life's pains and pleasures,
Fresh and undying till it cease to be.
THE ceaseless rain is falling fast,
And yonder gilded vane,
Immovable for three days past,
Points to the misty main.
It drives me in upon myself,
And to the fireside gleams,
To pleasant books that crowd my shelf, And still more pleasant dreams.
I read whatever bards have sung
Of lands beyond the sea,
And the bright days when I was young
Come thronging back to me.
In fancy I can hear again
The Alpine torrent's roar,
The mule-bells on the hills of Spain,
The sea at Elsinore.
I see the convent's gleaming wall
Rise from its groves of pine,
And towers of old cathedrals tall,
And castles by the Rhine.
I journey on by park and spire,
Beneath centennial trees,
Through fields with poppies all on fire,
And gleams of distant seas.
I fear no more the dust and heat,
No more I feel fatigue,
While journeying with another's feet
O'er many a lengthening league.
Let others traverse sea and land,
And toil through various climes,
I turn the world round with my hand
Reading these poets' rhymes.
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