The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind.
The owlet's
Came loud--and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which
Abstruser musings: save that at my
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it
And vexes meditation with its
And extreme silentness.
Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village!
Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling
By its own moods interprets, every
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought. But O! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger! and as
With unclosed lids, already had I
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man's only music,
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things,
I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
Save if the door half opened, and I snatchedA hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger's face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike! Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the intersperséd
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes!
For I was
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and
The lovely shapes and sounds
Of that eternal language, which thy
Utters, who from eternity doth
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask. Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of
Shall hang them up in silent icicles, Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.
