Oh! move thou Cottage from behind that oak Or let the aged tree uprooted lie, That in some other way yon smoke May mount into the sky! The clouds pass on; they from the Heavens depart : I look-the sky is empty space ; I know not what I trace; But when I cease to look, my hand is on my heart. O! what a weight is in these shades! Ye leaves, It robs my heart of rest. Thou Thrush, that singest loud and loud and free, Into yon row of willows flit, Upon that alder sit; Or sing another song, or chuse another tree Roll back, sweet rill! back to thy mountain bounds, And there for ever be thy waters chain'd! For thou dost haunt the air with sounds That cannot be sustain'd; If still beneath that pine-tree's ragged bough Headlong yon waterfall must come, Oh let it then be dumb!— Be any thing, sweet rill, but that which thou art now. Thou Eglantine whose arch so proudly towers For thus to see thee nodding in the air, Thus rise and thus descend, Disturbs me, till the sight is more than I can bear. The man who makes this feverish complaint POOR SUSAN. At the corner of Wood-Street, when day-light appears, There's a Thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years: Poor Susan has pass'd by the spot and has heard In the silence of morning the song of the bird. 'Tis a note of enchantment; what ails her? She sees Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale, She looks, and her heart is in Heaven, but they fade, The mist and the river, the hill and the shade; The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise, And the colours have all pass'd away from her eyes, Poor Outcast return-to receive thee once more |