If this belief from Heaven be sent,
If such be Nature's holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament

What man has made of man?

TO MY SISTER.

1798.-1798.

It is the first mild day of March:
Each minute sweeter than before,

The redbreast sings from the tall larch
That stands beside our door.

There is a blessing in the air,

Which seems a sense of joy to yield

To the bare trees, and mountains bare,
And grass in the green field.

My Sister! ('t is a wish of mine)
Now that our morning meal is done,
Make haste, your morning task resign;
Come forth and feel the sun.

Edward will come with you

and, pray,

Put on with speed your woodland dress;
And bring no book: for this one day
We'll give to idleness.

10

No joyless forms shall regulate
Our living calendar:

We from to-day, my Friend, will date
The opening of the year.

Love, now a universal birth,

From heart to heart is stealing,

From earth to man, from man to earth :
It is the hour of feeling.

One moment now may give us more

Than years of toiling reason:

Our minds shall drink at every pore

The spirit of the season.

Some silent laws our hearts will make,
Which they shall long obey:

We for the year to come may take
Our temper from to-day.

And from the blessed power that rolls
About, below, above,

We'll frame the measure of our souls:
They shall be tuned to love.

Then come, my Sister! come, I pray,
With speed put on your woodland dress;
And bring no book: for this one day
We'll give to idleness.

10

"WHY, William, on that old gray stone, Thus for the length of half a day,

Why, William, sit you thus alone,

And dream your time away?

"Where are your books?—that light bequeathed

To beings else forlorn and blind!

Up! up and drink the spirit breathed

From dead men to their kind.

"You look round on your Mother Earth,
As if she for no purpose
bore you;

As if you were her first-born birth,
And none had lived before you !"

One morning thus, by Esthwaite lake,
When life was sweet, I knew not why,
To me my good friend Matthew spake,
And thus I made reply:

"The eye-it cannot choose but see;
We cannot bid the ear be still;
Our bodies feel, where'er they be,
Against or with our will.

20

"Nor less I deem that there are Powers
Which of themselves our minds impress;
That we can feed this mind of ours
In a wise passiveness.

"Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum

Of things forever speaking,

That nothing of itself will come,

But we must still be seeking?

"Then ask not wherefore, here, alone,

Conversing as I may,

I sit upon this old gray stone,

And dream my time away."

30

THE TABLES TURNED:

AN EVENING SCENE ON THE SAME SUBJECT.

1798. —- 1798.

UP! up! my Friend, and quit your books;
Or surely you'll grow double:

Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?

The sun, above the mountain's head,
A freshening lustre mellow

Through all the long green fields has spread,

His first sweet evening yellow.

Books! 't is a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There's more of wisdom in it.

And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher :

Come forth into the light of things,

Let Nature be your teacher.

She has a world of ready wealth,

Our minds and hearts to bless
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,

Of moral evil and of good,

Than all the sages can.

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect

Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:
We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art;

10

20

Close up those barren leaves;

30

Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.