| |
| ‘WHY, William, on that old grey stone, | |
| Thus for the length of half a day, | |
| Why, William, sit you thus alone, | |
| And dream your time away? | |
| |
| ‘Where are your books?—that light bequeathed | 5 |
| To Beings else forlorn and blind! | |
| Up! up! and drink the spirit breathed | |
| From dead men to their kind. | |
| |
| ‘You look round on your Mother Earth, | |
| As if she for no purpose bore you; | 10 |
| As if you were her first-born birth, | |
| And none had lived before you!’ | |
| |
| One morning thus, by Esthwaite lake, | |
| When life was sweet, I knew not why, | |
| To me my good friend Matthew spake, | 15 |
| And thus I made reply: | |
| |
| ‘The eye—it cannot choose but see; | |
| We cannot bid the ear be still; | |
| Our bodies feel, where’er they be, | |
| Against, or with our will. | 20 |
| |
| ‘Nor less I deem that there are Powers | |
| Which of themselves our minds impress; | |
| That we can feed this mind of ours | |
| In a wise passiveness. | |
| |
| ‘Think you, ’mid all this mighty sum | 25 |
| Of things for ever speaking, | |
| That nothing of itself will come, | |
| But we must still be seeking? | |
| |
| ‘—Then ask not wherefore, here, alone, | |
| Conversing as I may, | 30 |
| I sit upon this old grey stone, | |
| And dream my time away.’ | |
| |
