The frog, with reckoning leap, enjoys apart,

Till now and then the woodcock frights his heart

With brushing down to dip his dainty bill.
Close by, from bank to bank,

A little bridge there is, a one-railed plank;
And all is woody, mossy, and watery.

Sometimes a poet from that bridge might see

A Nymph reach downwards, holding by a bough With tresses o'er her brow,

And with her white back stoop

The pushing stream to scoop

In a green gourd cup, shining sunnily.

THE CLOUD.

A FRAGMENT.

As I stood thus, a neighbouring wood of elms
Was moved, and stirred and whispered loftily,
Much like a pomp of warriors with plumed helms,
When some great general whom they long to see
Is heard behind them, coming in swift dignity;
And then there fled by me a rush of air
That stirred up all the other foliage there,

Filling the solitude with panting tongues;
into their songs,

At which the pines woke up

Shaking their choral locks; and on the place

There fell a shade as on an awe-struck face;

And overhead, like a portentous rim

Pulled over the wide world, to make all dim,

A grave gigantic cloud came hugely uplifting him.

It passed with it's slow shadow; and I saw
Where it went down beyond me on a plain,
Sloping it's dusky ladders of thick rain;
And on the mist it made, and blinding awe,
The sun, re-issuing in the opposite sky,

Struck the all-coloured arch of his great eye,
And the disburthened country laughed again:
The leaves were amber; the sunshine

Scored on the ground it's conquering line;

And the quick birds, for scorn of the great cloud,

Like children after fear, were merry and loud.

SONNETS.