FRAGMENT.

Thy walks are ever pleasant; every scene
Is rich in beauty, lively, or serene-

Rich is that varied view with woods around,
Seen from the seat, within the shrubb'ry bound;
Where shines the distant lake, and where appear,
From ruins bolting, unmolested deer;

Lively-the village-green, the inn, the place,
Where the good widow schools her infant race.
Shops, whence are heard the hammer and the saw,
And village-pleasures unreproved by law.
Then how serene, when in your favorite room,
Gales from your jasmines soothe the evening gloom;
And when from upland paddock you look down.
And just perceive the smoke which hides the town;
When weary peasants at the close of day
Walk to their cots, and part upon the way;

When cattle slowly cross the shallow brook,

And shepherds pen their folds, and rest upon their crook.

GEO. CRABBE, 1754-1832.

THE MEMORY OF A WALK.

I have taken, since you went away, many of the walks which we have taken together; and none of them, I believe, without thoughts of you. I have, though not a good memory in general, yet a good local memory, and can recollect, by the help of a tree or a stile, what you said on that particular spot. For this reason I purpose, when the summer is come, to walk with a book in my pocket; what I read at my fireside I forget, but what I read under a hedge or at the side of a pond, that pond and that hedge will always bring to remembrance; and this is a sort of memoria technica which I would recommend to you, if I did not know that you have no occasion for it.

W. CowPER.-Letter to S. Rose, Esq., Jan. 19, 1789.

Listen, gentle-ay, and simple !-Listen, children, on the kine!

Green the land is where my daily
Steps in jocund childhood played-
Dimpled close with hill and valley,
Dappled very close with shade;

Summer-snow of apple-blossoms, running up from glade to glade.

There is one hill I see nearer

In my vision of the rest;

And a little wood seems clearer,

As it climbeth from the west,

Sideway from the tree-locked valley to the airy upland crest.

Small the wood is, green with hazels,

And, completing the ascent,

Where the wind blows and sun dazzles,

Thrills, in leafy tremblement,

Like a heart that after climbing beateth quickly through content.

Not a step the wood advances

O'er the open hill-top's bound;

There in green arrest the branches

See their image on the ground:

You may walk beneath them smiling, glad with sight and glad with sound.

For you hearken on your right hand

How the birds do leap and call

In the greenwood, out of sight and

Out of reach and fear of all,

And the squirrels crack the filberts, through their cheerful madrigal.

On your left the sheep are cropping
The slant grass and daisies pale;

And fine apple-trees stand dropping
Separate shadows toward the vale,

Over which, in choral silence, the hills look you their "All hail !"

Far out, kindled by each other,

Shining hills on hills arise;

Close as brother leans to brother,

When they press beneath the eyes

Of some father praying blessings from the gifts of paradise.

While beyond, above them mounted,

And above their woods also,

Malvern hills, for mountains countel

Not unduly, loom a row

Keepers of Piers Plowman visions, through the sun hine and the snow.

Yet in childhood little prized I
That fair walk and far survey;

"Twas a straight walk, unadvised by
The least mischief worth a nay-

Up and down-as dull as grammar on an eve of holiday!

But the wood, all close and clenching,
Bough in bough, and root in root—
No more sky, for over-branching,

At your head than at your foot

Oh! the wood drew me within it, by a glamour past dispute.

Few and broken paths showed through it

Where the sheep had tried to run

Forced with snowy wool to strew it
Round the thickets, when anon

They with silly thorn-pricked noses bleated back unto the sun.

But my childish heart beat stronger
Than those thickets dared to grow:
I could pierce them! I could longer
Travel on, methought, than so!

Sheep for sheep-paths! braver children climb and creep where they would go.

And the poets wander, said I,

Over places all as rude!

Bold Rinaldo's lovely lady

Sat to meet him in a wood

Rosalinda, like a fountain, laughed out pure with solitude.

And if Chaucer had not traveled

Through a forest by a well,

He had never dream'd nor marveled

At those ladies fair and fell

Who lived smiling, without loving, in their island citadel.

Thus I thought of the old singers,

And took courage from their song,
Till my little struggling fingers
Tore asunder gyve and thong

Of the lichens which entrapped me, and the barrier branches strong.

On a day, such pastime keeping,
With a fawn's heart debonnaire,
Under-crawling, over-leaping

Thorns that prick and boughs that bear,

I stood suddenly astonished-I was gladdened unaware!