Felicia Hemans

“ The house, with all its ugliness, was large and convenient, the view from its windows beautiful and extensive, and its situation, on a fine green slope, terminating in a pretty woodland dingle, peculiarly healthy and cheerful. Never, perhaps, had she more thorough enjoyment of her boys than in witnessing, and often joining in, their sports in those pleasant breezy fields, where the kites soared so triumphantly, and the hoops trundled so merrily, and where the cowslips grew as cowslips had never grown before. ”

“ And low sweet sighs, like those of childhood’s sleep,
Amidst their dimness, and a fitful sound
As of soft showers on water. Dark and deep
Lay the oak shadows o’er the turf–so still
They seem’d but pictured glooms; a hidden rill
Made music–such as haunts us in a dream–
Under the fern-tufts ”

“ With your forehead as high, and as bare as the pate
Which an eagle once took for a stone or a slate, [3]
You lift yourself up, o’er the country afar,
As who would say, “Look at me!–here stands great R!”
I plant–I rear forest trees–shrubs great and small,
To wrap myself up in–you peer through them all!
With your lean scraggy neck o’er my poplars you rise ”