A Barn her winter bed supplies; But till the warmth of summer skies And summer days is gone, (And all do in this tale agree) She sleeps beneath the greenwood tree, And other home hath none. An innocent life, yet far astray! And Ruth will, long before her day, Be broken down and old. Sore aches she needs must have! but less Of mind, than body's wretchedness, From damp, and rain, and cold. If she is pressed by want of food, And there she begs at one steep place, That oaten Pipe of hers is mute, Or thrown away; but with a flute This flute, made of a hemlock stalk, The Quantock Woodman hears. I, too, have passed her on the hills By spouts and fountains wild Such small machinery as she turned Ere she had wept, ere she had mourned, A young and happy Child! Farewell! and when thy days are told, Ill-fated Ruth! in hallowed mould Thy corpse shall buried be; For thee a funeral bell shall ring, A Christian psalm for thee. LINES Written with a Slate-pencil, upon a Stone, the largest of a heap lying near a deserted Quarry, upon one of the Istands at Rydale. Stranger! this hillock of misshapen stones Nor, as perchance thou rashly deem'st, the Cairn Or Pleasure-house, once destined to be built But, as it chanced, Sir William having learned At any hour he chose, the Knight forthwith Are monuments of his unfinished task. The block on which these lines are traced, perhaps, Of the intended Pile, which would have been |