O'er flood and field and bosky wilderness,

Wreathing earth with the glory of a saint?

O! thus to dwell far from the stir of life,

Far from its pleasures and its miseries,

Far from the panting cry of man's desire,

That waileth upward in hoarse discontent,

And here to list but to that liquid voice

That riseth in the spirit, and whose flow

Is like a rivulet from Paradise—

To hear the wanderings of divine thought

Within the soul, like the low ebb and flow

Of waters in the blue-deep ocean caves,

Forming itself a speech and melody

Sweeter than words unto the aching sense—

To stand alone with Nature where man's step

Hath never bowed a grass-blade 'neath its weight,

Nor hath the sound of his rude utterance

Broken the pauses of the wild-bird's song;

And thus in its unpeopled solitude

To be the spirit of this universe,

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