British Poets of the Nineteenth Century

YES, IT WAS THE MOUNTAIN ECHO

YES, it was the mountain Echo, Solitary, clear, profound, Answering to the shouting Cuckoo, Giving to her sound for sound!

Unsolicited reply

To a babbling wanderer sent;
Like her ordinary cry,
Like-but oh, how different!

Hears not also mortal Life?
Hear not we, unthinking Creatures!
Slaves of folly, love, or strife-
Voices of two different natures?

Have not we too?-yes, we have Answers, and we know not whence; Echoes from beyond the grave, Recognized intelligence!

Such rebounds our inward ear
Catches sometimes from afar—
Listen, ponder, hold them dear;
For of God,-of God they are.
1806. 1807.

NUNS FRET NOT AT THEIR CON VENT'S NARROW ROOM

In the cottage, Town-end, Grasmere, one after noon in 1801, my sister read to me the Sonnets of Milton. I had long been well acquainted with them, but I was particularly struck on that occa sion with the dignified simplicity and majestic harmony that runs through most of them,-in character so totally different from the Italian, and still more so from Shakspeare's fine Sonnets. I took fire, if I may be allowed to say so, and produced three Sonnets the same afternoon, the first I ever wrote except an irregular one at school. Of these three, the only one I distinctly remember is-"I grieved for Buonaparté." One was never written down: the third, which was, I believe, preserved, I cannot particularize. (Wordsworth.)

NUNS fret not at their convent's narrow room;

And hermits are contented with their cells;

And students with their pensive citadels; Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,

Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,

High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells, Will murmur by the hour in foxglove

bells: