The voice was soft, and she who spake
Was walking by her native lake;
The salutation had to me
The very sound of courtesy;
Its power was felt; and while my eye
Was fixed upon the glowing sky,
The echo of the voice enwrought
A human sweetness with the thought
Of travelling through the world that lay
Before me in my endless way.
THE CHILDLESS FATHER
‘Up, Timothy, up with your staff and away!
Not a soul in the village this morning will stay;
The hare has just started from Hamilton’s grounds,
And Skiddaw is glad with the cry of the hounds.’
—Of coats and of jackets grey, scarlet, and green,
On the slopes of the pastures all colours were seen;
With their comely blue aprons, and caps white as snow,
The girls on the hills made a holiday show.
The basin of boxwood, [244] just six months before,
Had stood on the table at Timothy’s door;
A coffin through Timothy’s threshold had passed;
One child did it bear, and that child was his last.
Now fast up the dell came the noise and the fray,
The horse and the horn, and the ‘hark! hark away!’
Old Timothy took up his staff, and he shut,
With a leisurely motion, the door of his hut.
Perhaps to himself at that moment he said,
‘The key I must take, for my Helen is dead.’
But of this in my ears not a word did he speak,
And he went to the chase with a tear on his cheek.
ODE ON INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM
RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where’er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth.