His black matted head on his shoulder is bent,
And deep is the sigh of his breath,

And with stedfast dejection his eyes are intent

On the fetters that link him to death.

'Tis sorrow enough on that visage to gaze,

That body dismiss'd from his care;

Yet my fancy has pierced to his heart, and pourtrays More terrible images there.

His bones are consumed, and his life-blood is dried,

With wishes the past to undo;

And his crime, through the pains that o'erwhelm him, descried,

Still blackens and grows on his view.

When from the dark synod, or blood-reeking field,

To his chamber the monarch is led,

All soothers of sense their soft virtue shall yield,
And quietness pillow his head.

But if grief, self-consumed, in oblivion would doze,

And conscience her tortures appease,

'Mid tumult and uproar this man must repose;

In the comfortless vault of disease.

When his fetters at night have so press'd on his limbs,
That the weight can no longer be borne,
If, while a half-slumber his memory bedims,
The wretch on his pallet should turn,

While the jail-mastiff howls at the dull clanking chain, From the roots of his hair there shall start

A thousand sharp punctures of cold-sweating pain, And terror shall leap at his heart.

But now he half-raises his deep-sunken eye,

And the motion unsettles a tear ;

The silence of sorrow it seems to supply,

And asks of me why I am here.

"Poor victim! no idle intruder has stood

"With o'erweening complacence our state to compare, "But one, whose first wish is the wish to be good, "Is come as a brother thy sorrows to share.

“At thy name though compassion her nature resign, "Though in virtue's proud mouth thy report be a stain,

My care, if the arm of the mighty were mine,

"Would plant thee where yet thou might'st blossom again."

LINES

WRITTEN A FEW MILES ABOVE

TINTERN ABBEY,

ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING

A TOUR,

July 13, 1798.

Five years have passed; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear

These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a sweet inland murmur.*—Once again

Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,

Which on a wild secluded scene impress

Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect

८

*The river is not affected by the tides a few miles above Tintern.

The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose

Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which, at this season, with their unripe fruits,

Among the woods and copses lose themselves,

(

Nor, with their green and simple hue, disturb
The wild green landscape. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms
Green to the very door;
and wreathes of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees,
And the low copses-coming from the trees
With some uncertain notice, as might seem,
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some hermit's cave, where by his fire
The hermit sits alone.

Though absent long,

These forms of beauty have not been to me,