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* * * * * UP Grongar Hill I labor now, | |
| And reach at last his bushy brow. | |
| O, how fresh, how pure the air! | |
| Let me breathe a little here; | |
| Where am I, Nature? I descry | 5 |
| Thy magazine before me lie! | |
| Temples and towns and towers and woods, | |
| And hills and vales and fields and floods, | |
| Crowding before me, edged around | |
| With naked wilds and barren ground. | 10 |
| See, below, the pleasant dome, | |
| The poet’s pride, the poet’s home, | |
| Which the sunbeams shine upon | |
| To the even from the dawn. | |
| See her woods, where Echo talks, | 15 |
| Her gardens trim, her terrace-walks, | |
| Her wildernesses, fragrant brakes, | |
| Her gloomy bowers and shining lakes. | |
| Keep, ye gods, this humble seat | |
| Forever pleasant, private, neat. | 20 |
| See yonder hill, uprising steep | |
| Above the river slow and deep; | |
| It looks from hence a pyramid | |
| Beneath a verdant forest hid, | |
| On whose high top there rises great | 25 |
| The mighty remnant of a seat,— | |
| An old green tower, whoso battered brow | |
| Frowns upon the vale below. | |
| Look upon that flowery plain, | |
| How the sheep surround their swain, | 30 |
| How they crowd to hear his strain! | |
| All careless with his legs across, | |
| Leaning on a bank of moss, | |
| He spends his empty hours at play, | |
| Which fly as light as down away. | 35 |
| And there behold a bloomy mead, | |
| A silver stream, a willow shade, | |
| Beneath the shade a fisher stand, | |
| Who, with the angle in his hand, | |
| Swings the nibbling fry to land. | 40 |
| In blushes the descending sun | |
| Kisses the streams, while slow they run; | |
| And yonder hill remoter grows, | |
| Or dusky clouds do interpose. | |
| The fields are left, the laboring hind | 45 |
| His weary oxen does unbind; | |
| And vocal mountains, as they low, | |
| Re-echo to the vales below; | |
| The jocund shepherds piping come, | |
| And drive the herd before them home; | 50 |
| And now begin to light their fires, | |
| Which send up smoke in curling spires: | |
| While with light heart all homeward tend, | |
| To Aberglasney I descend. * * * * * | |
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