Why throw away a needful day "What's Yarrow but a river bare, -Strange words they seemed of slight and scorn My True-love sighed for sorrow; And looked me in the face, to think I thus could speak of Yarrow! "Oh! green," said I, "are Yarrow's holms, And sweet is Yarrow flowing! Fair hangs the apple frae the rock, But we will leave it growing. O'er hilly path, and open Strath, 'Let beeves and home-bred kine partake 40 32 24 Be Yarrow stream unseen, unknown! We have a vision of our own; The treasured dreams of times long past, "If Care with freezing years should come, And yet be melancholy; Should life be dull, and spirits low, That earth has something yet to show, 1803. 1807. William Wordsworth. 56 64 THE MARSHES OF GLYNN GLOOMS of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and Woven With intricate shades of the vines that myriad cloven Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs,— Virginal shy lights, Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows, When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods, Of the heavenly woods and glades, That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within The wide sea-marshes of Glynn; Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noon-day fire, Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire, Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves,-- Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves, 10 Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood, Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good: O braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the vine, While the riotous noon-day sun of the June-day long did shine Ye held me fast in your heart and I held you fast in mine; But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest, And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West, 20 And the slant yellow beam down with the woodaisle doth seem Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream, Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken soul of the oak, And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade And belief overmasters doubt, and I know And my spirit is grown to a lordly great That the length and the breadth and the sweep Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore 30 When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitterness sore, And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain, Oh, now, afraid, I am fain to face The vast sweet visage of space. To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am drawn, Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a belt of the dawn, For a mete and a mark To the forest-dark:- So: Affable live-oak, leaning low, 40 Thus with your favor-soft, with a reverent hand, (Not lightly touching your person, Lord of the land!) Bending your beauty aside, with a step I stand On the firm-packed sand, Free By a world of marsh that borders a world of sea. Sinuous southward and sinuous northward the shimmering band Of the sand-beach fastens the fringe of the marsh to the folds of the land. 50 Inward and outward to northward and southward the beach-lines linger and curl As a silver-wrought garment that clings to and follows the firm sweet limbs of a girl. Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving again into sight, Softly the sand-beach wavers away to a dim gray looping of light. And what if behind.me to westward the wall of the woods stands high? The world lies east: how ample, the marsh and the sea and the sky! A 'league and a league of marsh-grass, waist high, broad in the blade, Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a shade, Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain, To the terminal blue of the main. бо |