STRANGER! this hillock of misshapen stones | |
| Is not a ruin spared or made by time, | |
| Nor, as perchance thou rashly deem’st, the cairn | |
| Of some old British chief: ’t is nothing more | |
| Than the rude embyro of a little dome | 5 |
| Or pleasure-house, once destined to be built | |
| Among the birch-trees of this rocky isle. | |
| But, as it chanced, Sir William having learned | |
| That from the shore a full-grown man might wade, | |
| And make himself a freeman of this spot | 10 |
| At any hour he chose, the prudent knight | |
| Desisted, and the quarry and the mound | |
| Are monuments of his unfinished task. | |
| The block on which these lines are traced, perhaps, | |
| Was once selected as the corner-stone | 15 |
| Of that intended pile, which would have been | |
| Some quaint odd plaything of elaborate skill, | |
| So that, I guess, the linnet and the thrush, | |
| And other little builders who dwell here, | |
| Had wondered at the work. But blame him not, | 20 |
| For old Sir William was a gentle knight, | |
| Bred in this vale, to which he appertained | |
| With all his ancestry. Then peace to him, | |
| And for the outrage which he had devised, | |
| Entire forgiveness! But if thou art one | 25 |
| On fire with thy impatience to become | |
| An inmate of these mountains,—if, disturbed | |
| By beautiful conceptions, thou hast hewn | |
| Out of the quiet rock the elements | |
| Of thy trim mansion destined soon to blaze | 30 |
| In snow-white splendor,—think again; and, taught | |
| By old Sir William and his quarry, leave | |
| Thy fragments to the bramble and the rose; | |
| There let the venial slow-worm sun himself, | |
| And let the redbreast hop from stone to stone. | 35 |
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