Seem from hence ascending fires;
Half his beams Apollo sheds
On the yellow mountain-heads,
Gilds the fleeces of the flocks,
And glitters on the broken rocks.
Below me trees unnumbered rise,
Beautiful in various dyes:

The gloomy pine, the poplar blue,
The yellow beech, the sable yew,

The slender fir that taper grows,

The sturdy oak with broad-spread boughs.
And beyond the purple grove,

Haunt of Phyllis, queen of love,
Gaudy as the op'ning dawn

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Lies a long and level lawn,

On which a dark hill, steep and high,

Holds and charms the wand'ring eye;

Deep are his feet in Towy's flood,

His sides are clothed with waving wood,

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'Tis now the raven's bleak abode;.
'Tis now th' apartment of the toad;
And there the fox securely feeds;
And there the pois'nous adder breeds,
Concealed in ruins, moss, and weeds;
While, ever and anon, there falls

Huge heaps of hoary mouldered walls.
Yet Time has seen, that lifts the low

And level lays the lofty brow,
Has seen this broken pile complete,
Big with the vanity of state;
But transient is the smile of Fate:
A little rule, a little sway,
A sunbeam in a winter's day,

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Is all the proud and mighty have

Between the cradle and the grave.

And see the rivers, how they run

Through woods and meads, in shade and sun;
Sometimes swift, sometimes slow,
Wave succeeding wave, they go
A various journey to the deep,
Like human life to endless sleep:
Thus is Nature's vesture wrought
To instruct our wand'ring thought;
Thus she dresses green and gay

To disperse our cares away.

Ever charming, ever new,

When will the landskip tire the view!

The fountain's fall, the river's flow,

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The woody valleys, warm and low,

The windy summit, wild and high,
Roughly rushing on the sky,
The pleasant seat, the ruined tow'r,
The naked rock, the shady bow'r,
The town and village, dome and farm,
Each give each a double charm,
As pearls upon an Æthiop's arm.

See on the mountain's southern side,
Where the prospect opens wide,
Where the evening gilds the tide,
How close and small the hedges lie,
What streaks of meadows cross the eye!

A step methinks may pass the stream.
So little distant dangers seem;
So we mistake the Future's face,
Eyed through Hope's deluding glass,
As yon summits soft and fair,

Clad in colours of the air,

Which to those who journey near

Barren, brown, and rough appear:

Still we tread the same coarse way;
The present's still a cloudy day.
O may I with myself agree,

And never covet what I see;
Content me with an humble shade,

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My passions tamed, my wishes laid:
For while our wishes wildly roll,

The keener tempests come; and, fuming dun

From all the livid east or piercing north,

Thick clouds ascend, in whose capacious womb

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A vapoury deluge lies, to snow congealed.

Heavy they roll their fleecy world along,

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And the sky saddens with the gathered storm.

Through the hushed air the whitening shower descends

At first thin wavering, till at last the flakes
Fall broad and wide and fast, dimming the day
With a continual flow. The cherished fields
Put on their winter robe of purest white;
'Tis brightness all, save where the new snow melts
Along the mazy current; low the woods

Bow their hoar head; and ere the languid sun
Faint from the west emits his evening ray,
Earth's universal face, deep-hid and chill,

Is one wild dazzling waste, that buries wide
The works of man. Drooping, the labourer-ox
Stands covered o'er with snow, and then demands
The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heaven,
Tamed by the cruel season, crowd around
The winnowing store, and claim the little boon
Which Providence assigns them. One alone,
The redbreast, sacred to the household gods,
Wisely regardful of th' embroiling sky,
In joyless fields and thorny thickets leaves
His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man
His annual visit: Half-afraid, he first
Against the window beats; then brisk alights

ΙΟ

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On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the floor,

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Eyes all the smiling family askance,

And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is,

Till, more familiar grown, the table-crumbs

Attract his slender feet. The foodless wilds

Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare,

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Though timorous of heart and hard beset

By death in various forms-dark snares, and dogs,

And more unpitying men,—the garden seeks,
Urged on by fearless want: The bleating kind
Eye the black heaven, and next the glistening earth,
With looks of dumb despair; then, sad dispersed,
Dig for the withered herb through heaps of snow.
Now, shepherds, to your helpless charge be kind:
Baffle the raging year, and fill their pens
With food at will; lodge them below the storm,
And watch them strict, for from the bellowing east,
In this dire season, oft the whirlwind's wing
Sweeps up the burthen of whole wintry plains

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At one wide waft, and o'er the hapless flocks,
Hid in the hollow of two neighbouring hills,
The billowy tempest whelms, till, upward urged,
The valley to a shining mountain swells,
Tipt with a wreath high-curling in the sky,

As thus the snows arise, and foul and fierce All Winter drives along the darkened air, In his own loose-revolving fields the swain Disastered stands; sees other hills ascend, Of unknown, joyless brow, and other scenes, Of horrid prospect, shag the trackless plain; Nor finds the river nor the forest, hid Beneath the formless wild, but wanders on From hill to dale, still more and more astray, Impatient flouncing through the drifted heaps, Stung with the thoughts of home. The thoughts of home Rush on his nerves, and call their vigour forth In many a vain attempt. How sinks his soul, What black despair, what horror fills his heart, When, for the dusky spot which fancy feigned His tufted cottage rising through the snow, He meets the roughness of the middle waste, Far from the track and blest abode of man, While round him night resistless closes fast, And every tempest, howling o'er his head, Renders the savage wilderness more wild! Then throng the busy shapes into his mind Of covered pits unfathomably deep

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(A dire descent!), beyond the power of frost;

Of faithless bogs; of precipices huge,

Smoothed up with snow; and—what is land unknown,

What water-of the still unfrozen spring,

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In the loose marsh or solitary lake,

Where the fresh fountain from the bottom boils.

These check his fearful steps; and down he sinks
Beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift,
Thinking o'er all the bitterness of death,
Mixed with the tender anguish nature shoots
Through the wrung bosom of the dying man-
His wife, his children, and his friends unseen.
In vain for him th' officious wife prepares

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