Page:Poems by William Wordsworth (1815) Volume 1.djvu/155

95 He took his way, impatient to accost

The Stranger, whom he saw still lingering there.

'Twas one well known to him in former days,

A Shepherd-lad;—who ere his sixteenth year

Had left that calling, tempted to entrust

His expectations to the fickle winds

And perilous waters,—with the mariners

A fellow-mariner,—and so had fared

Through twenty seasons; but he had been reared

Among the mountains, and he in his heart

Was half a Shepherd on the stormy seas.

Oft in the piping shrouds had Leonard heard

The tones of waterfalls, and inland sounds

Of caves and trees:—and, when the regular wind

Between the tropics filled the steady sail,

And blew with the same breath through days and weeks,

Lengthening invisibly its weary line

Along the cloudless Main, he, in those hours

Of tiresome indolence, would often hang

Over the vessel's side, and gaze and gaze;

And, while the broad green wave and sparkling foam

Flashed round him images and hues that wrought

In union with the employment of his heart,