The Tables Turned

UP! up! my Friend, and quit your books; Or surely you'll grow double:

Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks; Why all this toil and trouble?

The sun, above the mountain's head,
A freshening lustre mellow

Through all the long green fields has spread,

His first sweet evening yellow.

Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:

Come, hear the woodland Linnet,

How sweet his music! on my life,

There's more of wisdom in it.

And hark! how blithe the Throstle sings!

He, too, is no mean preacher :

Come forth into the light of things,

Let Nature be your teacher.

She has a world of ready wealth,

Our minds and hearts to bless-
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.

One impulse from a vernal wood

May teach you more of man,

Of moral evil and of good,

Than all the sages can.

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings ;

Our meddling intellect

Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:

We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art;

Close up these barren leaves :

Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.

Daffodils by Ullswater

I

WANDERED lonely as a Cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host of golden Daffodils ;

Beside the Lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay :

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee :-
A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company;

I gazed-and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought :

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the Daffodils.

The Reverie of Poor Susan

AT the corner of Wood Street, when daylight

appears,

Hangs a Thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years:

Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard In the silence of morning the song of the Bird.

'Tis a note of enchantment; what ails her? She

sees

A mountain ascending, a vision of trees;

Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide, And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside.

Green pastures, she views in the midst of the dale, Down which she so often has tripped with her pail ; And a single small Cottage, a nest like a dove's, The one only dwelling on earth that she loves.

She looks, and her heart is in heaven: but they fade, The mist and the river, the hill and the shade: The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise, And the colours have all passed away from her eyes.

A Poet

BUT who is he, with modest looks,

And clad in homely russet brown? He murmurs near the running brooks A music sweeter than their own.

He is retired as noontide dew,
Or fountain in a noon-day grove;
And you must love him, ere to you
He will seem worthy of your love.

The outward shows of sky and earth,
Of hill and valley, he has viewed ;
And impulses of deeper birth
Have come to him in solitude.

In common things that round us lie
Some random truths he can impart,—
The harvest of a quiet eye

That broods and sleeps on his own heart.

Lines

Written in Early Spring

I

HEARD a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,

In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;

And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that sweet bower,
The periwrinkle trailed its wreaths ;
And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played;
Their thoughts I cannot measure :—
But the least motion that they made,
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.