ADLESTROP HILL.

Ah, why in age

Do we revert so fondly to the walks

Of childhood, but that there the soul discerns
The dear memorial footsteps unimpaired

Of her own native vigour-but for this,
That it is given her thence in age to hear
Reverberations; and a choral song,
Commingling with the incense that ascends
Undaunted tow'rds the imperishable heavens
From her own lonely altar?

WORDSWORTH'S Excursion, book viii.

I.

BEAUTIFUL day thou art! but doubly fair
To me as from this spot I now behold
Things of familiar loveliness; the air

Whispers of childhood, changeful lights unfold
Scenes of which many a pleasant tale is told.
Lo! as the panorama gay is seen

Distinctly, hamlets, mansions known of old, Glow in the sunshine; cornfields, meadows green, And wood-surrounded domes of grandeur swell between.*

*And "flowery gardens curtain'd round

With world-excluding groves."

II.

The deep of azure by a cloud unstained
Above; the wild bee's solitary hum;
The butterflies, whose joyaunce is unfeign'd,
Coloured, as if from gayer worlds they come,—
Creatures not grateful less for life, though dumb:
The swift that skims the ground with rapid wing,
The thousand thousand flowers we cannot sum,
The streams that from moss-covered founts outspring,-
All in the Sun rejoice, their earth-o'ergazing king.

III.

Here the pavilion stands, where children bright
At morn assembled for the dance or game,
Lively as fays, as delicate Ariel light;

Though they are grown to womanhood, there came
To Fancy's eye apparently the same

To-day, their young successors full of joy :

And as the sun subdued his fiercer flame,

The dance commenced, that charmed me when a boy, And simple sports that gave delight without alloy.

IV.

The presence of the past is bodied forth,
Or in plantation deep, or covert glade;
Though my coevals planted toward the north,
Grown with our growth, flourishing as we fade,
Throw out a wider amplitude of shade,

It seemeth that this hill-encircling zone

Of beech and firs but yesterday was made; There to assist illusion, yon grey stone

Remains, of old the work-directing planter's throne.

V.

The numerous steps of time that rise between
Childhood and age mature, when upward view'd,
Interminable seem;
when downward seen,

The mental eye with smooth descent illude: 'Twixt was and is how brief the interlude! As we reseek a spot the heart that cheers

With the remembrance of a sport pursued In childhood, visibly there it re-appears ; Vanisheth like a rapid dream long interval of years!

VI.

And what is Time's progression? the same breeze
That in my boyhood fann'd me, on this hill
Around me plays; yon patriarchal trees
Unchanged remain, the ever lively rill

Runs through the garden rapidly at will;

The stars that cheered my nightly walks, here shed
Their spiritual influence on me still.

One proof, alas! there is, that years have fled—

Some who have here with me rejoiced are numbered

with the dead.

VII.

Feelings they had to harmony attuned

Of Nature, song of birds, and voice of streams;
They with their ever-present God communed,
Tracing his finger in the reddening gleams
Of morn, or noon-day sun's resplendent beams*.
They saw his fiat in the lightning's speed;

They felt an evidence with which earth teems
Of life revived, as plants sprung from the seed,
And in the rainbow's sign God's promise loved to read †.

VIII.

Now are they spirits glorified, and far

Look through the unapparent, as they rise
Swift as Elijah in his fiery car

Through spaces infinite,- before their eyes
Truth now withdraws the veil of mysteries.
All they perceive that sought on earth behind
A cloud by man not penetrable lies ;
All they perceive as mirror'd in the mind,
That, ere creation was, wisdom eterne design'd.

"Wherever God will thus manifest himself, there is Heaven, though within the circle of this sensible world."-SIR THOMAS BROWNE'S" Religio Laici."

† How beautifully Jeremy Taylor, whose works are an inexhaustible magazine of poetical images, illustrates the covenant of our redemption by that of the rainbow! "For this Jesus was like the rainbow which God set in the clouds as a sacrament to confirm a promise, and establish a grace; he was half made of the glories of the light and half of the moisture of a cloud; he was sent to tell of his Father's mercies, and that God intended to spare us; but appeared not but in the company or in the retinue of a shower and of foul weather."

IX.

I love an avenue- -'tis like the aisle
Of a cathedral-solemn, ample, grand,
If at the close a venerable pile

Grey, turreted, the interspace command,
Looking tranquillity as evening bland
Comes on, and to the rookery return

Darkening the air in flights a cawing band:
But memory's spirit doth within me burn.
As yon majestic elms in ranks I now discern.

X.

Each tree has its peculiar charms allied
To early recollections: on the bough
Of one I dared, a venturous wight, to ride;
And where another far its arms doth throw
Around, a verdant arbour framed below-
A bower of bliss indeed, though not so gay

As that which Spenser's picturing fancies show,
In which Acrasia, fair enchantress lay,

And spread her net for idle knights through the long

summer-day *.

XI.

The spirit might (affections here embrace

The home in which is cast our early lot) Hereafter recognise some glorious place,

That slumbering in this world it had forgot—

*See Spenser's "Fairy Queen," Book ii., Canto xii., Stanza 42, and the following stanzas, in which the great poet combines all his powers of description with the utmost harmony of versification.