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Who lead their horses down the steep rough road
May thence remount at ease. The aged man
Had placed his staff across the broad smooth stone
That overlays the pile; and, from a bag

All white with flour, the dole of village dames,
He drew his scraps and fragments one by one;
And scanned them with a fixed and serious look
Of idle computation. In the sun,

Upon the second step of that small pile,
Surrounded by those wild unpeopled hills,
He sat, and ate his food in solitude!

And ever, scattered from his palsied hand,
That, still attempting to prevent the waste,
Was baffled still, the crumbs, in little showers,
Fell on the ground; and the small mountain-birds,
Not venturing yet to peck their destined meal,
Approached within the length of half his staff.

Him from my childhood have I known; and then
He was so old, he seems not older now;
He travels on, a solitary man,

So helpless in appearance, that for him

The sauntering horseman-traveller does not throw
With careless hand his alms upon the ground,
But stops-that he may safely lodge the coin
Within the old man's hat; nor quits him so,
But still, when he has given his horse the rein,
Watches the aged beggar with a look
Sidelong-and half reverted. She who tends
The tollgate, when in summer at her door
She turns her wheel, if on the road she sees
The aged beggar coming, quits her work,
And lifts the latch for him that he may pass.
The postboy, when his rattling wheels o'ertake
The aged beggar in the woody lane,

Shouts to him from behind; and, if thus warned,
The old man does not change his course, the boy
Turns with less noisy wheels to the roadside,
And passes gently by-without a curse
Upon his lips, or anger at his heart.
He travels on, a solitary man;

His age has no companion. On the ground
His eyes are turned, and, as he moves along,
They move along the ground; and, evermore,
Instead of common and habitual sight
Of fields with rural works, of hill and dale,
And the blue sky, one little span of earth
Is all his prospect. Thus, from day to day,
Bow-bent, his eyes forever on the ground,
He plies his weary journey; seeing still,
And seldom knowing that he sees, some straw,
Some scattered leaf, or marks which, in one track,
The nails of cart or chariot wheel have left

Impressed on the white road-in the same line,
At distance still the same. Poor traveller!
His staff trails with him; scarcely do his feet
Disturb the summer dust; he is so still
In look and motion, that the cottage curs,
Ere he have passed the door, will turn away,
Weary of barking at him. Boys and girls,
The vacant and the busy, maids and youths,
And urchins newly breeched-all pass him by;
Him even the slow-paced wagon leaves behind.

But deem not this man useless. Statesmen! ye
Who are so restless in your wisdom, ye
Who have a broom still ready in your hands
To rid the world of nuisances; ye proud,
Heart-swoln, while in your pride ye contemplate
Your talents, power, and wisdom, deem him not
A burden of the earth! 'Tis nature's law
That none, the meanest of created things,
Of forms created the most vile and brute,
The dullest or most noxious, should exist
Divorced from good-a spirit and pulse of good,
A life and soul, to every mode of being
Inseparably linked. While thus he creeps
From door to door, the villagers in him
Behold a record which together binds
Past deeds and offices of charity,

Else unremembered, and so keeps alive

The kindly mood in hearts which lapse of years,
And that half wisdom half experience gives,

Make slow to feel, and by sure steps resign
To selfishness, and cold oblivious cares.
Among the farms and solitary huts,
Hamlets and thinly scattered villages,
Where'er the aged beggar takes his rounds,
The mild necessity of use compels
To acts of love; and habit does the work
Of reason; yet prepares that after-joy

Which reason cherishes. And thus the soul,

By that sweet taste of pleasure unpursued,

Doth find itself insensibly disposed

To virtue and true goodness. Some there are,

By their good works exalted, lofty minds

And meditative, authors of delight

And happiness, which to the end of time

Will live, and spread, and kindle: even such minds

In childhood, from this solitary being,

Or from like wanderer, haply have received
(A thing more precious far than all that books
Or the solicitudes of love can do!)

That first mild touch of sympathy and thought,
In which they found their kindred with a world
Where want and sorrow were. The easy man

Who sits at his own door-and like the pear
That overhangs his head from the green wall,
Feeds in the sunshine; the robust and young,
The prosperous and unthinking, they who live
Sheltered, and flourish in a little grove
Of their own kindred-all bebold in him
A silent monitor, which on their minds
Must needs impress a transitory thought
Of self-congratulation to the heart

Of each recalling his peculiar boons,
His charters and exemptions; and, perchance,
Though he to no one give the fortitude
And circumspection needful to preserve
His present blessings, and to husband up
The respite of the season, he, at least,
And 'tis no vulgar service, makes them felt.
Yet further-many, I believe, there are
Who live a life of virtuous decency-
Men who can hear the decalogue and feel
No self-reproach; who of the moral law
Established in the land where they abide
Are strict observers; and not negligent

In acts of love to those with whom they dwell,
Their kindred and the children of their blood.
Praise be to such, and to their slumbers peace!-
But of the poor man ask the abject poor;
Go and demand of him if there be here,
In this cold abstinence from evil deeds,
And these inevitable charities,

Wherewith to satisfy the human soul?

No. Man is dear to man; the poorest poor

Long for some moments in a weary life

When they can know and feel that they have been
Themselves the fathers and the dealers out

Of some small blessings; have been kind to such
As needed kindness, for this single cause,
That we have all of us one human heart.

Such pleasure is to one kind being known,

My neighbor, when with punctual care each week,
Duly as Friday comes, though prest herself

By her own wants, she from her store of meal
Takes one unsparing handful for the scrip
Of this old mendicant, and from her door

Returning with exhilarated heart,

Sits by her fire, and builds her hope in heaven.

Then let him pass, a blessing on his head!
And while in that vast solitude to which
The tide of things has borne him, he appears
To breathe and live but for himself alone,
Unblamed, uninjured, let him bear about
The good which the benignant law of Heaven
Has hung around him; and while life is his,

Still let him prompt the unlettered villagers
To tender offices and pensive thoughts.
Then let him pass, a blessing on his head!
And, long as he can wander, let him breathe
The freshness of the valleys; let his blood
Struggle with frosty air and winter snows;
And let the chartered wind that sweeps the heath
Beat his gray locks against his withered face.
Reverence the hope whose vital anxiousness
Gives the last human interest to his heart.
May never HOUSE, misnamed of INDUSTRY,
Make him a captive! for that pent-up din,
Those life-consuming sounds that clog the air,
Be his the natural silence of old age!
Let him be free of mountain solitudes;
And have around him, whether heard or not,
The pleasant melody of woodland birds.
Few are his pleasures; if his eyes have now
Been doomed so long to settle on the earth
That not without some effort they behold
The countenance of the horizontal sun,
Rising or setting, let the light at least
Find a free entrance to their languid orbs.
And let him, where and when he will, sit down
Beneath the trees, or by the grassy bank
Of highway side, and with the little birds
Share his chance-gathered meal; and, finally,
As in the eye of Nature he has lived,

So in the eye of Nature let him die!

LUCY.

Three years she grew 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.

A PEASANT YOUTH.

The mountain ash

No eye can overlook, when 'mid a grove
Of yet unfaded trees she lifts her head,
Decked with autumnal berries, that outshine

Spring's richest blossoms; and ye may have marked
By a brook side or solitary tarn,

How she her station doth adorn.

The pool

Glows at her feet, and all the gloomy rocks

Are brightened round her. In his native vale,
Such and so glorious did this youth appear;
A sight that kindled pleasure in all hearts
By his ingenuous beauty, by the gleam
Of his fair eyes, by his capacious brow,
By all the graces with which Nature's hand
Had lavishly arrayed him. As old bards
Tell in their idle songs of wandering gods,
Pan or Apollo, veiled in human form;

Yet, like the sweet-breathed violet of the shade,
Discovered in their own despite to sense
Of mortals (if such fables without blame
May find chance mention on this sacred ground),
So, through a simple rustic garb's disguise,

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