The poetical works of William Wordsworth

OFT through thy fair domains, illustrious Peer!
In youth I roamed, on youthful pleasures bent;
And mused in rocky cell or sylvan tent,
Beside swift-flowing Lowther's current clear.
-Now, by thy care befriended, I appear
Before thee, LONSDALE, and this Work present,
A token (may it prove a monument !)
Of high respect and gratitude sincere.
Gladly would I have waited till my task
Had reached its close; but Life is insecure,
And Hope full oft fallacious as a dream:
Therefore, for what is here produced, I ask
Thy favour; trusting that thou wilt not deem
The offering, though imperfect, premature.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

THE EXCURSION.

THE WANDERER.

Book I.

A summer forenoon.-The Author reaches a ruined Cottage upon a Common, and there meets with a reverend Friend, the Wanderer, of whose education and course of life he gives an account.-The Wanderer, while resting under the shade of the Trees that surround the Cottage, relates the History of its last Inhabitant.

'TWAS summer, and the sun had mounted high:
Southward the landscape indistinctly glared
Through a pale steam; but all the northern downs,
In clearest air ascending, showed far off
A surface dappled o'er with shadows flung
From many a brooding cloud; far as the sight
Could reach, those many shadows lay in spots
Determined and unmoved, with steady beams
Of bright and pleasant sunshine interposed;
Pleasant to him who on the soft cool moss
Extends his careless limbs along the front
Of some huge cave, whose rocky ceiling casts
A twilight of its own, an ample shade,

Where the wren warbles, while the dreaming man,
Half conscious of the soothing melody,
With sidelong eye looks out upon the scene,
By that impending covert made more soft,
More low and distant! other lot was mine,
Yet with good hope that soon I should obtain
As grateful resting-place and livelier joy.
Across a bare wide Common I was toiling
With languid feet, which by the slippery ground
Were baffled; nor could my weak arm disperse
The hosts of insects gathering round my face,
And ever with me as I paced along.

Upon that open level stood a grove,

The wished-for port to which my course was bound.
Thither I came, and there, amid the gloom

Spread by a brotherhood of lofty elms,

Appeared a roofless Hut; four naked walls

That stared upon each other!-I looked round,

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