¡ALM is all nature as a resting wheel.

The kine are couched upon the dewy grass;
The horse alone, seen dimly as I pass,

Is cropping audibly his later meal :

Dark is the ground; a slumber seems to steal
O'er vale and mountain, and the starless sky;
Now, in this blank of things, a harmony,
Home-felt, and home-created, comes to heal
That grief for which the senses still supply
Fresh food; for only then, when memory

Is hushed, am I at rest. My friends! restrain
Those busy cares that would allay my pain;
Oh, leave me to myself! nor let me feel

The officious touch that makes me droop again.

OW sweet it is, when mother Fancy rocks
The wayward brain, to saunter through a wood!

An old place, full of many a lovely brood,

Tall trees, green arbours, and ground-flowers in flocks;
And wild rose tip-toe upon hawthorn stocks,
Like a bold girl who plays her agile pranks

At wakes and fairs with wandering mountebanks,— When she stands cresting the clown's head, and mocks The crowd beneath her. Verily I think,

Such place to me is sometimes like a dream

Or map of the whole world: thoughts, link by link,
Enter through ears and eyesight, with such gleam

Of all things, that at last in fear I shrink,

And leap at once from the delicious stream.

N

UNS fret not at their convent's narrow room;
And hermits are contented with their cells;

And students with their pensive citadels :

Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
In truth, the prison unto which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,

In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground; Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be) Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,

Should find brief solace there, as I have found.

HE world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our

powers:

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This sea that bares her bosom to the moon,

The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune ;
It moves us not.-Great God! I'd rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

LONDON, 1802.

ILTON! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen

Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen, Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,

Have forfeited their ancient English dower

Of inward happiness.

We are selfish men;

Oh! raise us up, return to us again;

And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.

Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart;

Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea,

Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free;

So didst thou travel on life's common way,

In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart

The lowliest duties on herself did lay.