One of the “Poems referring to the Period of Childhood.”—Ed.
High on a broad unfertile tract of forest-skirted Down,
Nor kept by Nature for herself, nor made by man his own,
From home and company remote and every playful joy,
Served, tending a few sheep and goats, a ragged Norman boy.
Him never saw I, nor the spot; but from an English Dame, 5
Stranger to me and yet my friend, a simple notice came,
With suit that I would speak in verse of that sequestered child
Whom, one bleak winter’s day, she met upon the dreary Wild.
His flock, along the woodland’s edge with relics sprinkled o’er