THERE was a boy; ye knew him well, ye cliffs

And islands of Winander! Many a time,

At evening, when the earliest stars began

To move along the edges of the hills,

Rising or setting, would he stand alone,

Beneath the trees, or by the glimmering lake;

And there, with fingers interwoven, both hands

Pressed closely palm to palm and to his mouth

Uplifted, he, as through an instrument,

Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls,

That they might answer him. And they would shout

Across the watery vale, and shout again,

Responsive to his call, with quivering peals,

And long hallóos and screams, and echoes loud

Redoubled and redoubled; concourse wild

Of mirth and jocund din! And when it chanced

That pauses of deep silence mocked his skill,

Then, sometimes, in that silence, while he hung

Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise

Has carried far into his heart the voice

Of mountain torrents; or the visible

scene

Would enter unawares into his mind With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,

Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received

Into the bosom of the steady lake. WORDSWORTH.

THE EARTH-SPIRIT.

I HAVE Woven shrouds of air
In a loom of hurrying light,
For the trees which blossoms
bear,

And gilded them with sheets of
bright;

I fall upon the grass like love's first

kiss;

I make the golden flies and their fine bliss;

I paint the hedgerows in the lane, And clover white and red the pathways bear;

I laugh aloud in sudden gusts of rain

To see the ocean lash himself in air;

I throw smooth shells and weeds along the beach,

And pour the curling waves far o'er the glossy reach;

Swing birds' nests in the elms, and shake cool moss

Along the aged beams, and hide their loss.

The very broad rough stones I gladden too;

Some willing seeds I drop along their sides,

Nourish the generous plant with freshening dew,

Till there where all was waste, true joy abides.

The peaks of aged mountains, with

I bind the caverns of the sea with hair,

Glossy, and long, and rich as kings'

estate;

I polish the green ice, and gleam the wall

With the white frost, and leaf the brown trees tall.

CHANNING.

THE PASS OF KIRKSTONE.

WITHIN the mind strong fancies work,

A deep delight the bosom thrills,
Oft as I pass along the fork
Of these fraternal hills,

Where, save the rugged road, we find

No appanage of human kind,

Nor hint of man; if stone or rock
Seem not his handiwork to mock
By something cognizably shaped;
Mockery, or model roughly hewn,
And left as if by earthquake strewn,
Or from the flood escaped:
Altars for Druid service fit;
(But where no fire was ever lit,
Unless the glow-worm to the skies
Thence offer nightly sacrifice,)
Wrinkled Egyptian monument;
Green moss-grown tower; or hoary
tent;

Tents of a camp that never shall be raised

On which four thousand years have gazed!

II.

Ye ploughshares sparkling on the

slopes!

Ye snow-white lambs that trip
Imprisoned 'mid the formal props
Of restless ownership!

Ye trees, that may to-morrow fall
To feed the insatiate prodigal!
Lawns, houses, chattels, groves, and
fields,

All that the fertile valley shields;
Wages of folly, baits of crime,
Of life's uneasy game the stake,
Playthings that keep the eyes awake
Of drowsy, dotard Time,

O care! O guilt! O vales and plains,

Here, 'mid his own unvexed domains,

The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay; And from the wood-top calls the crow, through all the gloomy day.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood, In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?

Alas! they all are in their graves:

the gentle race of flowers Are lying in their lowly beds, with

the fair and good of ours. The rain is falling where they lie;

but the cold November rain Calls not, from out the gloomy

earth, the lovely ones again.

The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago; And the brier-rose and the orchis

died amid the summer glow; But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sunflower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood, Till fell the frost from the clear, cold heaven, as falls the plague on

men,

And the brightness of their smile was gone from upland, glade, and glen.

And now when comes the calm mild day, as still such days will come, To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home; When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still,

And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill,

The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore,

And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more. And then I think of one who in her

youthful beauty died, The fair, meek blossom that grew up, and faded by my side: In the cold moist earth we laid her when the forest cast the leaf, And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief;

Of Umfraville or Percy ere they marched

To Scotland's heaths; or those that crossed the sea,

And drew their sounding bows at Azincour;

Perhaps at earlier Crecy, or Poictiers.

Of vast circumference and gloom profound

This solitary Tree! a living thing Produced too slowly ever to decay; Of form and aspect too magnifi

cent

To be destroyed. But worthier still of note

Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale,

Joined in one solemn and capacious grove;

Huge trunks! and each particular trunk a growth

Of intertwisted fibres serpentine Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved;

Nor uninformed with fantasy, and looks

That threaten the profane; a pillared shade,

Upon whose grassless floor of redbrown hue,

By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged Perennially; beneath whose sable roof

Of boughs, as if for festal purpose, decked

With unrejoicing berries, ghostly shapes

May meet at noontide; Fear, and
trembling Hope,
Silence, and Foresight; Death the
Skeleton,

And Time the Shadow; there to celebrate,

As in a natural temple scattered o'er

With altars undisturbed of mossy stone,

United worship; or in mute re

pose

To lie, and listen to the mountain flood

Murmuring from Glaramara's in

most caves.

WORDSWORTH.