Be broken down and old.

Sore aches she needs must have! but less Of mind, than body's wretchedness,

From damp, and rain, and cold.

If she is press'd by want of food
She from her dwelling in the wood
Repairs to a road-side;

And there she begs at one steep place,
Where and down with easy pace

up

The horsemen-travellers ride.

That oaten Pipe of hers is mute,
Or thrown away; but with a flute
Her loneliness she cheers : .

This flute made of a hemlock stalk
At evening in his homeward walk
The Quantock Woodman hears.

I, too, have pass'd her on the hills
Setting her little water-mills

By spouts and fountains wild--

Such small machinery as she turn'd

Ere she had wept, ere she had mourn'd, young and happy Child!

A

Farewel! and when thy days are told
-Ill-fated Ruth! in hallow'd mold
Thy corpse shall buried be;

For thee a funeral bell shall ring,
And all the congregation sing
A Christian psalm for thee.

LINES

Written with a Slate-pencil, upon a Stone, the largest of a heap lying near a deserted Quarry, upon one of the Islands at Rydale.

Stranger! this hillock of misshapen stones
Is not a ruin of the ancient time,

Nor, as perchance, thou rashly deem'st, the Cairn
Of some old British Chief: 'tis nothing more
Than the rude embryo of a little Dome

Or Pleasure-house, once destin'd to be built
Among the birch-trees of this rocky isle.

But, as it chanc'd, Sir William having learn'd
That from the shore a full-grown man might wade,

And make himself a freeman of this spot

At any hour he chose, the Knight forthwith
Desisted, and the quarry and the mound
Are monuments of his unfinish'd task.-

The block on which these lines are trac'd, perhaps,
Was once selected as the corner-stone

Of the intended Pile, which would have been
Some quaint odd play-thing of elaborate skill,
So that, I guess, the linnet and the thrush,
And other little Builders who dwell here,
Had wonder'd at the work. But blame him not,
For old Sir William was a gentle Knight
Bred in this vale, to which he appertain'd
With all his ancestry. Then peace to him,
And for the outrage which he had devis'd
Entire forgiveness !- But if thou art one
On fire with thy impatience to become
An inmate of these mountains, if disturb'd
By beautiful conceptions, thou hast hewn
Out of the quiet rock the elements

Of thy trim mansion destin'd soon to blaze
In snow-white glory, think again, and taught
By old Sir William and his quarry, leave

Thy fragments to the bramble and the rose;
There let the vernal Slow-worm sun himself,

And let the Red-breast hop from stone to stone.