Gave to the days a mark and name

By which we knew them when they came. -Yes, I, and all about me here,

Through all the changes of the year,

Had seen him through the mountains go,

In pomp of mist or pomp of snow,
Majestically huge and slow:

Or, with milder grace adorning

The landscape of a summer's morning; While Grasmere smoothed her liquid plain

The moving image to detain;

And mighty Fairfield, with a chime
Of echoes, to his march kept time;
When little other business stirred,
And little other sound was heard ;
In that delicious hour of balm,
Stillness, solitude, and calm,
While yet the valley is arrayed,
On this side with a sober shade ;
On that is prodigally bright-
Crag, lawn, and wood—with rosy light.
-But most of all, thou lordly Wain !
I wish to have thee here again,
When windows flap and chimney roars,
And all is dismal out of doors;

And, sitting by my fire, I see
Eight sorry carts, no less a train !

Unworthy successors of thee,

Come straggling through the wind and rain :

And oft, as they pass slowly on,
Beneath my windows, one by one,
See, perched upon the naked height
The summit of a cumbrous freight,
A single traveller-and there.
Another; then perhaps a pair-
The lame, the sickly, and the old;
Men, women, heartless with the cold;
And babes in wet and starveling plight;
Which once, be weather as it might,
Had still a nest within a nest,

Thy shelter and their mother's breast!
Then most of all, then far the most,
Do I regret what we have lost;
Am grieved for that unhappy sin
Which robbed us of good Benjamin ;-
And of his stately Charge, which none
Could keep alive when he was gone!

1805.

NOTES.

1.

SEVERAL years after the event that forms the subject of the foregoing poem, in company with my friend, the late Mr. Cole ridge, I happened to fall in with the person to whom the name of Benjamin is given. Upon our expressing regret that we had not, for a long time, seen upon the road either him or his waggon, he said: :14 'They could not do without me and as to the man who was put in my place, no good could come out of him; he was a man of no ideas."

The fact of my discarded hero's getting the horses out of a great difficulty with a word, as related in the poem, was told me by an eye-witness.

2.

The Dor-hawk, solitary bird.

When the Poem was first written the note of the bird was thus described :

The Night-hawk is singing his frog-like tune,

Twirling his watchman's rattle about

but from unwillingness to startle the reader at the outset by so bold a mode of expression, the passage was altered as it now stands.

3.

After the line, Page 293, Can any mortal clog come to her, followed in the MS. an incident which has been kept back. Part of the suppressed verses shall here be given as a gratification of private feeling, which the well-disposed reader will find no difficulty in excusing. They are now printed for the first time.

But Benjamin, in his vexation,
Possesses inward consolation;

He knows his ground, and hopes to find
A spot with all things to his mind,
An upright mural block of stone,
Moist with pure water trickling down.
A slender spring; but kind to man

It is, a true Samaritan;

Close to the highway, pouring out
Its offering from a chink or spout;
Whence all, howe'er athirst, or drooping
With toil, may drink, and without stooping.

Cries Benjamin, "Where is it, where?
Voice it hath none, but must be near."
-A star, declining towards the west,

Upon the watery surface threw

Its image tremulously imprest,

That just marked out the object and withdrew :
Right welcome service!

*

ROCK OF NAMES!

Light is the strain, but not unjust To Thee and thy memorial-trust, That once seemed only to express Love that was love in idleness; Tokens, as year hath followed year, How changed, alas, in character! For they were graven on thy smooth breast By hands of those my soul loved best; Meek women, men as true and brave As ever went to a hopeful grave: Their hands and mine, when side by side With kindred zeal and mutual pride, We worked until the Initials took Shapes that defied a scornful look.— Long as for us a genial feeling Survives, or one in need of healing, The power, dear Rock, around thee cast, Thy monumental power, shall last', For me and mine! O thought of pain, That would impair it or profane! Take all in kindness then, as said With a staid heart but playful head; And fail not Thou, loved Rock! to keep Thy charge when we are laid asleep.

END OF VOL. I.