And while I breathed that thankfulness, and felt its holy glow, And my heart gathered gladness in its calm and equal flow, While the sun shone within me, and the air elastic played, And to and fro the wheat-field like the wavy ocean swayed; And while the black firs tossed their boughs against the intense blue, Light glinting on the through, grassy sward as broken rays flashed I felt that Nature answered like an angel from her throne, And echoed back the rapture of my bosom from her own. I saw the rich red pathway in the opening distance rolled, As if it led through vistas to some throne or shore of gold, And while the light breeze murmured there like sighs of love suppressed, My heart poured forth its blessing on the loveliness it blessed. I felt I stood on sacred ground that hallowed was to me, To boyhood's years far faded on the verge of memory: Sacred to me the gray-haired man who drank God's blessed air, Though thirty years had rolled away since last I entered there! The oak drooped o'er that gate, a withered thing in dead repose, Gray Doulting's spire above the waste a sheeted spectre rose; And Mendip's bleak and barren heights again enclosed me round, Like faces of forgotten friends met on forgotten ground. But heath and landscape, boundless once, were shrunken: all was changed: I felt I stood a stranger there, the place aud me estranged: Each glance was memory, each step a joy, a welcome sense Of gratitude's fine ecstasy, calm, voiceless, but intense. All stirring impulses of life were sobered by the scene, While staid Reflection looked within the glass of what had been; For not a mound I trod upon was unforgot, nor tree Rose in that surging scene whose image had not entered me. * John Edmund Reade. SHE Dovedale. THE SPRINGS OF DOVE. HE dwelt among the untrodden ways A maid whom there were none to praise, A violet by a mossy stone Fair as a star, when only one She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be; But she is in her grave, and oh! The difference to me! William Wordsworth. ISAAC! IN DOVEDALE. TSAAC! still thou anglest near me Thou, whose ears drank in the warble O my kindly old piscator, See'st thou not these waters clear? Lo! at yonder bend he standeth, Where round rocks the wave bells out, See! with skilful touch he landeth 1 He is buried in Winchester Cathedral. Stream of beauty! winding, singing Learnéd in all honest learning, In life's fitful turmoil often Now a trout and now a grayling God's white clouds high o'er him sailing, Henry Glassford Bell. THE RETIREMENT. FAREWELL, thou busy world! and may We never meet again! Here I can eat and sleep and pray, Where naught but vanity and vice do reign. Good God! how sweet are all things here! How cleanly do we feed and lie! What peace! what unanimity! O, how happy here's our leisure! By turns, to come and visit ye! Dear Solitude, the soul's best friend, That man acquainted with himself doth make, And, all his Maker's wonders to entend, With thee I here converse at will, And would be glad to do so still, For it is thou alone that keep'st the soul awake. How calm and quiet a delight Is it, alone To read and meditate and write, By none offended and offending none ! To walk, ride, sit, or sleep at one's own ease; And, pleasing a man's self, none other to displease. |