Then track along their feet, grown hoarse with noise,
The crawling brook, that ekes its weary speed,
And struggles through the weeds
With faint and sullen brawl.—
These haunts I long have favoured, more as now
With thee thus wandering, moralizing on;
Stealing glad thoughts from grief,
And happy, though I sigh.
Sweet Vision, with the wild dishevelled hair,
And raiment shadowy of each wind’s embrace,
Fain would I win thine harp
To one accordant theme.
Now not inaptly craved, communing thus,
Beneath the curdled arms of this stunt oak,
While pillowed on the grass,
We fondly ruminate
O’er the disordered scenes of woods and fields,
Ploughed lands, thin travelled with half-hungry sheep,
Pastures tracked deep with cows,
Where small birds seek for seed:
Marking the cow-boy that so merry trills
His frequent, unpremeditated song,
Wooing the winds to pause,
Till echo brawls again;
As on with plashy step, and clouted shoon,
He roves, half indolent and self-employed,
To rob the little birds
Of hips and pendant haws,
And sloes, dim covered as with dewy veils,
And rambling bramble-berries, pulpy and sweet,
Arching their prickly trails
Half o’er the narrow lane:
Noting the hedger front with stubborn face
The dank bleak wind, that whistles thinly by
His leathern garb, thorn proof,
And cheek red hot with toil;
While o’er the pleachy lands of mellow brown,
The mower’s stubbling scythe clogs to his foot
The ever ekeing whisp,
With sharp and sudden jerk,