And oft the beggar mask'd with tan,
In rusty garments grey with dust,
Here sits and dips his little can,
And breaks his scanty crust;
And, lull'd beside thy whispering stream,
Oft drops to slumber unawares,
And sees the angel of his dream
Upon celestial stairs.
Dear dweller by the dusty way,
Thou saint within a mossy shrine,
The tribute of a heart to-day,
Weary and worn, is thine!
ON Leven's banks while free to rove,
And tune the rural pipe to love,
I envied not the happiest swain
That ever trod the Arcadian plain.
Pure stream, in whose transparent wave
My youthful limbs I wont to lave;
No torrents stain thy limpid source,
No rocks impede thy dimpling course,
That sweetly warbles o'er its bed,
With white, round, polished pebbles spread;
While, lightly poised, the scaly brood
In myriads cleave thy crystal flood:
The springing trout in speckled pride;
The salmon, monarch of the tide ;
The ruthless pike, intent on war;
The silver eel and mottled par.
Devolving from thy parent lake,
A charming maze thy waters make,
By bowers of birch and groves of pine,
And edges flowered with eglantine.
Still on thy banks so gaily green
May numerous herds and flocks be seen :
And lasses chanting o'er the pail,
And shepherds piping in the dale;
And ancient faith that knows no guile,
And industry embrowned with toil;
And hearts resolved, and hands prepared,
The blessings they enjoy to guard !
ALAS, delicious Spring! God sends thee down
To breathe upon his cold and perish'd works
Beauteous revival; earth should welcome thee—
Thee and the west wind, thy smooth paramour,
With the soft laughter of her flowery meads,
Her joys, her melodies: the prancing stag
Flutters the shivering fern; the steed shakes out
His main, the dewy herbage, silver-webb'd,
With frank step trampling; the wild goat looks down
From his empurpling bed of heath, where break
The waters deep and blue, with crystal gleams
Of their quick-leaping people; the fresh lark
Is in the morning sky; the nightingale
Tunes evensong to the dropping waterfall.
Creation lives with loveliness-all melts
And trembles into one wild harmony.
No cloud, no relic of the sunken day,
Distinguishes the west; no long, thin slip
Of sullen light-no obscure, trembling hues.
Come; we will rest on this old mossy bridge!
You see the glimmer of the stream beneath,
But hear no murmuring; it flows silently
O'er its soft bed of verdure. All is still--
A balmy night! and though the stars be dim,
Yet let us think upon the vernal showers
That gladden the green earth, and we shall find
A pleasure in the dimness of the stars.
And hark! the nightingale begins its song,
"Most musical, most melancholy" bird!
A melancholy bird! Oh, idle thought!
In nature there is nothing melancholy.
* 'Tis the merry nightingale
That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates
With fast, thick warble his delicious notes,
As he were fearful that an April night
Would be too short for him to utter forth
His lone chant, and disburden his full soul
Of all its music!
Of large extent, hard by a castle huge,
Which the great lord inhabits not; and so
This grove is wild with tangling underwood,
And the trim walks are broken up, and grass—
Thin grass-and king-cups grow within the paths.
But never elsewhere in one place I knew
So many nightingales; and far and near,
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