Page:The Excursion, Wordsworth, 1814.djvu/52

26 Marked with the steps of those, whom, as they pass'd,

The gooseberry trees that shot in long lank slips,

Or currants hanging from their leafless stems

In scanty strings, had tempted to o'erleap

The broken wall. I looked around, and there,

Where two tall hedge-rows of thick alder boughs

Joined in a cold damp nook, espied a Well

Shrouded with willow-flowers and plumy fern.

My thirst I slaked, and from the chearless spot

Withdrawing, straightway to the shade returned

Where sate the Old Man on the Cottage bench;

And, while, beside him, with uncovered head,

I yet was standing, freely to respire,

And cool my temples in the fanning air,

Thus did he speak. "I see around me here

Things which you cannot see: we die, my Friend,

Nor we alone, but that which each man loved

And prized in his peculiar nook of earth

Dies with him, or is changed; and very soon

Even of the good is no memorial left.

—The Poets, in their elegies and songs

Lamenting the departed, call the groves,

They call upon the hills and streams to mourn,