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English Men of Letters: Crabbe by Alfred Ainger
page 170 of 214 (79%)
To hail the glories of the new-born day;
But now dejected, languid, listless, low,
He saw the wind upon the water blow,
And the cold stream curl'd onward as the gale
From the pine-hill blew harshly down the dale;
On the right side the youth a wood survey'd,
With all its dark intensity of shade;
Where the rough wind alone was heard to move,
In this, the pause of nature and of love,
When now the young are rear'd, and when the old,
Lost to the tie, grow negligent and cold--
Far to the left he saw the huts of men,
Half hid in mist that hung upon the fen;
Before him swallows, gathering for the sea,
Took their short flights, and twitter'd on the lea;
And near the bean-sheaf stood, the harvest done,
And slowly blacken'd in the sickly sun;
All these were sad in nature, or they took
Sadness from him, the likeness of his look,
And of his mind--he ponder'd for a while,
Then met his Fanny with a borrow'd smile."

The entire story, from which this is an extract, is finely told, and the
fitness of the passage is beyond dispute. At other times the description
is either so much above the level of the narrative, or below it, as to
be almost startling. In the very first pages of _Tales of the Hall_, in
the account of the elder brother's early retirement from business, occur
the following musical lines:

"He chose his native village, and the hill
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