Page:Poems of Nature and Life.djvu/323

 THE SOLITARY MAN 313

So shall my thoughts the sage revere

Who nature viewed with loving eyes, Content to live on homely cheer, Regarding with delight sincere God's earth and skies.

��And now they reached the pathway bar —

Leaped o'er — but neither spoke his mind. The hermit's pool gleamed back afar, In distance twinkling like a star. Their path behind.

Each turns to look once more, and sees

The lean old man far down the hill, His white locks waving in the breeze ; And at the squirrels in the trees He gazes still.

��THE SOLITARY MAN.

What dost thou there alone Seated on mossy stone. Intent to view the flowery ground And grassy hummocks scattered round, Or, half asleep beside the murmuring rill, To watch the cattle feeding on the hill ? Thine eyes have gazed all day, yet have not seen their fill.

An idler, thou, I'm told,

Sad, solitary, cold ; A man, they say, who hath few friends. Who little gives and nothing lends,

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