One of the “Poems founded on the Affections.”—­Ed.

  These Tourists, heaven preserve us! needs must live
  A profitable life:  some glance along,
  Rapid and gay, as if the earth were air,
  And they were butterflies to wheel about
  Long as the [1] summer lasted:  some, as wise, 5
  Perched on the forehead of a jutting crag,
  Pencil in hand and book upon the knee,
  Will look and scribble, scribble on and look, [2]
  Until a man might travel twelve stout miles,
  Or reap an acre of his neighbour’s corn. 10
  But, for that moping Son of Idleness,
  Why can he tarry yonder?—­In our church-yard
  Is neither epitaph nor monument,
  Tombstone nor name—­only the turf we tread
  And a few natural graves.” 15

                              To Jane, his wife,
  Thus spake the homely Priest of Ennerdale. 
  It was a July evening; and he sate
  Upon the long stone-seat beneath the eaves
  Of his old cottage,—­as it chanced, that day, 20
  Employed in winter’s work.  Upon the stone
  His wife sate near him, teasing matted wool,
  While, from the twin cards toothed with glittering wire,
  He fed the spindle of his youngest child,
  Who, in the open air, with due accord 25
  Of busy hands and back-and-forward steps,
  Her large round wheel was turning. [3] Towards the field
  In which the Parish Chapel stood alone,
  Girt round with a bare ring of mossy wall,
  While half an hour went by, the Priest had sent 30
  Many a long look of wonder:  and at last,
  Risen from his seat, beside the snow white ridge
  Of carded wool which the old man had piled
  He laid his implements with gentle care,
  Each in the other locked; and, down the path 35
  That [4] from his cottage to the church-yard led,
  He took his way, impatient to accost
  The Stranger, whom he saw still lingering there.

  ’Twas one well known to him in former days,
  A Shepherd-lad; who ere his sixteenth year 40
  Had left that calling, tempted to entrust
  His expectations to the fickle winds
  And perilous waters; with the mariners [5]
  A fellow-mariner;—­and so had fared
  Through twenty seasons; but he had been reared 45
  Among the mountains, and he in his heart
  Was half a shepherd on the stormy seas. 
  Oft in the piping shrouds had Leonard heard
  The tones of waterfalls, and inland sounds
  Of caves and trees:—­and, when the regular wind 50
  Between the tropics filled the steady sail,
  And blew with the same breath through days and weeks,
  Lengthening invisibly its weary line
  Along the cloudless Main, he, in those hours
  Of tiresome indolence, would often hang