I NOW, O friend, whom noiselessly the snows

Settle around, and whose small chamber grows

Dusk as the sloping window takes its load:

* * * * *

The kindly hill, as to complete our hap,

Has ta’en us in the shelter of her lap;

Well sheltered in our slender grove of trees

And ring of walls, we sit between her knees;

A disused quarry, paved with rose plots, hung

With clematis, the barren womb whence sprung

The crow-stepped house itself, that now far seen

Stands, like a bather, to the neck in green.

A disused quarry, furnished with a seat

Sacred to pipes and meditation meet

For such a sunny and retired nook.

There in the clear, warm mornings many a book

Has vied with the fair prospect of the hills

That, vale on vale, rough brae on brae, upfills

Halfway to the zenith all the vacant sky

To keep my loose attention . . . .

Horace has sat with me whole mornings through:

And Montaigne gossiped, fairly false and true;

And chattering Pepys, and a few beside

That suit the easy vein, the quiet tide,

The calm and certain stay of garden-life,

Far sunk from all the thunderous roar of strife.

There is about the small secluded place

A garnish of old times; a certain grace

Of pensive memories lays about the braes:

The old chestnuts gossip tales of bygone days.

Here, where some wandering preacher, blest Lazil,

Perhaps, or Peden, on the middle hill

Had made his secret church, in rain or snow,

He cheers the chosen residue from woe.

All night the doors stood open, come who might,

The hounded kebbock mat the mud all night.

Nor are there wanting later tales; of how

Prince Charlie’s Highlanders . . .

* * * * *

I have had talents, too. In life’s first hour

God crowne............