Yet, in his worst pursuits, I ween
That sometimes there did intervene
Pure hopes of high intent:

For passions, linked to forms so fair
And stately, needs must have their share
Of noble sentiment.

But ill he lived, much evil saw,

With men to whom no better law
Nor better life was known;
Deliberately, and undeceived,
Those wild men's vices he received,
And gave them back his own.

His genius and his moral frame

Were thus impaired, and he became
The slave of low desires :

A Man who without self-control
Would seek what the degraded soul
Unworthily admires.

And yet he with no feigned delight
Had wooed the Maiden, day and night
Had loved her, night and morn :

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150

What could he less than love a Maid

160

Whose heart with so much nature played?
So kind and so forlorn!

Sometimes, most earnestly, he said,

'O Ruth! I have been worse than dead;
False thoughts, thoughts bold and vain,
Encompassed me on every side
When I, in confidence and pride,
Had crossed the Atlantic main.

'Before me shone a glorious world-
Fresh as a banner bright, unfurled
To music suddenly:

I looked upon those hills and plains,
And seemed as if let loose from chains,
To live at liberty.

'No more of this; for now, by thee
Dear Ruth! more happily set free
With nobler zeal I burn;

My soul from darkness is released,
Like the whole sky when to the east
The morning doth return.'

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180

Full soon that better mind was gone;
No hope, no wish remained, not one,-
They stirred him now no more;
New objects did new pleasure give,
And once again he wished to live
As lawless as before.

Meanwhile, as thus with him it fared,
They for the voyage were prepared,
And went to the sea-shore,

But, when they thither came, the Youth
Deserted his poor Bride, and Ruth
Could never find him more.

God help thee, Ruth!-Such pains she had,
That she in half a year was mad,

And in a prison housed;

And there, with many a doleful song
Made of wild words, her cup of wrong
She fearfully caroused.

Yet sometimes milder hours she knew,
Nor wanted sun, nor rain, nor dew,
Nor pastimes of the May;

-They all were with her in her cell;
And a clear brook with cheerful knell
Did o'er the pebbles play.

When Ruth three seasons thus had lain,
There came a respite to her pain;
She from her prison fled;

But of the Vagrant none took thought;
And where it liked her best she sought
Her shelter and her bread.

Among the fields she breathed again :
The master-current of her brain

Ran permanent and free;

And, coming to the Banks of Tone,

There did she rest; and dwell alone
Under the greenwood tree.

The engines of her pain, the tools

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200

210

A Barn her winter bed supplies;

But, till the warmth of summer skies
And summer days is gone,

(And all do in this tale agree)

She sleeps beneath the greenwood tree,
And other home hath none.

An innocent life, yet far astray!

And Ruth will, long before her day,

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Be broken down and old:

Sore aches she needs must have! but less

Of mind than body's wretchedness,

From damp, and rain, and cold.

If she is prest by want of food,

She from her dwelling in the wood

Repairs to a road-side;

And there she begs at one steep place
Where and down with easy pace

up

The horsemen-travellers ride.

That oaten pipe of hers is mute,
Or thrown away; but with a flute
Her loneliness she cheers:

This flute, made of a hemlock stalk,
At evening in his homeward walk
The Quantock woodman hears.

I, too, have passed her on the hills
Setting her little water-mills

Such small machinery as she turned

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By spouts and fountains wild

250

Ere she had wept, ere she had mourned,
A young and happy Child!

Farewell! and when thy days are told,
Ill-fated Ruth, in hallowed mould

Thy corpse shall buried be,

For thee a funeral bell shall ring,
And all the congregation sing

A Christian psalm for thee.

1799

XXII

RESOLUTION AND INDEPENDENCE

T

I

HERE was a roaring in the wind all night; The rain came heavily and fell in floods; But now the sun is rising calm and bright; The birds are singing in the distant woods; Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods; The Jay makes answer as the Magpie chatters; And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.

II

All things that love the sun are out of doors;

The sky rejoices in the morning's birth;

The grass is bright with rain-drops;—on the moors IO

The hare is running races in her mirth;

And with her feet she from the plashy earth

Raises a mist, that, glittering in the sun,

Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run.

III

I was a Traveller then upon the moor;

I saw the hare that raced about with joy ;
I heard the woods and distant waters roar;
Or heard them not, as happy as a boy :
The pleasant season did my heart employ:
My old remembrances went from me wholly ;
And all the ways of men, so vain and melancholy.

IV

But, as it sometimes chanceth, from the might

Of joy in minds that can no further go,

As high as we have mounted in delight

In our dejection do we sink as low;

To me that morning did it happen so ;

And fears and fancies thick upon me came;

20

Dim sadness—and blind thoughts, I knew not, nor could name.

V

I heard the sky-lark warbling in the sky;
And I bethought me of the playful hare:
Even such a happy Child of earth am I;
Even as these blissful creatures do I fare;
Far from the world I walk, and from all care ;

30

But there may come another day to me—
Solitude, pain of heart, distress, and poverty.

VI

My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought,
As if life's business were a summer mood;

As if all needful things would come unsought

To genial faith, still rich in genial good;
But how can He expect that others should
Build for him, sow for him, and at his call
Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all?

VII

I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy,
The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride;
Of Him who walked in glory and in joy

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(ROBEET)

Following his plough, along the mountain-side: gaus By our own spirits are we deified:

We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;

But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.

VIII

Now, whether it were by peculiar grace,

A leading from above, a something given,
Yet it befell that, in this lonely place,

When I with these untoward thoughts had striven,
Beside a pool bare to the eye of heaven

I saw a Man before me unawares:

The oldest man he seemed that ever wore grey hairs.

IX

As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie
Couched on the bald top of an eminence;
Wonder to all who do the same espy,

By what means it could thither come, and whence;
So that it seems a thing endued with sense:
Like a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a shelf
Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun itself;

X

Such seemed this Man, not all alive nor dead,
Nor all asleep-in his extreme old age:
His body was bent double, feet and head
Coming together in life's pilgrimage;
As if some dire constraint of pain, or rage
Of sickness felt by him in times long past,

A more than human weight upon his frame had cast.