Classic Poem

Sweet baby boy, accept a stranger's song;
An untaught minstrel joys to sing of thee!
And, all alone, her forest haunts among,
Courts the wild tone of mazy harmony!
A stranger's song, babe of the mountain-wild,
Greets thee as Inspiration's darling child!
Oh may the fine-wrought spirit of thy sire
Awake thy soul and breathe upon thy lyre!
And blest, amid thy mountain haunts sublime,
Be all thy days, thy rosy infant days,
And may the never-tiring steps of time
Press lightly on with thee o'er life's disastrous maze.

Ye hills, coeval with the birth of time!
Bleak summits, linked in chains of rosy light!
Oh may your wonders many a year invite
Your native son the breezy path to climb
Where, in majestic pride of solitude,
Silent and grand, the hermit thought shall trace,
Far o'er the wild infinity of space,
The sombre horrors of the waving wood;
The misty glen; the river's winding wave;
The last deep blush of summer's lingering day;
The winter storm that, roaming unconfined,
Sails on the broad wings of the impetuous wind.

Oh, whether on the breezy height
Where Skiddaw greets the dawn of light,
Ere the rude sons of labour homage pay
To summer's flaming eye or winter's banner grey;
Whether Lodore its silver torrent flings
The mingling wonders of a thousand springs;
Whether smooth Bassenthwaite, at eve's still hour,
Reflects the young moon's crescent pale,
Or meditation seeks her silent bower
Amid the rocks of lonely Borrowdale —
Still may thy name survive, sweet boy, till Time
Shall bend to Keswick's vale thy Skiddaw's brow sublime!