TO A SEXTON

1799. 1800

Written in Germany.

LET thy wheel-barrow alone
Wherefore, Sexton, piling still
In thy bone-house bone on bone?
'Tis already like a hill

In a field of battle made,

Where three thousand skulls are laid;

These died in peace each with the other, Father, sister, friend, and brother.

Mark the spot to which I point!

From this platform, eight feet square,
Take not even a finger-joint:
Andrew's whole fire-side is there.
Here, alone, before thine eyes,
Simon's sickly daughter lies,

From weakness now, and pain defended,
Whom he twenty winters tended.

Look but at the gardener's pride
How he glories, when he sees
Roses, lilies, side by side,
Violets in families!

By the heart of Man, his tears,
By his hopes and by his fears,

Thou, too heedless, art the Warden
Of a far superior garden.

Thus then, each to other dear,
Let them all in quiet lie,
Andrew there, and Susan here,
Neighbours in mortality.

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And, should I live through sun and rain
Seven widowed years without my Jane, 30
O Sexton, do not then remove her,
Let one grave hold the Loved and Lover!

THE DANISH BOY

A FRAGMENT

1799. 1800

Written in Germany. It was entirely a fancy; but intended as a prelude to a ballad poem never written.

I

BETWEEN two sister moorland rills
There is a spot that seems to lie

Sacred to flowerets of the hills,
And sacred to the sky.

From bloody deeds his thoughts are far
And yet he warbles songs of war,
That seem like songs of love,
For calm and gentle is his mien;
Like a dead Boy he is serene.

LUCY GRAY

OR, SOLITUDE

1799. 1800

Written at Goslar in Germany. It w founded on a circumstance told me by my Si ter, of a little girl who, not far from Halifa in Yorkshire, was bewildered in a snow-stor Her footsteps were traced by her parents to th middle of the lock of a canal, and no oth vestige of her, backward or forward, could traced. The body however was found in th canal. The way in which the incident w treated and the spiritualising of the charact might furnish hints for contrasting the imag native influences which I have endeavoured throw over common life with Crabbe's matt of fact style of treating subjects of the san kind. This is not spoken to his disparagemen far from it, but to direct the attention thoughtful readers, into whose hands the notes may fall, to a comparison that may bo enlarge the circle of their sensibilities, an tend to produce in them a catholic judgment

OFT I had heard of Lucy Gray:
And, when I crossed the wild,
I chanced to see at break of day
The solitary child.

No mate, no comrade Lucy knew;
She dwelt on a wide moor,

- The sweetest thing that ever grew Beside a human door!

You yet may spy the fawn at play, The hare upon the green;

But the sweet face of Lucy Gray Will never more be seen.

"To-night will be a stormy nightYou to the town must go;

And take a lantern, Child, to light
Your mother through the snow."

"That, Father! will I gladly do:
'Tis scarcely afternoon -

The minster-clock has just struck two And yonder is the moon!"

At this the Father raised his hook,
And snapped a faggot-band;
He plied his work; - and Lucy took
The lantern in her hand.

Not blither is the mountain roe:
With many a wanton stroke

Her feet disperse the powdery snow,
That rises up like smoke.

The storm came on before its time:
She wandered up and down;
And many a hill did Lucy climb:
But never reached the town.

The wretched parents all that night Went shouting far and wide;

But there was neither sound nor sight To serve them for a guide.

At day-break on a hill they stood
That overlooked the moor;

And thence they saw the bridge of wood,
A furlong from their door.

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They wept - and, turning homeward, cried,
In heaven we all shall meet;
-When in the snow the mother spied
The print of Lucy's feet.

Then downwards from the steep hill's edge

They tracked the footmarks small;

And through the broken hawthorn hedge,
And by the long stone-wall;

And then an open field they crossed:
The marks were still the same;
They tracked them on, nor ever lost;
And to the bridge they came.

They followed from the snowy
Those footmarks, one by one,
Into the middle of the plank;
And further there were none !

bank

-Yet some maintain that to this day She is a living child;

That you may see sweet Lucy Gray Upon the lonesome wild.

O'er rough and smooth she trips along,
And never looks behind;
And sings a solitary song

That whistles in the wind

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* Before me shone a glorious world Fresh as a banner bright, unfurled To music suddenly:

I looked upon those hills and plains, And seemed as if let loose from chains, To live at liberty.

"No more of this; for now, by thee
Dear Ruth! more happily set free
With nobler zeal I burn;

My soul from darkness is released,
Like the whole sky when to the east
The morning doth return."

Fall soon that better mind was gone;
No hope, no wish remained, not one,
They stirred him now no more;
New objects did new pleasure give,
And once again he wished to live
As lawless as before.

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Meanwhile, as thus with him it fared, They for the voyage were prepared, And went to the sea-shore,

But, when they thither came the Youth 190
Deserted his poor Bride, and Ruth
Could never find him more.

God help thee, Ruth!-Such pains she had,
That she in half a year was mad,

And in a prison housed;

And there, with many a doleful song
Made of wild words, her cup of wrong
She fearfully caroused.

Yet sometimes milder hours she knew,
Nor wanted sun, nor rain, nor dew,
Nor pastimes of the May;

- They all were with her in her cell;
And a clear brook with cheerful knell
Did o'er the pebbles play.

When Ruth three seasons thus had lain,
There came a respite to her pain;
She from her prison fled;

But of the Vagrant none took thought;
And where it liked her best she sought
Her shelter and her bread.

Among the fields she breathed again:
The master-current of her brain
Ran permanent and free;

And, coming to the Banks of Tone,
There did she rest; and dwell alone
Under the greenwood tree.

The engines of her pain, the tools

That shaped her sorrow, rocks and pools,
And airs that gently stir

The vernal leaves she loved them still;
Nor ever taxed them with the ill
Which had been done to her.

A Barn her winter bed supplies;

But, till the warmth of summer skies And summer days is gone,

(And all do in this tale agree)

She sleeps beneath the greenwood tree, And other home hath none.

An innocent life, yet far astray!

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And Ruth will, long before her day, Be broken down and old:

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Sore aches she needs must have! but less Of mind, than body's wretchedness,

From damp, and rain, and cold.