251

WEDDED LOVE.

THIS fair Bride

In the devotedness of youthful love,
Preferring me to parents and the choir
Of gay companions, to the natal roof,
And all known places and familiar sights
(Resigned with sadness gently weighing down
Her trembling expectations, but no more
Than did to her due honour, and to me
Yielded, that day, a confidence sublime
In what I had to build upon)—this Bride,
Young, modest, meek, and beautiful, I led
To a low cottage in a sunny bay,
Where the salt sea innocuously breaks,
And the sea-breeze as innocently breathes,

On Devon's leafy shores; a sheltered hold,

In a soft clime encouraging the soil

To a luxuriant bounty! As our steps

Approach th' embowered abode-our chosen seat-
See, rooted in the earth, its kindly bed,

Th' unendangered myrtle, decked with flowers,
Before the threshold stands to welcome us!
While, in the flowering myrtle's neighbourhood,
Not overlooked, but courting no regard,
Those native plants, the holly and the yew,
Gave modest intimation to the mind

Of willingness with which they would unite
With the green myrtle, t' endear the hours
Of winter, and protect that pleasant place.
Wild were the walks upon those lonely Downs,
Track leading into track; how marked, how worn
Into bright verdure, among fern and gorse,

Winding away its never-ending line.

On their smooth surface, evidence was none :

But, there, lay open to our daily haunt,

A range of unappropriated earth,

Where youth's ambitious feet might move at large; Whence, unmolested wanderers, we beheld

The shining giver of the day diffuse

His brightness o'er a tract of sea and land

Gay as our spirits, free as our desires,

As our enjoyments boundless. From those heights
We dropped, at pleasure, into sylvan combs;

Where arbours of impenetrable shade,

And mossy seats, detained us side by side, With hearts at ease, and knowledge in our hearts "That all the grove and all the day was ours."

WORDSWORTH

LO, YONDER shed! observe its garden ground, With the low paling, form'd of wreck, around : There dwells a fisher: if you view his boat,

With bed and barrel-'t is his house afloat;

Look at his house, where ropes, nets, blocks abound, Tar, pitch, and oakum-'t is his boat aground :

That space enclosed but little he regards,

Spread o'er with relics of masts, sails, and yards;

Fish by the wall, on spit of elder, rest,

Of all his food the cheapest and the best,

By his own labour caught, for his own hunger dress'd.

Here our reformers come not; none object
To paths polluted, or upbraid neglect;
None care that ashy heaps at doors are cast,
That coal-dust flies along the blinding blast;
None heed the stagnant pools on either side,
Where new-launch'd ships of infant sailors ride:
Rodneys in rags here British valour boast,
And lisping Nelsons fright the Gallic coast;
They fix the rudder, set the swelling sail,
They point the bowsprit, and they blow the gale.

CRABBE