Page:Lyrical ballads, Volume 2, Wordsworth, 1800.djvu/35

27 As if they had been made that they might be

Companions for each other; ten years back,

Close to those brother fountains, the huge crag

Was rent with lightning—one is dead and gone,

The other, left behind, is flowing still.——

For accidents and changes such as these,

Why we have store of them! a water spout

Will bring down half a mountain; what, a feast

For folks that wander up and down like you,

To see an acre's breadth of that wide cliff

One roaring cataract—a sharp May storm

Will come with loads of January snow,

And in one night send twenty score of sheep

To feed the ravens, or a Shepherd dies

By some untoward death among the rocks:

The ice breaks up and sweeps away a bridge—

A wood is fell'd:—and then for our own homes!

A child is born or christen'd, a field plough'd,

A daughter sent to service, a web spun,

The old house cloth is deck'd with a new face;