Yet am I prone to guess that he would not Have conn'd, or known, or loved her half so well. She was a stranger to his opening eyes, And finding little in the daily round To fashion fancy from the things of sense, His love of kin was all the more profound; Not wide in surface, but in act intense, Affection still a dutiful reality, The ground and law, and soul of all morality. Yet keeping still his little heart at home, He wander'd with his mind in realms remote, Made playmates of the Fairy, Sylph, and Gnome, And knew each Giant, Knight, and Wight of note Whate'er of wonderful the East and North, Darkly commingling, gender'd and brought forth. Sweet thought he found, and noble, in the story And watch'd the Sleeping Beauty in the wood. THE LARCH GROVE. LINE above line the nursling larches planted, And shot and crankled down the mountain's side. The larches grew, and darker grew the shade; And small green needles called the birds to sing. They grew apace as fast as they could grow, Ah, larches! that shall never be your lot; Nought shall you have to do with amorous weepers, Nor shall ye prop the roof of cozy cot, But rumble out your days as railway sleepers. DENT. I. THERE is a town, of little note or praise, And the nigh savour of the hissing sweets The hungry nose that threads the sinuous maze ; The sceptic wisdom, positive in doubt, All creeds and fancies, like the hunter's torch, Caught each from each, perfection find in Dent, Where what they cannot get they do without. GEOLOGY. II. In that small town was born a worthy wight, The fate of Galileo had been thine. |