The Excursion

THE WANDERER.

’Twas summer, and the sun had mounted high: Southward, the landscape indistinctly glared Through a pale steam; but all the northern downs, In clearest air ascending, shew’d far off A surface dappled o’er with shadows, flung From many a brooding cloud; far as the sight Could reach, those many shadows lay in spots Determined and unmoved, with steady beams Of bright and pleasant sunshine interposed. Pleasant to him who on the soft cool moss Extends his careless limbs along the front Of some huge cave, whose rocky ceiling casts A twilight of its own, an ample shade, Where the wren warbles; while the dreaming Man, Half conscious of the soothing melody, With side-long eye looks out upon the scene, By that impending covert made more soft, More low and distant! Other lot was mine; Yet with good hope that soon I should obtain As grateful resting-place, and livelier joy. Across a bare wide Common I was toiling With languid feet, which by the slippery ground Were baffled; nor could my weak arm disperse The host of insects gathering round my face, And ever with me as I paced along.