'My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The child is father of the man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.' II. p. 44.
A third, 'on a Sparrow's Nest,' runs thus—
'Look, five blue eggs are gleaming there!
Few visions have I seen more fair,
Nor many prospects of delight
More pleasing than that simple sight.' II. p. 53.
The charm of this fine prospect, however, was, that it reminded him of another nest which his sister Emmeline and he had visited in their childhood.
'She look'd at it as if she fear'd it;
Still wishing, dreading to be near it:
Such heart was in her, being then
A little prattler among men,' &c., &c. II. p. 54.
We have then a rapturous mystical ode to the Cuckoo; in which the author, striving after force and originality, produces nothing but absurdity.
'O cuckoo! shall I call thee bird,
Or but a wandering voice?' II. p. 57.
And then he says, that the said voice seemed to pass from hill to hill, 'about and all about!'—Afterwards he assures us, it tells him 'in the vale of visionary hours,' and calls it a darling; but still insists, that it is
'No bird; but an invisible thing,
A voice,—a mystery.' II. p. 58.