Crown the pale year weak and new ;
When the night is left behind,

In the deep east, dim and blind,
And the blue noon is over us,

And the multitudinous
Billows murmur at our feet,

Where the earth and ocean meet,
And all things seem only one
In the universal sun.

BYRON

Converse with Nature

то

sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell, To slowly trace the forest's shady scene, Where things that own not man's dominion

dwell,

And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been;
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,
With the wild flock that never needs a fold;
Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean;
This is not solitude; 'tis but to hold

Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unroll'd.

But midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men, To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess,

And roam along, the world's tired denizen,
With none who bless us, none whom we can

bless;

Minions of splendour shrinking from distress! None that, with kindred consciousness endued, If we were not, would seem to smile the less, Of all that flatter'd, follow'd, sought, and sued; This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!

More blest the life of godly eremite, Such as on lonely Athos may be seen, Watching at eve upon the giant height, Which looks o'er waves so blue, skies so serene, That he who there at such an hour hath been Will wistful linger on that hallow'd spot; Then slowly tear him from the 'witching scene, Sigh forth one wish that such had been his lot, Then turn to hate a world he had almost forgot.

Dear Nature is the kindest mother still,
Though always changing, in her aspect mild;
From her bare bosom let me take my fill,
Her never-wean'd, though not her favour'd child.
Oh! she is fairest in her features wild,

Where nothing polish'd dares pollute her path:
To me by day or night she ever smiled,

Though I have mark'd her when none other hath, And sought her more and more, and loved her best in wrath.

Clear placid Leman! thy contrasted lake,
With the wide world I dwelt in, is a thing
Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake
Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring.
This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing

To waft me from distraction; once I loved
Torn ocean's roar, but thy soft murmuring
Sounds sweet as if a Sister's voice reproved,
That I with stern delights should e'er have been
so moved.

It is the hush of night, and all between
Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear,
Mellow'd and mingling, yet distinctly seen,
Save darken'd Jura, whose capt heights appear
Precipitously steep; and drawing near,

There breathes a living fragrance from the shore,

Of flowers yet fresh from childhood; on the ear Drops the light drip of the suspended oar,

Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol

more:

He is an evening reveller, who makes
His life an infancy, and sings his fill ;
At intervals, some bird from out the brakes
Starts into voice a moment, then is still.
There seems a floating whisper on the hill,
But that is fancy, for the starlight dews

All silently their tears of love instil,

Weeping themselves away, till they infuse Deep into Nature's breast the spirit of her hues.

All heaven and earth are still-though not in sleep,

But breathless, as we grow when feeling most;
And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep:-
All heaven and earth are still: from the high host
Of stars, to the lull'd lake and mountain-coast,
All is concenter'd in a life intense,

Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost,
But hath a part of being, and a sense

Of that which is of all Creator and defence.

Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt
In solitude, where we are least alone;
A truth, which through our being then doth melt,
And purifies from self: it is a tone,

The soul and source of music, which makes known

Eternal harmony, and sheds a charm

Like to the fabled Cytherea's zone,

Binding all things with beauty ;-'twould disarm The spectre Death, had he substantial power to harm.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep Sea, and music in its roar : I love not Man the less, but Nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal To mingle with the Universe, and feel What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

DE QUINCEY

Wandering in North Wales

THERE were already, even in those days of 1802, numerous inns, erected at reasonable distances from each other, for the accommodation of tourists and no sort of disgrace attached in Wales, as too generally upon the great roads of England, to the pedestrian style of travelling. Indeed, the majority of those whom I met as fellow-tourists in the quiet little cottage-parlours of the Welsh posting-houses were pedestrian travellers. All the way from Shrewsbury through Llangollen, Llanrwst, Conway, Bangor, and then turning to the left at right angles through Carnarvon, and so on to Dolgelly (the chief town of Merionethshire), Tan y Bwlch, Harlech, Barmouth, and through the sweet solitudes of Cardiganshire, or turning sharply back towards the English border through the gorgeous wood scenery of Mont