The liberty of nature; there he kept
In solitude and solitary thought

His mind in a just equipoise of love.
Serene it was, unclouded by the cares
Of ordinary life; unvexed, unwarped

By partial bondage. In his steady course,
No piteous revolutions had he felt,

No wild varieties of joy and grief.

Unoccupied by sorrow of its own,

His heart lay open; and, by nature tuned
And constant disposition of his thoughts

To sympathy with man, he was alive

To all that was enjoyed where'er he went,
And all that was endured; for, in himself
Happy, and quiet in his cheerfulness,

He had no painful pressure from without
That made him turn aside from wretchedness
With coward fears. He could afford to suffer
With those whom he saw suffer. Hence it came

That in our best experience he was rich,
And in the wisdom of our daily life.

For hence, minutely, in his various rounds,
He had observed the progress and decay

Of many minds, of minds and bodies too;

The history of many families;

How they had prospered; how they were o'erthrown

By passion or mischance, or such misrule

Among the unthinking masters of the earth

As makes the nations groan. This active course,
Chosen in youth, through manhood he pursued,
Till due provision for his modest wants
Had been obtained;—and thereupon resolved
To pass the remnant of his days, untasked
With needless services, from hardship free.
His calling laid aside, he lived at ease:

But still he loved to pace the public roads

And the wild paths; and, when the summer's warmth

Invited him, would often leave his home

And journey far, revisiting those scenes

That to his memory were most endeared.

-Vigorous in health, of hopeful spirits, untouched

By worldly-mindedness or anxious care;
Observant, studious, thoughtful, and refreshed
By knowledge gathered up from day to day;
Thus had he lived a long and innocent life.

The Scottish Church, both on himself and those With whom from childhood he grew up, had held The strong hand of her purity; and still Had watched him with an unrelenting eye. This he remembered in his riper age With gratitude, and reverential thoughts. But by the native vigour of his mind, By his habitual wanderings out of doors, By loneliness, and goodness, and kind works, Whate'er, in docile childhood or in youth, He had imbibed of fear or darker thought, Was melted all away; so true was this That sometimes his religion seemed to me Self-taught, as of a dreamer in the woods; Who to the model of his own pure heart Framed his belief, as grace divine inspired, Or human reason dictated with awe.

-And surely never did there live on earth A man of kindlier nature. The rough sports And teasing ways of children vexed not him; Nor could he bid them from his presence, With questions and importunate demand. Indulgent listener was he to the tongue

tired

Of garrulous age; nor did the sick man's tale, To his fraternal sympathy addressed,

Obtain reluctant hearing.

Plain his garb;

For Sabbath duties; yet he was a man

Whom no one could have passed without remark.
Active and nervous was his gait; his limbs
And his whole figure breathed intelligence.
Time had compressed the freshness of his cheek
Into a narrower circle of deep red,

But had not tamed his eye; that, under brows
Shaggy and grey, had meanings which it brought
From years of youth; which, like a Being made
Of many Beings, he had wondrous skill

To blend with knowledge of the years to come,
Human, or such as lie beyond the grave.

So was He framed; and such his course of life, Who now with no appendage but a staff,

The prized memorial of relinquished toils,

Upon that cottage-bench reposed his limbs,

Screened from the sun. Supine the Wanderer lay,

His eyes as if in drowsiness half shut,

The shadows of the breezy elms above
Dappling his face.
He had not heard my steps
As I approached, and near him did I stand
Unnoticed in the shade some minutes' space.