Page:Poems by William Wordsworth (1815) Volume 2.djvu/317

309 He seems ten birth-days younger, is green and is stout;

Twice as fast as before does his blood run about;

You would say that each hair of his beard was alive,

And his fingers are busy as bees in a hive.

For he's not like an Old Man that leisurely goes

About work that he knows in a track that he knows;

But often his mind is compelled to demur,

And you guess that the more then his body must stir.

In the throng of the Town like a Stranger is he,

Like one whose own Country's far over the sea,

And Nature, while through the great City he hies,

Full ten times a day takes his heart by surprize.

This gives him the fancy of one that is young,

More of soul in his face than of words on his tongue;

Like a Maiden of twenty he trembles and sighs,

And tears of fifteen have come into his eyes.

What's a tempest to him or the dry parching heats?

Yet he watches the clouds that pass over the streets;

With a look of such earnestness often will stand

You might think he'd twelve Reapers at work in the Strand.