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INSCRIPTION
For the Spot where the HERMITAGE stood
on St. Herbert's Island, Derwent-Water

 
  If thou in the dear love of some one friend
  Hast been so happy, that thou know'st what thoughts
  Will, sometimes, in the happiness of love
  Make the heart sink, then wilt thou reverence
  This quiet spot. – St. Herbert hither came
  And here, for many seasons, from the world
  Remov'd, and the affections of the world
  He dwelt in solitude. He living here,
  This island's sole inhabitant! had left
  A Fellow-labourer, whom the good Man lov'd
  As his own soul; and when within his cave
  Alone he knelt before the crucifix
  While o'er the lake the cataract of Lodore
  Peal'd to his orisons, and when he pac'd
  Along the beach of this small isle and thought
  Of his Companion, he had pray'd that both
  Might die in the same moment. Nor in vain
  So pray'd he: – as our Chronicles report,
  Though here the Hermit number'd his last days,
  Far from St. Cuthbert his beloved friend,
  Those holy men both died in the same hour.
 

INSCRIPTION
For the House (an Outhouse) on the Island at Grasmere

 
  Rude is this Edifice, and Thou hast seen
  Buildings, albeit rude, that have maintain'd
  Proportions more harmonious, and approach'd
  To somewhat of a closer fellowship
  With the ideal grace. Yet as it is
  Do take it in good part; for he, the poor
  Vitruvius of our village, had no help
  From the great city; never on the leaves
  Of red Morocco folio saw display'd
  The skeletons and pre-existing ghosts
  Of Beauties yet unborn, the rustic Box,
  Snug Cot, with Coach-house, Shed and Hermitage.
  It is a homely pile, yet to these walls
  The heifer comes in the snow-storm, and here
  The new-dropp'd lamb finds shelter from the wind.
 
 
  And hither does one Poet sometimes row
  His pinnace, a small vagrant barge, up-piled
  With plenteous store of heath and wither'd fern,
  A lading which he with his sickle cuts
  Among the mountains, and beneath this roof
  He makes his summer couch, and here at noon
  Spreads out his limbs, while, yet unborn, the sheep
  Panting beneath the burthen of their wool
  Lie round him, even as if they were a part
  Of his own household: nor, while from his bed
  He through that door-place looks toward the lake
  And to the stirring breezes, does he want
  Creations lovely as the work of sleep,
  Fair sights, and visions of romantic joy.
 

To a SEXTON

 
  Let thy wheel-barrow alone.
  Wherefore, Sexton, piling still
  In thy bone-house bone on bone?
  Tis already like a hill
  In a field of battle made,
  Where three thousand skulls are laid.
  – These died in peace each with the other,
  Father, Sister, Friend, and Brother.
 
 
  Mark the spot to which I point!
  From this platform eight feet square
  Take not even a finger-joint:
  Andrew's whole fire-side is there.
 
 
  Here, alone, before thine eyes,
  Simon's sickly Daughter lies
  From weakness, now, and pain defended,
  Whom he twenty winters tended.
 
 
  Look but at the gardener's pride,
  How he glories, when he sees
  Roses, lilies, side by side,
  Violets in families.
 
 
  By the heart of Man, his tears,
  By his hopes and by his fears,
  Thou, old Grey-beard! art the Warden
  Of a far superior garden.
 
 
  Thus then, each to other dear,
  Let them all in quiet lie,
  Andrew there and Susan here,
  Neighbours in mortality.
 
 
  And should I live through sun and rain
  Seven widow'd years without my Jane,
  O Sexton, do not then remove her,
  Let one grave hold the Lov'd and Lover!
 

ANDREW JONES

 
  I hate that Andrew Jones: he'll breed
  His children up to waste and pillage.
  I wish the press-gang or the drum
  With its tantara sound would come,
  And sweep him from the village!
 
 
  I said not this, because he loves
  Through the long day to swear and tipple;
  But for the poor dear sake of one
  To whom a foul deed he had done,
  A friendless Man, a travelling Cripple!
 
 
  For this poor crawling helpless wretch
  Some Horseman who was passing by,
  A penny on the ground had thrown;
  But the poor Cripple was alone
  And could not stoop – no help was nigh.
 
 
  Inch-thick the dust lay on the ground
  For it had long been droughty weather:
  So with his staff the Cripple wrought
  Among the dust till he had brought
  The halfpennies together.
 
 
  It chanc'd that Andrew pass'd that way
  Just at the time; and there he found
  The Cripple in the mid-day heat
  Standing alone, and at his feet
  He saw the penny on the ground.
 
 
  He stopp'd and took the penny up.
  And when the Cripple nearer drew,
  Quoth Andrew, "Under half-a-crown.
  What a man finds is all his own,
  And so, my Friend, good day to you."
 
 
  And hence I said, that Andrew's boys
  Will all be train'd to waste and pillage;
  And wish'd the press-gang, or the drum
  With its tantara sound, would come
  And sweep him from the village!
 

The TWO THIEVES,
Or the last Stage of AVARICE

 
  Oh now that the genius of Bewick were mine
  And the skill which He learn'd on the Banks of the Tyne;
  When the Muses might deal with me just as they chose
  For I'd take my last leave both of verse and of prose.
 
 
  What feats would I work with my magical hand!
  Book-learning and books should be banish'd the land
  And for hunger and thirst and such troublesome calls
  Every ale-house should then have a feast on its walls.
 
 
  The Traveller would hang his wet clothes on a chair
  Let them smoke, let them burn, not a straw would he care.
  For the Prodigal Son, Joseph's Dream and his Sheaves,
  Oh what would they be to my tale of two Thieves!
 
 
  Little Dan is unbreech'd, he is three birth-days old,
  His Grandsire that age more than thirty times told,
  There's ninety good seasons of fair and foul weather
  Between them, and both go a stealing together.
 
 
  With chips is the Carpenter strewing his floor?
  It a cart-load of peats at an old Woman's door?
  Old Daniel his hand to the treasure will slide,
  And his Grandson's as busy at work by his side.
 
 
  Old Daniel begins, he stops short and his eye
  Through the lost look of dotage is cunning and sly.
  'Tis a look which at this time is hardly his own,
  But tells a plain tale of the days that are flown.
 
 
  Dan once had a heart which was mov'd by the wires
  Of manifold pleasures and many desires:
  And what if he cherish'd his purse? 'Twas no more
  Than treading a path trod by thousands before.
 
 
  'Twas a path trod by thousands, but Daniel is one
  Who went something farther than others have gone;
  And now with old Daniel you see how it fares
  You see to what end he has brought his grey hairs.
 
 
  The pair sally forth hand in hand; ere the sun
  Has peer'd o'er the beeches their work is begun:
  And yet into whatever sin they may fall,
  This Child but half knows it and that not at all.
 
 
  They hunt through the street with deliberate tread,
  And each in his turn is both leader and led;
  And wherever they carry their plots and their wiles,
  Every face in the village is dimpled with smiles.
 
 
  Neither check'd by the rich nor the needy they roam,
  For grey-headed Dan has a daughter at home;
  Who will gladly repair all the damage that's done,
  And three, were it ask'd, would be render'd for one.
 
 
  Old Man! whom so oft I with pity have ey'd,
  I love thee and love the sweet boy at thy side:
  Long yet may'st thou live, for a teacher we see
  That lifts up the veil of our nature in thee.
 
 
  A whirl-blast from behind the hill
  Rush'd o'er the wood with startling sound:
  Then all at once the air was still,
  And showers of hail-stones patter'd round.
 
 
  Where leafless Oaks tower'd high above,
  I sate within an undergrove
  Of tallest hollies, tall and green,
  A fairer bower was never seen.
 
 
  From year to year the spacious floor
  With wither'd leaves is cover'd o'er,
  You could not lay a hair between:
  And all the year the bower is green.
 
 
  But see! where'er the hailstones drop
  The wither'd leaves all skip and hop,
  There's not a breeze – no breath of air —
  Yet here, and there, and every where
 
 
  Along the floor, beneath the shade
  By those embowering hollies made,
  The leaves in myriads jump and spring,
  As if with pipes and music rare
  Some Robin Good-fellow were there,
  And all those leaves, that jump and spring,
  Were each a joyous, living thing.
 
 
  Oh! grant me Heaven a heart at ease
  That I may never cease to find,
  Even in appearances like these
  Enough to nourish and to stir my mind!
 

SONG
FOR THE WANDERING JEW

 
  Though the torrents from their fountains
  Roar down many a craggy steep,
  Yet they find among the mountains
  Resting-places calm and deep.
 
 
  Though almost with eagle pinion
  O'er the rocks the Chamois roam.
  Yet he has some small dominion
  Which no doubt he calls his home.
 
 
  If on windy days the Raven
  Gambol like a dancing skiff,
  Not the less he loves his haven
  On the bosom of the cliff.
 
 
  Though the Sea-horse in the ocean
  Own no dear domestic cave;
  Yet he slumbers without motion
  On the calm and silent wave.
 
 
  Day and night my toils redouble!
  Never nearer to the goal,
  Night and day, I feel the trouble,
  Of the Wanderer in my soul.
 

RUTH

 
  When Ruth was left half desolate,
  Her Father took another Mate;
  And so, not seven years old,
  The slighted Child at her own will
  Went wandering over dale and hill
  In thoughtless freedom bold.
 
 
  And she had made a pipe of straw
  And from that oaten pipe could draw
  All sounds of winds and floods;
  Had built a bower upon the green,
  As if she from her birth had been
  An Infant of the woods.
 
 
  There came a Youth from Georgia's shore,
  A military Casque he wore
  With splendid feathers drest;
  He brought them from the Cherokees;
  The feathers nodded in the breeze
  And made a gallant crest.
 
 
  From Indian blood you deem him sprung:
  Ah no! he spake the English tongue
  And bare a Soldier's name;
  And when America was free
  From battle and from jeopardy
  He cross the ocean came.
 
 
  With hues of genius on his cheek
  In finest tones the Youth could speak.
  – While he was yet a Boy
  The moon, the glory of the sun,
  And streams that murmur as they run
  Had been his dearest joy.
 
 
  He was a lovely Youth! I guess
  The panther in the wilderness
  Was not so fair as he;
  And when he chose to sport and play,
  No dolphin ever was so gay
  Upon the tropic sea.
 
 
  Among the Indians he had fought,
  And with him many tales he brought
  Of pleasure and of fear,
  Such tales as told to any Maid
  By such a Youth in the green shade
  Were perilous to hear.
 
 
  He told of Girls, a happy rout,
  Who quit their fold with dance and shout
  Their pleasant Indian Town
  To gather strawberries all day long,
  Returning with a choral song
  When day-light is gone down.
 
 
  He spake of plants divine and strange
  That ev'ry day their blossoms change,
  Ten thousand lovely hues!
  With budding, fading, faded flowers
  They stand the wonder of the bowers
  From morn to evening dews.
 
 
  He told of the Magnolia,⁶ spread
  High as a cloud, high over head!
  The Cypress and her spire,
  Of flowers that with one scarlet gleam⁷
  Cover a hundred leagues and seem
  To set the hills on fire.
 
 
  The Youth of green Savannahs spake,
  And many an endless endless lake
  With all its fairy crowds
  Of islands that together lie
  As quietly as spots of sky
  Among the evening clouds:
 
 
  And then he said "How sweet it were
  A fisher or a hunter there,
  A gardener in the shade,
  Still wandering with an easy mind
  To build a household fire and find
  A home in every glade."
 
 
  "What days and what sweet years! Ah me!
  Our life were life indeed, with thee
  So pass'd in quiet bliss,
  And all the while" said he "to know
  That we were in a world of woe.
  On such an earth as this!"
 
 
  And then he sometimes interwove
  Dear thoughts about a Father's love,
  "For there," said he, "are spun
  Around the heart such tender ties
  That our own children to our eyes
  Are dearer than the sun."
 
 
  Sweet Ruth! and could you go with me
  My helpmate in the woods to be,
  Our shed at night to rear;
  Or run, my own adopted bride,
  A sylvan huntress at my side
  And drive the flying deer.
 
 
  "Beloved Ruth!" No more he said
  Sweet Ruth alone at midnight shed
  A solitary tear,
  She thought again – and did agree
  With him to sail across the sea,
  And drive the flying deer.
 
 
  "And now, as fitting is and right,
  We in the Church our faith will plight,
  A Husband and a Wife."
  Even so they did; and I may say
  That to sweet Ruth that happy day
  Was more than human life.
 
 
  Through dream and vision did she sink,
  Delighted all the while to think
  That on those lonesome floods
  And green Savannahs she should share
  His board with lawful joy, and bear
  His name in the wild woods.
 
 
  But, as you have before been told,
  This Stripling, sportive gay and bold,
  And, with his dancing crest,
  So beautiful, through savage lands
  Had roam'd about with vagrant bands
  Of Indians in the West.
 
 
  The wind, the tempest roaring high,
  The tumult of a tropic sky
  Might well be dangerous food.
  For him, a Youth to whom was given
  So much of earth so much of Heaven,
  And such impetuous blood.
 
 
  Whatever in those climes he found
  Irregular in sight or sound
  Did to his mind impart
  A kindred impulse, seem'd allied
  To his own powers, and justified
  The workings of his heart.
 
 
  Nor less to feed voluptuous thought
  The beauteous forms of Nature wrought,
  Fair trees and lovely flowers;
  The breezes their own languor lent,
  The stars had feelings which they sent
  Into those magic bowers.
 
 
  Yet, in his worst pursuits, I ween,
  That sometimes there did intervene
  Pure hopes of high intent:
  For passions link'd to forms so fair
  And stately, needs must have their share
  Of noble sentiment.
 
 
  But ill he liv'd, much evil saw
  With men to whom no better law
  Nor better life was known;
  Deliberately and undeceiv'd
  Those wild men's vices he receiv'd,
  And gave them back his own.
 
 
  His genius and his moral frame
  Were thus impair'd, and he became
  The slave of low desires;
  A man who without self-controul
  Would seek what the degraded soul
  Unworthily admires.
 
 
  And yet he with no feign'd delight
  Had woo'd the Maiden, day and night
  Had luv'd her, night and morn;
  What could he less than love a Maid
  Whose heart with so much nature play'd
  So kind and so forlorn?
 
 
  But now the pleasant dream was gone,
  No hope, no wish remain'd, not one,
  They stirr'd him now no more,
  New objects did new pleasure give,
  And once again he wish'd to live
  As lawless as before.
 
 
  Meanwhile as thus with him it fared.
  They for the voyage were prepared
  And went to the sea-shore,
  But, when they thither came, the Youth
  Deserted his poor Bride, and Ruth
  Could never find him more.
 
 
  "God help thee Ruth!" – Such pains she had
  That she in half a year was mad
  And in a prison hous'd,
  And there, exulting in her wrongs,
  Among the music of her songs
  She fearfully carouz'd.
 
 
  Yet sometimes milder hours she knew,
  Nor wanted sun, nor rain, nor dew,
  Nor pastimes of the May,
  They all were with her in her cell,
  And a wild brook with chearful knell
  Did o'er the pebbles play.
 
 
  When Ruth three seasons thus had lain
  There came a respite to her pain,
  She from her prison fled;
  But of the Vagrant none took thought,
  And where it liked her best she sought
  Her shelter and her bread.
 
 
  Among the fields she breath'd again:
  The master-current of her brain
  Ran permanent and free,
  And to the pleasant Banks of Tone⁸
  She took her way, to dwell alone
  Under the greenwood tree.
 
 
  The engines of her grief, the tools
  That shap'd her sorrow, rocks and pools,
  And airs that gently stir
  The vernal leaves, she loved them still,
  Nor ever tax'd them with the ill
  Which had been done to her.
 
 
  A Barn her winter bed supplies,
  But till the warmth of summer skies
  And summer days is gone,
  (And in this tale we all agree)
  She sleeps beneath the greenwood tree,
  And other home hath none.
 
 
  If she is press'd by want of food
  She from her dwelling in the wood
  Repairs to a road side,
  And there she begs at one steep place,
  Where up and down with easy pace
  The horsemen-travellers ride.
 
 
  That oaten pipe of hers is mute
  Or thrown away, but with a flute
  Her loneliness she cheers;
  This flute made of a hemlock stalk
  At evening in his homeward walk
  The Quantock Woodman hears.
 
 
  I, too have pass'd her on the hills
  Setting her little water-mills
  By spouts and fountains wild,
  Such small machinery as she turn'd
  Ere she had wept, ere she had mourn'd
  A young and happy Child!
 
 
  Farewel! and when thy days are told
  Ill-fated Ruth! in hallow'd mold
  Thy corpse shall buried be,
  For thee a funeral bell shall ring,
  And all the congregation sing
  A Christian psalm for thee.
 

LINES
Written with a Slate-pencil upon a Stone, the largest of a heap lying near a deserted Quarry, upon one of the Islands at Rydale

 
  Stranger! this hillock of mishapen stones
  Is not a ruin of the ancient time,
  Nor, as perchance thou rashly deem'st, the Cairn
  Of some old British Chief: 'tis nothing more
  Than the rude embryo of a little dome
  Or pleasure-house, which was to have been built
  Among the birch-trees of this rocky isle.
  But, as it chanc'd, Sir William having learn'd
  That from the shore a full-grown man might wade,
  And make himself a freeman of this spot
  At any hour he chose, the Knight forthwith
  Desisted, and the quarry and the mound
  Are monuments of his unfinish'd task. —
  The block on which these lines are trac'd, perhaps,
  Was once selected as the corner-stone
  Of the intended pile, which would have been
  Some quaint odd play-thing of elaborate skill,
  So that, I guess, the linnet and the thrush,
  And other little builders who dwell here,
  Had wonder'd at the work. But blame him not,
  For old Sir William was a gentle Knight
  Bred in this vale to which he appertain'd
  With all his ancestry. Then peace to him
  And for the outrage which he had devis'd
  Entire forgiveness. – But if thou art one
  On fire with thy impatience to become
  An Inmate of these mountains, if disturb'd
  By beautiful conceptions, thou hast hewn
  Out of the quiet rock the elements
  Of thy trim mansion destin'd soon to blaze
  In snow-white splendour, think again, and taught
  By old Sir William and his quarry, leave
  Thy fragments to the bramble and the rose,
  There let the vernal slow-worm sun himself,
  And let the red-breast hop from stone to stone.
 

In the School of – is a tablet on which are inscribed, in gilt letters, the names of the federal persons who have been Schoolmasters there since the foundation of the School, with the time at which they entered upon and quitted their office. Opposite one of those names the Author wrote the following lines.

 
  If Nature, for a favorite Child
  In thee hath temper'd so her clay,
  That every hour thy heart runs wild
  Yet never once doth go astray,
 
 
  Read o'er these lines; and then review
  This tablet, that thus humbly rears
  In such diversity of hue
  Its history of two hundred years.
 
 
  – When through this little wreck of fame,
  Cypher and syllable, thine eye
  Has travell'd down to Matthew's name,
  Pause with no common sympathy.
 
 
  And if a sleeping tear should wake
  Then be it neither check'd nor stay'd:
  For Matthew a request I make
  Which for himself he had not made.
 
 
  Poor Matthew, all his frolics o'er,
  Is silent as a standing pool,
  Far from the chimney's merry roar,
  And murmur of the village school.
 
 
  The sighs which Matthew heav'd were sighs
  Of one tir'd out with fun and madness;
  The tears which came to Matthew's eyes
  Were tears of light, the oil of gladness.
 
 
  Yet sometimes when the secret cup
  Of still and serious thought went round
  It seem'd as if he drank it up,
  He felt with spirit so profound.
 
 
  – Thou soul of God's best earthly mould,
  Thou happy soul, and can it be
  That these two words of glittering gold
  Are all that must remain of thee?