Nought living meets the eye or ear,
But well I ween the dead are near; 175
For though, in feudal strife, a foe
Hath laid Our Lady’s chapel low,
Yet still, beneath the hallow’d soil,
The peasant rests him from his toil,
And, dying, bids his bones be laid, 180
Where erst his simple fathers pray’d.

If age had tamed the passions’ strife,
And fate had cut my ties to life,
Here have I thought, ’twere sweet to dwell,
And rear again the chaplain’s cell, 185
Like that same peaceful hermitage,
Where Milton long’d to spend his age. 
’Twere sweet to mark the setting day,
On Bourhope’s lonely top decay;
And, as it faint and feeble died 190
On the broad lake, and mountain’s side,
To say, ’Thus pleasures fade away;
Youth, talents, beauty thus decay,
And leave us dark, forlorn, and grey;’
Then gaze on Dryhope’s ruin’d tower, 195
And think on Yarrow’s faded Flower: 
And when that mountain-sound I heard,
Which bids us be for storm prepared,
The distant rustling of his wings,
As up his force the Tempest brings, 200
’Twere sweet, ere yet his terrors rave,
To sit upon the Wizard’s grave;
That Wizard Priest’s, whose bones are thrust,
From company of holy dust;
On which no sunbeam ever shines—­ 205
(So superstition’s creed divines)—­
Thence view the lake, with sullen roar,
Heave her broad billows to the shore;
And mark the wild-swans mount the gale,
Spread wide through mist their snowy sail, 210
And ever stoop again, to lave
Their bosoms on the surging wave;
Then, when against the driving hail
No longer might my plaid avail,
Back to my lonely home retire, 215
And light my lamp, and trim my fire;
There ponder o’er some mystic lay,
Till the wild tale had all its sway,
And, in the bittern’s distant shriek,
I heard unearthly voices speak, 220
And thought the Wizard Priest was come,
To claim again his ancient home! 
And bade my busy fancy range,
To frame him fitting shape and strange,
Till from the task my brow I clear’d, 225
And smiled to think that I had fear’d.

But chief, ’twere sweet to think such life,
(Though but escape from fortune’s strife,)
Something most matchless good and wise,
A great and grateful sacrifice; 230
And deem each hour, to musing given,
A step upon the road to heaven.