Page:Poems by William Wordsworth (1815) Volume 1.djvu/166

106 The finest Sunday that the Autumn saw,

With all its mealy clusters of ripe nuts,

Could never keep these boys away from church,

Or tempt them to an hour of sabbath breach.

Leonard and James! I warrant, every corner

Among these rocks, and every hollow place

Where foot could come, to one or both of them

Was known as well as to the flowers that grow there.

Like Roe-bucks they went bounding o'er the hills:

They played like two young Ravens on the crags:

Then they could write, ay and speak too, as well

As many of their betters—and for Leonard!

The very night before he went away,

In my own house I put into his hand

A Bible, and I'd wager twenty pounds,

That, if he is alive, he has it yet.

.

It seems, these Brothers have not lived to be

A comfort to each other.—

.

That they might

Live to such end, is what both old and young

In this our valley all of us have wished,

And what, for my part, I have often prayed:

But Leonard—