1. THE BROTHERS*. THESE Tourists, Heaven preserve us! needs must live A profitable life: some glance along, Rapid and gay, as if the earth were air, And they were butterflies to wheel about Sit perched, with book and pencil on their knee, * This Poem was intended to conclude a series of pastorals, the scene of which was laid among the mountains of Cumberland and Westmoreland. I mention this to apologize for the abruptness with which the poem begins. But, for that moping Son of Idleness, Why can he tarry yonder?-In our church-yard Tomb-stone nor name-only the turf we tread, Who turned her large round wheel in the open air With back and forward steps. Towards the field In which the Parish Chapel stood alone, Girt round with a bare ring of mossy wall, He took his way, impatient to accost The Stranger, whom he saw still lingering there. "Twas one well known to him in former days, Through twenty seasons; but he had been reared Was half a Shepherd on the stormy seas. Oft in the piping shrouds had Leonard heard The tones of waterfalls, and inland sounds Of caves and trees:-and, when the regular wind Between the tropics filled the steady sail, And blew with the same breath through days and weeks, Lengthening invisibly its weary line Along the cloudless Main, he, in those hours Of tiresome indolence, would often hang Over the vessel's side, and gaze and gaze; And, while the broad green wave and sparkling foam Flashed round him images and hues that wrought In union with the employment of his heart, He, thus by feverish passion overcome, Below him, in the bosom of the deep, Saw mountains,-saw the forms of sheep that grazed Which he himself had worn *. And now at last From perils manifold, with some small wealth To his paternal home he is returned, The life which he lived there; both for the sake * This description of the Calenture is sketched from an imperfect recollection of an admirable one in prose, by Mr. Gilbert, author of The Hurricane. |