The morning sharp and clear.

But now at noon,

Upon the southern side of the slant hills,

And where the woods fence off the northern blast,

The season smiles, resigning all its rage,

And has the warmth of May.

The vault is blue
Without a cloud, and white without a speck
The dazzling splendour of the scene below.
Again the harmony comes o'er the vale;

And through the trees I view the embattled tower
Whence all the music. I again perceive
The soothing influence of the wafted strains,
And settle in soft musings as I tread

The walk, still verdant, under oaks and elms,
Whose outspread branches overarch the glade.
The roof, though moveable through all its length
As the wind sways it, has yet well sufficed,
And, intercepting in their silent fall
The frequent flakes, has kept a path for me.
No noise is here, or none that hinders thought.

The redbreast warbles still, but is content

With slender notes, and more than half suppress'd:
Pleased with his solitude, and flitting light

From spray to spray, where'er he rests he shakes
From many a twig the pendent drops of ice
That tinkle in the wither'd leaves below.
Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft,
Charms more than silence. Meditation here
May think down hours to moments. Here the heart
May give a useful lesson to the head,

And Learning wiser grow without his books.
Knowledge and Wisdom, far from being one,
Have oft-times no connexion. Knowledge dwells
In heads replete with thoughts of other men ;
Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.

Knowledge a rude unprofitable mass,

The mere materials with which Wisdom builds,
Till smooth'd, and squared, and fitted to its place,
Does but encumber whom it seems to enrich.
Knowledge is proud that he has learn'd so much;
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
Books are not seldom talismans and spells,
By which the magic art of shrewder wits
Holds an unthinking multitude enthrall'd.
Some to the fascination of a name

Surrender judgment, hoodwink'd. Some the style
Infatuates, and through labyrinths and wilds
Of error leads them, by a tune entranced:
While sloth seduces more, too weak to bear
The insupportable fatigue of thought;

And swallowing, therefore, without pause or choice,
The total grist unsifted, husks and all.

But trees and rivulets, whose rapid course

Defies the check of winter, haunts of deer,

And sheep-walks populous with bleating lambs,
And lanes in which the primrose, ere her time,
Peeps through the moss that clothes the hawthorn root,
Deceive no student. Wisdom there, and Truth,

Not shy, as in the world, and to be won

By slow solicitation, seize at once

The roving thought, and fix it on themselves.
What prodigies can Power divine perform,
More grand than it produces year by year,
And all in sight of inattentive man?
Familiar with the effect, we slight the cause,
And, in the constancy of Nature's course,
The regular return of genial months,
And renovation of a faded world,

See nought to wonder at. Should God again,

ine illac, various in array, now wine,

* The Guelder-rose.