Ebenezer Elliott

Plumpton

WHO would not here become a hermit? here
Grow old in song? here die, on Nature’s breast
Hushed, like yon wild bird on the lake, to rest?
Then laid asleep beneath the branches sere,
Till the Awakener in the east appear,
And call the dead to judgment? Quietness,
Methinks the heart-whole rustic loves thee less
Than the town’s thought-worn smiler. O, most dear
Art thou to him who flies from care to bowers
That breathe of sainted calmness! and to me
More welcome than the breath of hawthorn flowers
To children of the city, when delight
Leads them from smoke to cowslips, is the sight
Of these green shades, those rocks, this little sea.