Oft have I seen yon Solitary Man Pacing the upland meadow. On his brow Sits melancholy, mark’d with decent pride, As it would fly the busy, taunting world, And feed upon reflection. Sometimes, near The foot of an old Tree, he takes his seat And with the page of legendary lore Cheats the dull hour, while Evening’s sober eye Looks tearful as it closes. In the dell By the swift brook he loiters, sad and mute, Save when a struggling sigh, half murmur’d, steals From his wrung bosom. To the rising moon, His eye rais’d wistfully, expression fraught, He pours the cherish’d anguish of his Soul, Silent yet eloquent: For not a sound That might alarm the night’s lone centinel, The dull-eyed Owl, escapes his trembling lip, Unapt in supplication. He is young, And yet the stamp of thought so tempers youth, That all its fires are faded. What is He? And why, when morning sails upon the breeze, Fanning the blue hill’s summit, does he stay Loit’ring and sullen, like a Truant boy, Beside the woodland glen; or stretch’d along On the green slope, watch his slow wasting form Reflected, trembling, on the river’s breast? His garb is coarse and threadbare, and his cheek Is prematurely faded. The check’d tear, Dimming his dark eye’s lustre, seems to say, “This world is now, to me, a barren waste, “A desart, full of weeds and wounding thorns, “And I am weary: for my journey here “Has been, though short, but chearless.” Is it so? Poor Traveller! Oh tell me, tell me all— For I, like thee, am but a Fugitive An alien from delight, in this dark scene!