Rest, ardent Spirits! till the cries Of dying Nature bid you rise; Not even your Britain's groans can pierce The leaden silence of your hearse; Then, O, how impotent and vain 200 This grateful tributary strain! Though not unmark'd from northern clime, Ye heard the Border Minstrel's rhyme: His Gothic harp has o'er you rung; The Bard you deign'd to praise, your deathless names has sung. Stay yet, illusion, stay a while, My wilder'd fancy still beguile! From this high theme how can I part, Ere half unloaded is my heart! For all the tears e'er sorrow drew, 210 And all the raptures fancy knew, And all the keener rush of blood, That throbs through bard in bard-like mood, Were here a tribute mean and low, Though all their mingled streams could flow-- 215 Woe, wonder, and sensation high, In one spring-tide of ecstasy!-- It will not be--it may not last-- The vision of enchantment's past: Like frostwork in the morning ray, 220 The fancied fabric melts away; Each Gothic arch, memorial-stone, And long, dim, lofty aisle, are gone; And, lingering last, deception dear, The choir's high sounds die on my ear. 225 Now slow return the lonely down, The silent pastures bleak and brown, The farm begirt with copsewood wild The gambols of each frolic child, Mixing their shrill cries with the tone 230 Of Tweed's dark waters rushing on. Prompt on unequal tasks to run, Thus Nature disciplines her son: Meeter, she says, for me to stray, And waste the solitary day, 235 In plucking from yon fen the reed, And watch it floating down the Tweed; Or idly list the shrilling lay, With which the milkmaid cheers her way, Marking its cadence rise and fail, 240 As from the field, beneath her pail, She trips it down the uneven dale: Meeter for me, by yonder cairn, The ancient shepherd's tale to learn; Though oft he stop in rustic fear, 245 Lest his old legends tire the ear Of one, who, in his simple mind, May boast of book-learn'd taste refined.