And purely gleams the crystal well Amid the silence terrible; On heaven its eye is ever wide, At morning and at eventide; And as a lover in the sight And favour of his maiden bright, Bends till his face he proudly spies In the clear depths of upturn'd eyes-- The mighty heaven above it bow'd, Looks down and sees its crumbling cloud; Its round of summer blue immense, Drawn in a yard's circumference, And lingers o'er the image there, Than its once self more purely fair. Whence come the waters, garner'd up So purely in that rocky cup? They come from regions high and far, Where blows the wind, and shines the star. The silent dews that Heaven distils At midnight on the lonely hills; The shower that plain and mountain dims, On which the dazzling rainbow swims: The torrents from the thunder gloom, Let loose as by the crack of doom, The whirling waterspout that cracks Into a scourge of cataracts, Are swallow'd by the thirsty ground, And day and night without a sound, Through banks of marl, and belts of ores, They filter through a million pores, Losing each foul and turbid stain: So fed by many a trickling vein, The well, through silent days and years, Fills softly, like an eye with tears. AUTUMN. Happy tourist, freed from London, The planets' murmur in the _Times_! Seated here with task work undone, I must list the city chimes A fortnight longer. As I gaze On Pentland's back, where noon-day piles his Mists and vapours: old St Giles's Coronet in sultry haze: A hoary ridge of ancient town Smoke-wreathed, picturesque, and still; Cirque of crag and templed hill, And Arthur's lion couching down In watch, as if the news of Flodden Stirr'd him yet--my fancy flies To level wastes and moors untrodden Purpling 'neath the low-hung skies. I see the burden'd orchards, mute and mellow: I see the sheaves; while, girt by reaper trains, And blurr'd by breaths of horses, through a yellow September moonlight, roll the swaggering wanes.