FAR from our home by Grasmere's quiet Lake, Frowns, deepening visibly his native gloom, What on the Plain we have of warmth and light, From heaviness, oft fly, dear Friend, to thee; Turn from a spot where neither sheltered road Nor hedge-row screen invites my steps abroad; Where one poor Plane-tree, having as it might Where strength has been the Builder's only care; Whose rugged walls may still for years demand The final polish of the Plasterer's hand. - This Dwelling's Inmate more than three weeks' space And oft a Prisoner in the cheerless place, And tired of listening to the boisterous sea- Though these dull hours (mine is it, or their shame?) Would tempt me to renounce that humble aim. But if there be a Muse who, free to take Her seat upon Olympus, doth forsake Those heights, (like Phoebus when his golden locks He veiled, attendant on Thessalian flocks,) And, in disguise, a Milkmaid with her pail What shall I treat of? News from Mona's Isle? Such have we, but unvaried in its style; No tales of Runagates fresh landed, whence And wherefore fugitive or on what pretence; Of feasts, or scandal, eddying like the wind, Most restlessly alive when most confined. Ask not of me, whose tongue can best appease The mighty tumults of the HOUSE OF KEYS; The last year's cup whose Ram or Heifer gained, What slopes are planted, or what mosses drained: An eye of fancy only can I cast On that proud pageant now at hand or past, When full five hundred boats in trim array, With nets and sails outspread and streamers gay, And chanted hymns and stiller voice of prayer, For the old Manx-harvest to the Deep repair, Soon as the herring-shoals at distance shine, Like beds of moonlight shifting on the brine. Mona from our abode is daily seen, But with a wilderness of waves between ; And by conjecture only can we speak Of aught transacted there in bay or creek; No tidings reach us hence from town or field, Only faint news her mountain sunbeams yield, And some we gather from the misty air, And some the hovering clouds, our telegraph, de clare. But these poetic mysteries I withhold; For Fancy hath her fits both hot and cold, Let more substantial themes the pen engage, And nearer interests, culled from the opening stage Of our migration. — Ere the welcome dawn Had from the east her silver star withdrawn, The Wain stood ready, at our Cottage-door, Thoughtfully freighted with a various store; And long or ere the uprising of the Sun, O'er dew-damped dust our journey was begun, A needful journey, under favoring skies, |