Wordsworth (Whittier)

WRITTEN ON A BLANK LEAF OF HIS MEMOIRS.

Dear friends, who read the world aright, And in its common forms discern A beauty and a harmony The many never learn!

Kindred in soul of him who found In simple flower and leaf and stone The impulse of the sweetest lays Our Saxon tongue has known,--

Accept this record of a life As sweet and pure, as calm and good, As a long day of blandest June In green field and in wood.

How welcome to our ears, long pained By strife of sect and party noise, The brook-like murmur of his song Of nature's simple joys!

The violet' by its mossy stone, The primrose by the river's brim, And chance-sown daffodil, have found Immortal life through him.

The sunrise on his breezy lake, The rosy tints his sunset brought, World-seen, are gladdening all the vales And mountain-peaks of thought.

Art builds on sand; the works of pride And human passion change and fall; But that which shares the life of God With Him surviveth all.