University of Virginia Library

Lines, written at Bridgewater, in Somersetshire, on the 27th of July, 1797; during a long excursion, in quest of a peaceful retreat.

Day of my double birth! who gave me first
To breathe Life's troubled air; and, kindlier far
Gave all that makes Life welcome—gave me her
Who now, far distant, sheds, perchance, the tear
In pensive solitude, and chides the hours

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That keep her truant wanderer from her arms—
Her's and our smiling babes:—Eventful Day!
How shall I greet thee now, at thy return,
So often mark'd with sadness? Art thou, say,
Once more arriv'd a harbinger of woes,
Precursor of a Year of miseries,
Of storms and persecutions, of the pangs
Of disappointed hope, and keen regrets,
Wrung from the bosom by a sordid World
That kindness pays with hatred, and returns
Evil for good?—a World most scorpion-like,
That stings what warms it, and the ardent glow
Of blest Benevolence too oft transmutes
To sullen gloom and sour misanthropy,
Wounding, with venom'd tooth, the fostering breast
That her milk turns to gall. Or art thou come,
In most unwonted guise, O, fateful Day!
With cheering prophecy of kindlier times?—
Of hours of sweet retirement, tranquil joys
Of friendship, and of love—of studious ease,
Of philosophic thought—poetic dreams
In dell romantic, or by bubbling brook,
High wood, or rocky shore; where Fancy's train,
Solemn or gay, shall in the sunbeam sport,
Or murmur in the gloom, peopling earth, air,
Ocean, and woodland haunt,—mountain, and cave,
With wildest phantazies:—wild, but not vain,
For, but for dreams like these, Meonides
Had never shook the soul with epic song,
Nor Milton, slumbering underneath the shade

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Of fancy-haunted oak, heard the loud strain
Of heavenly minstrelsey:—nor yet had he,
Shakespear (in praise of whom smooth Avon still
Flows eloquent to every Briton's ear,)
Pierc'd the dark womb of Nature, with keen glance,
Tracing the embrio Passions ere their birth,
And every mystic movement of the soul
Baring to public ken.—O, Bards! to whom
Youth owes its emulation, Age the bliss
Of many a wintry evening, dull and sad,
But for your cheering aid!—Ye from whose strains,
As from a font of Inspiration, oft
The quickning mind, else stagnant, learns to flow
In tides of generous ardour, scattering wide
Smiling fertility, fresh fruits and flowers
Of intellectual worth!—O! might my soul
Henceforth with yours hold converse, in the scenes
Where Nature cherishes Poetic-Thought,
Best cradled in the solitary haunts
Where bustling Cares intrude not, nor the throng
Of cities, or of courts. Yet not for aye
In hermit-like seclusion would I dwell
(My soul estranging from my brother Man)
Forgetful and forgotten: rather oft,
With some few minds congenial, let me stray
Along the Muses' haunts, where converse, meet
For intellectual beings, may arouse
The soul's sublimer energies, or wing
The fleeting Time most cheerily—The Time
Which, tho swift-fleeting, scatters, as he flies,

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Seeds of delight, that, like the furrow'd grain,
Strew'd by the farmer, as he onward stalks
Over his well-plough'd acres, shall produce,
In happy season, its abundant fruits.

Ah! 'twould be sweet, beneath the neighb'ring thatch,
In philosophic amity to dwell,
Inditing moral verse, or tale, or theme,
Gay or instructive; and it would be sweet,
With kindly interchange of mutual aid,

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To delve our little garden plots, the while
Sweet converse flow'd, suspending oft the arm
And half-driven spade, while, eager, one propounds,
And listens one, weighing each pregnant word,
And pondering fit reply, that may untwist
The knotty point—perchance, of import high—
Of Moral Truth, of Causes Infinite,
Creating Power! or Uncreated Worlds
Eternal and uncaus'd! or whatsoe'er,
Of Metaphysic, or of Ethic lore,
The mind, with curious subtilty, pursues—
Agreeing, or dissenting—sweet alike,
When wisdom, and not victory, the end.
And 'twould be sweet, my Samuel, ah! most sweet
To see our little infants stretch their limbs
In gambols unrestrain'd, and early learn
Practical love, and, Wisdom's noblest lore,
Fraternal kindliness; while rosiest health,
Bloom'd on their sun-burnt cheeks. And 'twould be sweet,
When what to toil was due, to study what,
And literary effort, had been paid,
Alternate, in each other's bower to fit,
In summer's genial season; or, when, bleak,
The wintry blast had stripp'd the leafy shade,
Around the blazing hearth, social and gay,
To share our frugal viands, and the bowl
Sparkling with home-brew'd beverage:—by our sides
Thy Sara, and my Susan, and, perchance,
Allfoxden's musing tenant, and the maid
Of ardent eye, who, with fraternal love,

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Sweetens his solitude. With these should join
Arcadian Pool, swain of a happier age,
When Wisdom and Refinement lov'd to dwell
With Rustic Plainness, and the pastoral vale
Was vocal to the melodies of verse—
Echoing sweet minstrelsey. With such, my friend!—
With such how pleasant to unbend awhile,
Winging the idle hour with song, or tale,
Pun, or quaint joke, or converse, such as fits
Minds gay, but innocent: and we would laugh—
(Unless, perchance, pity's more kindly tear
Check the obstreperous mirth) at such who waste
Life's precious hours in the delusive chace
Of wealth and worldly gewgaws, and contend
For honours emptier than the hollow voice
That rings in Echo's cave; and which, like that,
Exists but in the babbling of a world
Creating its own wonder. Wiselier we,
To intellectual joys will thus devote
Our fleeting years; mingling Arcadian sports
With healthful industry. O, it would be
A Golden Age reviv'd!—Nor would we lack
Woodnymph, or Naïd, to complete the group
Of classic fable; for, in happy time,
Sylvanus, Chester, in each hand should bring
The sister nymphs, Julia of radiant eye
And stately tread, the Dryad of the groves;
And she, of softer mien, the meek-ey'd maid,
Pensively sweet! whom Fancy well might deem
The Fairy of the brooks that bubble round.

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