ESKDALE, CUMBERLAND.
Oh! No: I do not wish to see
The sunshine o’er these hills again;
Their quiet beauty wakes in me
A thousand wishes wild and vain.
I hear the skylark’s matin songs
Breathe of the heaven he singeth near;
Ah! heaven, that to our earth belongs,
Why is thy hope so seldom here?
The grass is fill’d with early flowers,
Whereon the dew is scarcely dry;
While singing to the silent hours,
The glittering waves are murmuring by.
And fancies from afar are brought
By magic lights and wandering wind;
Such scene hath poet never sought,
But he hath left his heart behind.
It is too sad to feel how blest
In such a spot might be our home;
And then to think with what unrest
Throughout this weary world we roam.
In the midst of these secluded mountain districts, says Mr. Warren in his Northern Tour, lives one of the most independent, most moral, and most respectable characters existing, the estatesman, as he is called in the language of the country, whose hospitality to the wayfarer and traveller has been thus touchingly illustrated:—"Go," said an estatesman to a person whom he had entertained for some days at his house, "go to the vale on the other side of the mountain, to the house of———,(naming the party.) and tell him you came from me. I know him not, but he will receive you kindly, for our sheep mingle on the mountains."
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