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III

WHY art thou silent! Is thy love a plant
Of such weak fibre that the treacherous air
Of absence withers what was once so fair?
Is there no debt to pay, no boon to grant?

Yet have my thoughts for thee been vigilant-
Bound to thy service with unceasing care,
The mind's least generous wish a mendicant
For nought but what thy happiness could spare.

Speak-though this soft warm heart, once free to hold
A thousand tender pleasures, thine and mine,
Be left more desolate, more dreary cold

Than a forsaken bird's-nest filled with snow
'Mid its own bush of leafless eglantine-

Speak, that my torturing doubts their end may know !

THREE years she grew

IV

in sun and shower,

Then Nature said, "A lovelier flower

On earth was never sown ;

This Child I to myself will take;

She shall be mine, and I will make
A Lady of my own.

Myself will to my darling be

Both law and impulse: and with me
The Girl, in rock and plain,

In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,
Shall feel an overseeing power

To kindle or restrain.

She shall be sportive as the fawn
That wild with glee across the lawn
Or up the mountain springs ;
And hers shall be the breathing balm,
And hers the silence and the calm

Of mute insensate things.

The floating clouds their state shall lend

To her; for her the willow bend;

Nor shall she fail to see

Even in the motions of the Storm

Grace that shall mould the Maiden's form

By silent sympathy.

The stars of midnight shall be dear

To her; and she shall lean her ear

In many a secret place

Where rivulets dance their wayward round,

And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face.

And vital feelings of delight

Shall rear her form to stately height,

Her virgin bosom swell;

Such thoughts to Lucy I will give

While she and I together live

Here in this happy dell."

Thus Nature spake-The work was done—

How soon my Lucy's race was run!

She died, and left to me

This heath, this calm, and quiet scene;

The memory of what has been,
And never more will be.

SHE dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,

A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love :

A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
-Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.

1799

She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;

But she is in her grave, and, oh,

The difference to me!

1799

VI

A SLUMBER did my spirit seal;

I had no human fears:

She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force;

She neither hears nor sees;

Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,

With rocks, and stones, and trees.

1799

VII

I TRAVELLED among unknown men,
In lands beyond the sea;
Nor, England! did I know till then
What love I bore to thee.

'Tis past, that melancholy dream!
Nor will I quit thy shore
A second time; for still I seem
To love thee more and more.

Among thy mountains did I feel

The joy of my desire;

And she I cherished turned her wheel
Beside an English fire.

Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed
The bowers where Lucy played;
And thine too is the last green field

That Lucy's eyes surveyed.

1799

VIII

'Tis said, that some have died for love :

And here and there a church-yard grave is found In the cold north's unhallowed ground,

Because the wretched man himself had slain,

His love was such a grievous pain.

And there is one whom I five years have known ; He dwells alone

Upon Helvellyn's side:

He loved the pretty Barbara died;

And thus he makes his moan:

Three years had Barbara in her grave been laid
When thus his moan he made:

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Oh, move, thou Cottage, from behind that oak ! Or let the aged tree uprooted lie,

That in some other way yon smoke

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