The Tables Turned "Nor less I dream that there are Powers "Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum Of things forever speaking, That nothing of itself will come, But we must still be seeking? 66 -Then ask not wherefore, here, alone, Conversing as I may, I sit upon this old gray stone, And dream my time away." 1657 William Wordsworth (1770-1850] THE TABLES TURNED AN EVENING SCENE ON THE SAME SUBJECT Up! up! my friend, and quit your books; Up! up! my friend, and clear your looks; The sun, above the mountain's head, Through all the long green fields has spread, His first sweet evening yellow. Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife: Come, hear the woodland linnet, How sweet his music! on my life There's more of wisdom in it. And hark! how blithe the throstle sings! He, too, is no mean preacher: Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher. She has a world of ready wealth, One impulse from a vernal wood Than all the sages can. Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; Our meddling intellect Misshapes the beauteous forms of things: We murder to dissect. Enough of Science and of Art; Close up those barren leaves; Come forth, and bring with you a heart That watches and receives. William Wordsworth [1770-1850] SIMPLE NATURE Be it not mine to steal the cultured flower i have not toiled, but take what God has made. My Lord Ambition passed, and smiled in scorn; I plucked a rose, and, lo! it had no thorn. George John Romanes [1848–1894] A Runnable Stag 1659 "I FEAR NO POWER A WOMAN WIELDS" I FEAR no power a woman wields While I can have the woods and fields, Gray marsh-wastes and the burning sun. For aye the heart's most poignant pain The lonely watch beside the shore, Gramercy, for thy haunting face, Ernest McGaffey [1861 A RUNNABLE STAG WHEN the pods went pop on the broom, green broom, We harbored a stag in the Priory coomb, A stag of warrant, a stag, a stag, A runnable stag, a kingly crop, Brow, bay and tray and three on top, A stag, a runnable stag. Then the huntsman's horn rang yap, yap, yap, By warrant and might of the stag, the stag, So we tufted the covert till afternoon With Tinkerman's Pup and Bell-of-the-North; The stag of warrant, the wily stag, It was Bell-of-the-North and Tinkerman's Pup And the stag of warrant away at last, "Let your gelding be: if you check or chide He stumbles at once and you're out of the hunt; For three hundred gentlemen, able to ride, On hunters accustomed to bear the brunt, Are after the runnable stag, the stag, By perilous paths in coomb and dell, The heather, the rocks, and the river-bed, His antlered crest, his cloven hoof, A Runnable Stag Brow, bay and tray and three aloof, For a matter of twenty miles and more, By the densest hedge and the highest wall, The stag of warrant, the wily stag, When he turned at bay in the leafy gloom, 1661 In the emerald gloom where the brook ran deep, He heard in the distance the rollers boom, A stag of warrant, a stag, a stag, So a fateful hope lit up his eye, And he opened his nostrils wide again, And he tossed his branching antlers high As he headed the hunt down the Charloch glen, As he raced down the echoing glen— For five miles more, the stag, the stag, For twenty miles, and five and five, Three hundred gentlemen, able to ride, John Davidson [1857-1909] |