| The Frost performs its secret ministry, | |
| Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry | |
| Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before. | |
| The inmates of my cottage, all at rest, | |
| Have left me to that solitude, which suits | |
| Abstruser musings: save that at my side | |
| My cradled infant slumbers peacefully. | |
| 'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs | |
| And vexes meditation with its strange | |
| And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood, | 10 |
| This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood, | |
| With all the numberless goings-on of life, | |
| Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame | |
| 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 nature | |
| Gives it dim sympathies with me who live, | |
| Making it a companionable form, | |
| Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit | 20 |
| By its own moods interprets, every where | |
| 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 oft | |
| With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt | |
| Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower, | |
| Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang | |
| From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day, | 30 |
| So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me | |
| With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear | |
| 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 eye | |
| Fixed with mock study on my swimming book: | |
| Save if the door half opened, and I snatched | |
| A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up, | 40 |
| 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 interspersèd vacancies | |
| And momentary pauses of the thought! | |
| My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart | |
| With tender gladness, thus to look at thee, | |
| And think that thou shalt learn far other lore, | 50 |
| And in far other scenes! For I was reared | |
| 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 breeze | |
| By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags | |
| Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds, | |
| Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores | |
| And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear | |
| The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible | |
| Of that eternal language, which thy God | 60 |
| Utters, who from eternity doth teach | |
| Himself in all, and all things in himself. | |
| Great universal Teacher! he shall mould | |
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.
| |
| Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee, | |
| Whether the summer clothe the general earth | |
| With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing | |
| Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch | |
| Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch | |
| Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall | 70 |
| Heard only in the trances of the blast, | |
| Or if the secret ministry of frost | |
| Shall hang them up in silent icicles, | |
| Quietly shining to the quiet Moon. | |