ROBERT SOUTHEY.

 FIDELITY.

“Fidelity,” by William Wordsworth (1770-1850), is placed here out of respect to a boy of eleven years who liked the poem well enough to recite it frequently.  The scene is laid on Helvellyn, to me the most impressive mountain of the Lake District of England.  Wordsworth is a part of this country.  I once heard John Burroughs say:  “I went to the
 Lake District to see what kind of a country it could be that would produce a Wordsworth.”

    A barking sound the Shepherd hears,
    A cry as of a dog or fox;
    He halts—­and searches with his eyes
    Among the scattered rocks;
    And now at distance can discern
    A stirring in a brake of fern;
    And instantly a Dog is seen,
    Glancing through that covert green.

    The Dog is not of mountain breed;
    Its motions, too, are wild and shy;
    With something, as the Shepherd thinks,
    Unusual in its cry: 
    Nor is there any one in sight
    All round, in hollow or on height;
    Nor shout, nor whistle strikes his ear;
    What is the Creature doing here?

    It was a cove, a huge recess,
    That keeps, till June, December’s snow. 
    A lofty precipice in front,
    A silent tarn below! 
    Far in the bosom of Helvellyn,
    Remote from public road or dwelling,
    Pathway, or cultivated land;
    From trace of human foot or hand.

    There sometimes doth a leaping fish
    Send through the tarn a lonely cheer;
    The crags repeat the raven’s croak,
    In symphony austere;
    Thither the rainbow comes—­the cloud—­
    And mists that spread the flying shroud;
    And sunbeams; and the sounding blast,
    That, if it could, would hurry past,
    But that enormous barrier binds it fast.

    Not free from boding thoughts, a while
    The Shepherd stood:  then makes his way
    Toward the Dog, o’er rocks and stones,
    As quickly as he may;
    Nor far had gone, before he found
    A human skeleton on the ground;
    The appalled discoverer with a sigh
    Looks round, to learn the history.

    From those abrupt and perilous rocks
    The Man had fallen, that place of fear! 
    At length upon the Shepherd’s mind
    It breaks, and all is clear: 
    He instantly recalled the name,
    And who he was, and whence he came;
    Remembered, too, the very day
    On which the traveller passed this way.

    But hear a wonder, for whose sake
    This lamentable tale I tell! 
    A lasting monument of words
    This wonder merits well. 
    The Dog, which still was hovering nigh,
    Repeating the same timid cry,
    This Dog had been through three months space
    A dweller in that savage place.