O for a single hour of that Dundee,

Who on that day the word of onset gave!

Uncertain what to choose and how to

steer

sense

And wise reserve the plea of indolence-Come ye-whate'er your creed-O waken

all,

Whate'er your temper, at your Country's call;

Resolving (this a free-born Nation can)
To have one Soul, and perish to a man,
Or save this honoured Land from every
Lord

But British reason and the British sword.

THE FARMER OF TILSBURY VALE1

The character of this man was described to me, and the incident upon which the verses turn was told me, by Mr. Pool of Nether Stowey, with whom I became acquainted through our common friend, S. T. Coleridge. During my residence at Alfoxden I used to see much of him and had frequent occasions to admire the course of his daily life, especially his conduct to his labourers and poor neighbours: their virtues he carefully encouraged, and weighed their faults in the scales of charity. If I seem in these verses to have treated the weaknesses of the farmer, and his transgression, too tenderly, it may in part be ascribed to my having received the story from one so averse to all harsh judgment. After his death, was found in his escritoir a lock of grey hair carefully preserved, with a notice that it had been cut from the head of his faithful shepherd, who had served him for a length of years. I need scarcely add that he felt for all men as his brothers. He was much beloved by distinguished persons-Mr. Coleridge, Mr. Southey, Sir H. Davy, and many others; and in his own neighbourhood was highly valued as a magistrate, a man of business, and in every other social relation. The latter part of the poem, perhaps, requires some apology as being too much of an echo to the "Reverie of Poor Susan."

'Tis not for the unfeeling, the falsely refined, The squeamish in taste, and the narrow of mind,

And the small critic wielding his delicate pen, That I sing of old Adam, the pride of old

men.

He dwells in the centre of London's wide Town;

1 See Note.

His staff is a sceptre-his grey hairs a crown;

To the neighbours he went,—all were free with their money;

by the streak

Of the unfaded rose that still blooms on his cheek.

'Mid the dews, in the sunshine of morn,'mid the joy

Of the fields, he collected that bloom, when a boy,

That countenance there fashioned, which, spite of a stain

That his life hath received, to the last will remain.

Farmer he was; and his house far and

near

Was the boast of the country for excellent cheer:

How oft have I heard in sweet Tilsbury Vale

Of the silver-rimmed horn whence he dealt his mild ale!

Yet Adam was far as the farthest from ruin, His fields seemed to know what their Master was doing:

And turnips, and corn-land, and meadow, and lea,

All caught the infection-as generous as he.

with honey,

That they dreamt not of dearth;-He continued his rounds,

Knocked here-and knocked there, pounds still adding to pounds.

He paid what he could with his ill-gotten pelf,

And something, it might be, reserved for himself:

Then (what is too true) without hinting a word,

Turned his back on the country-and off like a bird.

You lift up your eyes!—but I guess that you frame

A judgment too harsh of the sin and the shame;

In him it was scarcely a business of art, For this he did all in the ease of his heart.

To London--a sad emigration I weenWith his grey hairs he went from the brook and the green;

And there, with small wealth but his legs and his hands,

As lonely he stood as a crow on the sands.

In the throng of the town like a stranger is he,

Like one whose own country's far over the

sea;

If you pass by at morning, you'll meet with

him there.

The breath of the cows you may see him inhale,

Full ten times a day takes his heart by surprise.

Vale.

Now farewell, old Adam! when low thou art laid,

young, More of soul in his face than of words on his tongue;

Like a maiden of twenty he trembles and sighs,

And tears of fifteen will come into his eyes.

head;

And I hope that thy grave, wheresoever it be,

Will hear the wind sigh through the leaves of a tree.

TO THE CUCKOO

1803.

Composed in the orchard, Town-end, Grasmere.

O BLITHE New-comer! I have heard,
I hear thee and rejoice.

O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird,
Or but a wandering Voice?

While I am lying on the grass
Thy twofold shout I hear,
From hill to hill it seems to pass,
At once far off, and near.

Though babbling only to the Vale,
Of sunshine and of flowers,
Thou bringest unto me a tale
Of visionary hours.

Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring!
Even yet thou art to me

No bird, but an invisible thing,
A voice, a mystery;

The same whom in my school-boy days I listened to; that Cry

Which made me look a thousand ways. In bush, and tree, and sky.

Written at Town-end, Grasmere. The germ of this poem was four lines composed as a part of the verses on the Highland Girl. Though beginning in this way, it was written from my heart, as is sufficiently obvious.

SHE was a Phantom of delight

When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely Apparition, sent

To be a moment's ornament;
Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair;
Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful Dawn;
A dancing Shape, an Image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and way-lay.

of Ullswater, and probably may be seen to this day as beautiful in the month of March, nodding their golden heads beside the dancing and foaming waves.

I WANDERED lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed-and gazed-but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought:

This was an overflow from the "Affliction of Margaret," and was excluded as superfluous there, but preserved in the faint hope that it may turn to account by restoring a shy lover to some forsaken damsel. My poetry has been complained of as deficient in interests of this sort,-a charge which the piece beginning, "Lyre! though such power do in thy magic live," will scarcely tend to obviate. The natural imagery of these verses was supplied by frequent, I might say intense, observation of the Rydal torrent. What an animating contrast is the ever-changing aspect of that, and indeed of every one of our mountain brooks, to the monotonous tone and unmitigated fury of such streams among the Alps as are fed all the summer long by glaciers and melting