She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove;
A maid whom there were none to praise,
And very few to love.
A violet by a mossy stone
Half-hidden from the eye!
— Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, O!
The difference to me!
A LESSON There is a flower, the Lesser Celandine, When hailstones have been falling, swarm on swarm, But lately, one rough day, this flower I past, I stopp'd and said, with inly-mutter'd voice, 'The sunshine may not cheer it, nor the dew; To be a prodigal's favourite — then, worse truth, THE RAINBOW My heart leaps up when I behold
That shrinks like many more from cold and rain,
And the first moment that the sun may shine,
Bright as the sun himself, 'tis out again.
Or blasts the green field and the trees distrest,
Oft have I seen it muffled up from harm
In close self-shelter, like a thing at rest.
And recognised it, though an alter'd form,
Now standing forth and offering to the blast,
And buffeted at will by rain and storm.
'It doth not love the shower, nor seek the cold;
This neither is its courage nor its choice,
But its necessity in being old.
It cannot help itself in its decay;
Stiff in its members, wither'd, changed of hue,' —
And, in my spleen, I smiled that it was gray.
A miser's pensioner — behold our lot!
O Man! that from thy fair and shining youth
Age might take the things Youth needed not!
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.