FAR from my dearest Friend, 'tis mine to rove
Through bare gray dell, high wood, and pastoral cove;
His wizard course where hoary Derwent takes,
Through crags and forest glooms and opening lakes,

Staying his silent waves, to hear the roar
That stuns the tremulous cliffs of high Lodore;
Where peace to Grasmere's lonely island leads,
To willowy hedge-rows, and to emerald meads;
Leads to her bridge, rude church, and cottaged grounds,
Her rocky sheepwalks, and her woodland bounds;
Where, bosomed deep, the shy Winander1 peeps
'Mid clustering isles, and holly-sprinkled steeps;
Where twilight glens endear my Esthwaite's shore,
And memory of departed pleasures, more.

Fair scenes, erewhile, I taught, a happy child,
The echoes of your rocks my carols wild:
Then did no ebb of cheerfulness demand
Sad tides of joy from Melancholy's hand;
In youth's wild eye the livelong day was bright,
The sun at morning, and the stars at night,
Alike, when first the vales the bittern fills,
Or the first woodcocks2 roamed the moonlit hills.

In thoughtless gaiety I coursed the plain, And hope itself was all I knew of pain; For then, even then, the little heart would beat At times, while young Content forsook her seat, And wild Impatience, pointing upward, showed, Where, tipped with gold, the mountain summits glowed. Alas! the idle tale of man is found

Depicted in the dial's moral round;

With hope reflection blends her social rays

To gild the total tablet of his days;

Yet still, the sport of some malignant power,
He knows but from its shade the present hour.

But why, ungrateful, dwell on idle pain? To show her yet some joys to me remain, Say, will my Friend, with soft affection's ear, The history of a poet's evening hear