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Not ignorant was the Youth that still no few
Of his adventurous countrymen were led
By perseverance in this track of life

To competence and ease:-to him it offered 1
Attractions manifold;-and this he chose.
-His Parents on the enterprise bestowed 2
Their farewell benediction, but with hearts
Foreboding evil. From his native hills

He wandered far; much did he see of men,*
Their manners, their enjoyments, and pursuits,
Their passions and their feelings; chiefly those
Essential and eternal in the heart,

That, 'mid the simpler forms of rural life,
Exist more simple in their elements,

And speak a plainer language. In the woods,
A lone Enthusiast, and among the fields,
Itinerant in this labour, he had passed
The better portion of his time; and there
Spontaneously had his affections thriven
Amid the bounties of the year, the peace
And liberty of nature; there he kept
In solitude and solitary thought

His mind in a just equipoise of love.

1 1849.

2

1827.

;-for him it bore

1814.

He asked his Mother's blessing; and, with tears
Thanking his second Father, asked from him
Paternal blessings. The good Pair bestowed

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1814.

1814.

1814.

See Wordsworth's note, p. 395.

+ Compare the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, 1800, Vol. IV. p. 278-9.-Ed.

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

He followed till provision for his wants

Had been obtained;-the Wanderer then resolved 1 To pass the remnant of his days, untasked

1 1827.

-This active course,

Chosen in youth, through manhood he pursued,
Till due provision for his modest wants
Had been obtained ;—and, thereupon, resolved

1814.

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, by the summer's warmth
Invited, often would he leave his home

And journey far, revisiting the scenes
That to his memory were most endeared.1
-Vigorous in health, of hopeful spirits, undamped 2
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

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Shaped his belief,1 as grace divine inspired,
And human reason 2 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;
Indulgent listener3 was he to the tongue
Of garrulous age; nor did the sick man's tale,
To his fraternal sympathy addressed,

Obtain reluctant hearing.

Plain his garb;

Such as might suit a rustic Sire, prepared

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 gray, had meanings which it brought
From years of youth; † which, like a Being made

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Nor could he bid them from his presence, tired

With questions and importunate demands:

Indulgent listener

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1814.

1814.

1814.

"Full five-and-thirty years he lived

A running huntsman merry;
And still the centre of his cheek
Is red as a ripe cherry."

- Vol. I. p. 227.

Also the description of Margaret, p. 57 of this volume.-ED. + Compare the Leech Gatherer, st. xiii.—ED.

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 the sound
Of my approaching steps, and in the shade
Unnoticed did I stand some minutes' space.1
At length I hailed him, seeing that his hat
Was moist with water-drops, as if the brim
Had newly scooped a running stream.
And ere our lively greeting into peace

2

He rose,

Had settled, ""Tis," said I, " a burning day:

My lips are parched with thirst, but you, it seems,3
Have somewhere found relief." He, at the word,
Pointing towards a sweet-briar, bade me climb

The fence where that aspiring shrub looked out
Upon the public way. It was a plot

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He had not heard my steps
As I approached; and near him did I stand
Unnotic'd in the shade, some minutes' space.

And ere the pleasant greeting that ensued

Was ended,

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1814.

1814.

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Pointing towards a sweet-briar, bade me climb

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