POEMS OLD AND NEW
" For thirteen hours he ran a desperate race ;
And in my simple mind we cannot tell
What cause the hart might have to love this place.
And come and make his death-bed near the well.
66 Here on the grass perhaps asleep he sank,
Lulled by the fountain in the summer-tide ;
This water was perhaps the first he drank
When he had wandered from his mother's side.
" In April here, beneath the flowering thorn,
He heard the birds their morning carols sing ; 10
And he perhaps, for aught we know, was born
Not half a furlong from that self-same spring.
" Now, here is neither grass nor pleasant shade;
The sun on drearier hollow never shone ;
So will it be, as I have often said,
Till trees, and stones, and fountain, all are gone."
:* Grey-headed shepherd, thou hast spoken well ;
Small difference lies between thy creed and mine :
This beast not unobserved by Nature fell ;
His death was mourned by sympathy divine. 20
:c The Being that is in the clouds and air,
That is in the green leaves among the groves,
Maintains a deep and reverential care
For the unoffending creatures whom he loves.
c The pleasure-house is dust :—behind, before,
This is no common waste, no common gloom ;
But Nature, in due course of time, once more
Shall here put on her beauty and her bloom.
e She leaves these objects to a slow decay,
That what we are, and have been, may be known ; 30
*ut at the coming of the milder day
These monuments shall all be overgrown.
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