Who, from their lowly mansions hither brought, Beneath this turf lie mouldering at our feet. ; The Priest replied." An office you impose For which peculiar requisites are mine ; Yet much, I feel, is wanting-else the task Would be most grateful. True indeed it is That They whom Death has hidden from our sight Is undergone; the transit made that shews One Picture from the living. You behold, High on the breast of yon dark mountain-dark With stony barrenness, a shining speck Bright as a sun-beam sleeping till a shower Brush it away, or cloud pass over it; And such it might be deemed-a sleeping sun-beam ; But 'tis a plot of cultivated ground, Cut off, an island in the dusky waste; And that attractive brightness is its own. The lofty Site, by nature framed to tempt Amid a wilderness of rocks and stones The Tiller's hand, a Hermit might have chosen, Far forth to send his wandering eye o'er land That ever Hermit dipped his maple dish In the sweet spring that lurks mid yon green fields; And no such visionary views belong To those who occupy and till the ground, A wedded Pair, in childless solitude. -A House of stones collected on the spot, Of birch-trees waves above the chimney top; In shape, in size, and colour, an abode Such as in unsafe times of Border war Might have been wished for and contrived-to elude The eye of roving Plunderer, for their need Of their most dreaded foe, the strong South-west, There, or within the compass of her fields, H H But humbleness of heart descends from heaven; -Stoop from your height, ye proud, and copy these! "Much was I pleased," the grey-haired Wanderer said, "When to those shining fields our notice first You turned; and yet more pleased have from your lips A lone way-faring Man, I once was brought. For human habitation; but I longed I looked with steadiness as Sailors look On the north star, or watch-tower's distant lamp, It is no night-fire of the naked hills, Who there was standing on the open hill, (The same kind Matron whom your tongue hath praised) Alarm and disappointment! The alarm Ceased, when she learned through what mishap I came, And by what help had gained those distant fields. Bearing a lantern in her hand she stood, Or paced the ground-to guide her Husband home, By that unwearied signal, kenned afar ; |