But now the pleasant dream was gone,.
No hope, no wish remain'd, not one,
They stirr'd him now no more;
New objects did new pleasure give,.
And once again he wish'd to live,.
As lawless as before.

Meanwhile, as thus with him it fared,
They for the voyage were prepared
And went to the Sea-shore;

But, when they thither came, the Youth
Deserted his poor Bride, and Ruth.
Could never find him more.

God help thee, Ruth!-Such pains she had
That she in half a year was mad
And in a prison hous'd,

And there, exulting in her wrongs,

Among the music of her songs
She fearfully carouz'd..

Yet sometimes milder hours she knew,
Nor wanted sun, nor rain, nor dew,

Nor pastimes of the May,

They all were with her in her cell,

And a wild brook with cheerful knell

Did o'er the pebbles play.

When Ruth three seasons thus had lain,
There came a respite to her pain,
She from her prison fled;

But of the Vagrant none took thought,
And where it lik'd her best she sought
Her shelter and her bread.

Among the fields she breath'd again:
The master-current of her brain
Ran permanent and free,

And to the pleasant banks of Tone*
She took her way, to dwell alone
Under the greenwood tree.

The engines of her grief, the tools

That shap'd her sorrow, rocks and pools,

And airs that gently stir

The vernal leaves, she loved them still,
Nor ever tax'd them with the ill

Which had been done to her.

The Tone is a river of Somersetshire at no great distance from the Quantock Hills. These hills, which are alluded to a few stanzas below, are extremely beautiful, and in most places richly coverod with coppice woods.

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 mis-shapen 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, which was to have been
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, per-
haps,

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,

મો

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 splendor, 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

VOL. II.

In the School of -

is a Tablet on

which are inscribed, in gilt letters, the Names of the several persons who have been Schoolmasters there since the foundation of the School, with the time at which they entered upon and quitted their office Opposite one of those Names the Author wrote the following

LINES.

IF Nature, for a favorite Child
In Thee hath temper'd so her clay,
That every hour thy heart runs wild
Yet never once doth go astray,

Read o'er these Lines; and then review
This Tablet, that thus humbly rears
In such diversity of hue

Its history of two hundred years.

-When through this little wreck of fame,

Cypher and syllable, thine eye

Has travell'd down to Matthew's name,
Pause with no common sympathy.