Within the breast of Peter Bell
These silent raptures found no place;
He was a Carl as wild and rude
As ever hue-and-cry pursued,

As ever ran a felon's race.

Though Nature could not touch his heart
By lovely forms, and silent weather,
And tender sounds, yet you might see
At once, that Peter Bell and she
Had often been together.

To all the unshaped half-human thoughts

Which solitary Nature feeds

'Mid summer storms or winter's ice,

Had Peter joined whatever vice

The cruel city breeds.

His face was keen as is the wind
That cuts along the hawthorn-fence; -

He had a dark and sidelong walk,

And long and slouching was his gait;
Beneath his looks so bare and bold,
You might perceive, his spirit cold
Was playing with some inward bait.

His forehead wrinkled was and furred;
A work, one half of which was done
By thinking of his "whens" and "hows";
And half, by knitting of his brows
Beneath the glaring sun.

There was a hardness in his cheek,
There was a hardness in his eye,
As if the man had fixed his face,
In many a solitary place,
Against the wind and open sky!

And now is Peter taught to feel
That man's heart is a holy thing;
And Nature through a world of death
Breathes into him a second breath,

More searching than the breath of spring.

"THERE WAS A BOY"

THERE was a Boy; ye knew him well, ye cliffs
And islands of Winander! —many a time,
At evening, when the earliest stars began
To move along the edges of the hills,

"When thou dost to that summer turn thy thoughts, And hast before thee all which then we were,

To thee the work shall justify itself."

-The Prelude, Book xiv, p. 116.

Rising or setting, would he stand alone,
Beneath the trees, or by the glimmering lake;
And there, with fingers interwoven, both hands
Pressed closely palm to palm and to his mouth
Uplifted, he, as through an instrument,

Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls,

That they might answer him. And they would shout
Across the watery vale, and shout again,

Responsive to his call, with quivering peals,
And long halloos, and screams, and echoes loud
Redoubled and redoubled; concourse wild

Of jocund din! And, when there came a pause
Of silence such as baffled his best skill:
Then, sometimes, in that silence, while he hung
Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise
Has carried far into his heart the voice
Of mountain-torrents; or the visible scene
Would enter unawares into his mind
With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,

Its woods, and that uncertain heaven received.
Into the bosom of the steady lake.1

This boy was taken from his mates, and died
In childhood, ere he was full twelve years old.

Pre-eminent in beauty is the vale

Where he was born and bred: the church-yard hangs
Upon a slope above the village-school; 2

1 Of these lines, Coleridge wrote: "I should have recognized them anywhere; had I met them running wild in the deserts of Arabia I should have instantly screamed out, 'Wordsworth!" "

2 Hawkshead.

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