60 PRÆTERITA-I

Lay where they were. Far different was the Earth

When first the flood came down, than at its second birth.

Now for its produce!-Queen of flowers, O rose,

From whose fair coloured leaves such odour flows,

Thou must now be before thy subjects named,

Both for thy beauty and thy sweetness famed.

Thou art the flower of England, and the flow’r

Of Beauty too-of Venus’ odrous bower.

And thou wilt often shed sweet odours round,

And often stooping, hide thy head on ground.*

And then the lily, towering up so proud,

And raising its gay head among the various crowd,

There the black spots upon a scarlet ground,

And there the taper-pointed leaves are found.”

67. In 220 lines, of such quality, the first book ascends from the rose to the oak. The second begins-to my surprise, and in extremely exceptional violation of my above-boasted custom-with an ecstatic apostrophe to what I had never seen!

“I sing the Pine, which clothes high Switzer’s † head,

And high enthroned, grows on a rocky bed,

On gulfs so deep, on cliffs that are so high,

He that would dare to climb them dares to die.”

This enthusiasm, however, only lasts-mostly exhausting itself in a description, verified out of Harry and Lucy, of the slide of Alpnach,-through 76 lines, when the verses cease, and the book being turned upside down, begins at the other end with the information that “Rock-crystal is accompanied by Actynolite, Axinite, and Epidote, at Bourg d’Oisans in Dauphiny.” But the garden-meditations never ceased, and it is impossible to say how much strength was gained, or how much time uselessly given, except in pleasure, to these quiet hours and foolish rhymes. Their happiness made all the duties of outer life irksome, and their unprogressive reveries might, the reader may think, if my mother had wished, have been changed into a

* An awkward way-chiefly for the rhyme’s sake-of saying that roses are often too heavy for their stalks.

† Switzer, clearly short for Switzerland.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]