LITMIR.BIZ

        When, musing on companions gone,

      We doubly feel ourselves alone,                            135

      Something, my friend, we yet may gain,

      There is a pleasure in this pain:

      It soothes the love of lonely rest,

      Deep in each gentler heart impress’d.

      ‘Tis silent amid worldly toils,                            140

      And stifled soon by mental broils;

      But, in a bosom thus prepared,

      Its still small voice is often heard,

      Whispering a mingled sentiment,

      ‘Twixt resignation and content.                            145

      Oft in my mind such thoughts awake,

      By lone Saint Mary’s silent lake;

      Thou know’st it well, – nor fen, nor sedge,

      Pollute the pure lake’s crystal edge;

      Abrupt and sheer, the mountains sink                      150

      At once upon the level brink;

      And just a trace of silver sand

      Marks where the water meets the land.

      Far in the mirror, bright and blue,

      Each hill’s huge outline you may view;                    155

      Shaggy with heath, but lonely bare,

      Nor tree, nor bush, nor brake, is there,

      Save where, of land, yon slender line

      Bears thwart the lake the scatter’d pine.

      Yet even this nakedness has power,                        160

      And aids the feeling of the hour:

      Nor thicket, dell, nor copse you spy,

      Where living thing conceal’d might lie;

      Nor point, retiring, hides a dell,

      Where swain, or woodman lone, might dwell;                165

      There’s nothing left to fancy’s guess,

      You see that all is loneliness:

      And silence aids-though the steep hills

      Send to the lake a thousand rills;

      In summer tide, so soft they weep,                        170

      The sound but lulls the ear asleep;

      Your horse’s hoof-tread sounds too rude,

      So stilly is the solitude.

        Nought living meets the eye or ear,

      But well I ween the dead are near;                        175

      For though, in feudal strife, a foe

      Hath laid Our Lady’s chapel low,

      Yet still, beneath the hallow’d soil,

      The peasant rests him from his toil,

      And, dying, bids his bones be laid,                        180

      Where erst his simple fathers pray’d.

        If age had tamed the passions’ strife,

      And fate had cut my ties to life,

      Here have I thought, ‘twere sweet to dwell,

      And rear again the chaplain’s cell,                        185

      Like that same peaceful hermitage,

      Where Milton long’d to spend his age.

      ‘Twere sweet to mark the setting day,

      On Bourhope’s lonely top decay;

      And, as it faint and feeble died                          190

      On the broad lake, and mountain’s side,

      To say, ‘Thus pleasures fade away;

      Youth, talents, beauty thus decay,

      And leave us dark, forlorn, and grey;’

      Then gaze on Dryhope’s ruin’d tower,                      195

      And think on Yarrow’s faded Flower:

      And when that mountain-sound I heard,

      Which bids us be for storm prepared,

      The distant rustling of his wings,

      As up his force the Tempest brings,                        200

      ‘Twere sweet, ere yet his terrors rave,

      To sit upon the Wizard’s grave;

      That Wizard Priest’s, whose bones are thrust,

      From company of holy dust;

      On which no sunbeam ever shines-                          205

      (So superstition’s creed divines) -

      Thence view the lake, with sullen roar,

      Heave her broad billows to the shore;

      And mark the wild-swans mount the gale,

      Spread wide through mist their snowy sail,                210

      And ever stoop again, to lave

      Their bosoms on the surging wave;

      Then, when against the driving hail

      No longer might my plaid avail,

      Back to my lonely home retire,                            215

      And light my lamp, and trim my fire;

      There ponder o’er some mystic lay,

      Till the wild tale had all its sway,

      And,

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