It is a golden view, the sunny glow
Sleeps on the water!—Of unnumber’d tints
Gorgeous, this bordering wood, with its proud oak,
That lords it on the bank, have now put on
The burnish’d livery of receding suns,
Ere yet their fires grow pale. Pure, glassy stream,
The forest, skirting to thine utmost edge,
Curtains thee amply; while the far-off hill
Lifts its grey, barren summit, faintly gleam’d.
Look on the herd, how leisurely they pace,
In social line, the narrow, bloomy lane
Descending to the flood! Do you not see
A luxury of quiet in their step,
Congenial to the landscape?—farther on,
In yonder little goats?—how calm they sit
Close to the brink, and with declining head
Muse on their watry image!—Then the boy,
Heedfully following the full-udder’d train
On his staid horse! while up the left-hand glade
Streams the rich setting sun, and on his back
And shoulders warmly plays. No child, I ween,
Of fancy he; for sure his sober eye
Marks little of the beauty he beholds;
Yet we perceive a measureless content
Sit on his sun-burnt cheek. Dale, to thy charms
Pays or the poet’s or the painter’s mind
A better homage?—’Tis a right good boy;
He loves the brutes he follows;—they love him,
And we will say he earns his supper well.