Waste and lonely mountain heather; solitude its shade that throws
An oppression on the bosom felt, but which is not repose;
Tones that sink within the spirit, lines of thought that deeper trace
Furrows on the tablet-forehead, that nor time nor life efface.

The Boy sate on the hill's margin, wave-like valleys downward rolled
Through a landscape where the white cots foam-like peered above the fold
Of woods darkening in deep hollows, where spires gleamed like sea-birds' wings,
On to where the hill's broad shoulder o'er that waste its shadow flings.

On his hand his cheek declining, his eye strayed that landscape o'er,
With its stream arterial veining heath and vale, to where its floor
Rested 'gainst the hills of azure, whose engirding clefts between,
Like a snake in sunlight glancing, gleams of the far deep were seen.

As the sapling oak that o'er him its light arm o'er-shadowing cast,
Rooted from the acorn, nourished by the sun and wandering blast,
So material life pervaded that young form with strength imbued;
So earth nourished, and the keen air with elastic nerve renewed.

For almighty nature entered in that human temple; sight
Was a feeling, tinging beauty with its self-reflected light;
The fine ear a shell responsive, in its folded depths the tone
Vibrated of entering music fused and blended with his own.

For that pageantry wrought on him ere his inner spirit knew
That mists, colourless and formless, shape and substance from him drew;
From their forms Elysium moulded, and the islands of the blest,
The lost paradise of Eden and the imaginative rest.

Why sought he the open hill-side, grey wastes loving more to scan,
And far distance o'er the heather, than from bounded fields of man?
Where he felt as in a dungeon, save when o'er the darkened floor
The red line of twilight deepened, flashed forth from day's closing door?

There he sate, the far hills watching, where in hues fantastic played
Beauty's wavy outlines flowing in green sunlight and in shade;
Symphonies, but soundless felt and heard, along their azure roll,
Through the sentient being passing to his inmost depths of soul.

Like the old athletæ naked, in ungirded strength reposed
Their bared shoulders, and the sinewy veins each granite frame disclosed;
At their feet the vales upheaving, as if quickening motion dwelt
In their bosoms to the spirit giving the repose they felt.

There he gazed, as boyhood gazes upon beauty till the eyes
Dim, and the oppressèd bosom melts in its own ecstasies;
He saw mystery in their distant azure forms, nor knew when near
Their hues vanished, that the treasure grasped becomes familiar.

So grows up the ardent poet to each phaseful mood resigned,
While the images of Nature pass into his open mind,
Till imagination bodies shadows into form, and roll
The unconscious numbers flowing from his self-revolving soul;

From God sent, a glory trailing, as a lyre to be strung
By the melodies of ether as of earth around him swung;
To attune apparent discords, to teach fellow-man the tone
Of the chords existent in him from responses of his own.

River-like the hours flowed by him; what knew that rapt youth of time,
Nourishing within his being aspirations, faiths sublime?
While he sat and watched before him, where Day's sinking altar blazed,
Till his spirit drew its glory from that Hereo where he gazed.

There the heaven-born Tiran rested mid the solitudes of mind,
Child of the material mother in unconscious strength reclined;
At his feet the unforged thunders, found not, formed not, until hurled,
Their cohesion felt in grasping, their flight echoed by a world.

There Elysian streams were visioned where the armed heroes trode,
By the sightless bard of Chios hailed in their august abode;
Where the grey Pythagorean taught the creeds by Maro told;
Where bright science hands unfolded truths like fairy dreams unrolled,

So that youth fed joy but troubled, happiness that breathed not peace
In his heart, but feverish impulse, thraldom that but asked release;
Restlessness in vain eluded, yearnings vague, but welcomed felt;
Sighs indefinite to wander from the haunts wherein he dwelt.

In vain woodland nooks engirded, he would breathe the open sky;
He saw not the lapsing brooklet that filled his abstracted eye;
On the windy ridge with freedom he looked out, and sought through space
In what star the wandering spirit finds its home and dwelling-place.

Instinct that the eagle urges from her cloud-cliff, upward driven
On the winds' wing soaring, point-like, until vanishing in heaven;
That doth hurl the grey stork forward, leaning on the storm, to share
The contention and wild effort, and the strife opposing there.

But the Vision darkened, evening's mantle o'er that landscape fell,
And the cry of ‘Homeward’ reached him, sheltered in the heathery dell:
Joined his little world, life's earliest, half-instinctive art was taught,
To disguise the natural feeling, to repress the sacred thought.