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She has a world of ready wealth,

Our minds and hearts to bless

Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.

One impulse from a vernal wood

May teach you more of man,

Of moral evil and of good,

Than all the sages can.

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;

Our meddling intellect

Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:

We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art;

Close up those barren leaves;

Come forth, and bring with you a heart

That watches and receives.

LXXV

PERSONAL TALK

I

I AM not One who much or oft delight
To season my fireside with personal talk,—
Of friends, who live within an easy walk,
Or neighbours, daily, weekly, in my sight:

1798

And, for my chance-acquaintance, ladies bright, Sons, mothers, maidens withering on the stalk, These all wear out of me, like Forms, with chalk Painted on rich men's floors, for one feast-night.

Better than such discourse doth silence long,
Long, barren silence, square with my desire;
To sit without emotion, hope, or aim,

In the loved presence of my cottage-fire,
And listen to the flapping of the flame,
Or kettle whispering its faint undersong.

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"Yet life," you say, "is life; we have seen and see, And with a living pleasure we describe;

And fits of sprightly malice do but bribe

The languid mind into activity.

Sound sense, and love itself, and mirth and glee
Are fostered by the comment and the gibe."
Even be it so; yet still among your tribe,

Our daily world's true Worldlings, rank not me !

Children are blest, and powerful; their world lies
More justly balanced; partly at their feet,
And part far from them: sweetest melodies
Are those that are by distance made more sweet;

Whose mind is but the mind of his own eyes,
He is a slave; the meanest we can meet !

III

Wings have we,-and as far as we can go,
We may find pleasure: wilderness and wood,
Blank ocean and mere sky, support that mood
Which with the lofty sanctifies the low.

Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know,

Are a substantial world, both pure and good:

Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, Our pastime and our happiness will grow.

There find I personal themes, a plenteous store,
Matter wherein right voluble I am,

To which I listen with a ready ear;

Two shall be named, pre-eminently dear,-
The gentle Lady married to the Moor;
And heavenly Una with her milk-white Lamb.

IV

Nor can I not believe but that hereby
Great gains are mine; for thus I live remote
From evil-speaking; rancour, never sought,
Comes to me not; malignant truth, or lie.

Hence have I genial seasons, hence have I
Smooth passions, smooth discourse, and joyous
thought:

And thus from day to day my little boat
Rocks in its harbour, lodging peaceably.

Blessings be with them-and eternal praise,
Who gave us nobler loves, and nobler cares-
The Poets, who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays !
Oh! might my name be numbered among theirs,
Then gladly would I end my mortal days.

LXXVI

GLEN-ALMAIN;

OR, THE NARROW GLEN

In this still place, remote from men,
Sleeps Ossian, in the NARROW GLEN ;
In this still place, where murmurs on
But one meek streamlet, only one:
He sang of battles, and the breath
Of stormy war, and violent death;
And should, methinks, when all was past,
Have rightfully been laid at last

Where rocks were rudely heaped, and rent

As by a spirit turbulent ;

Where sights were rough, and sounds were wild, And everything unreconciled;

In some complaining, dim retreat,

For fear and melancholy meet;
But this is calm; there cannot be
A more entire tranquillity.

Does then the Bard sleep here indeed?
Or is it but a groundless creed?

What matters it ?—I blame them not
Whose Fancy in this lonely Spot

Was moved; and in such way expressed

Their notion of its perfect rest.
A convent, even a hermit's cell,

Would break the silence of this Dell:
It is not quiet, is not ease;

But something deeper far than these:
The separation that is here

Is of the grave; and of austere
Yet happy feelings of the dead :
And, therefore, was it rightly said
That Ossian, last of all his race!
Lies buried in this lonely place.

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