THE LARGEST OF A HEAP LYING NEAR A DESERTED QUARRY, UPON ONE OF THE ISLANDS AT RYDAL <br /> <br />Stranger! this hillock of mis-shapen stones <br />Is not a Ruin spared or made by time, <br />Nor, as perchance thou rashly deem'st, the Cairn <br />Of some old British Chief: 'tis nothing more <br />Than the rude embryo of a little Dome <br />Or Pleasure-house, once destined to be built <br />Among the birch-trees of this rocky isle. <br />But, as it chanced, Sir William having learned <br />That from the shore a full-grown man might wade, <br />And make himself a freeman of this spot <br />At any hour he chose, the prudent Knight <br />Desisted, and the quarry and the mound <br />Are monuments of his unfinished task. <br />The block on which these lines are traced, perhaps, <br />Was once selected as the corner-stone <br />Of that intended Pile, which would have been <br />Some quaint odd plaything of elaborate skill, <br />So that, I guess, the linnet and the thrush, <br />And other little builders who dwell here, <br />Had wondered at the work. But blame him not, <br />For old Sir William was a gentle Knight, <br />Bled in this vale, to which he appertained <br />With all his ancestry. Then peace to him, <br />And for the outrage which he had devised <br />Entire forgiveness!--But if thou art one <br />On fire with thy impatience to become <br />An inmate of these mountains,--if, disturbed <br />By beautiful conceptions, thou hast hewn <br />Out of the quiet rock the elements <br />Of thy trim Mansion destined soon to blaze <br />In snow-white splendour,--think again; and, taught <br />By old Sir William and his quarry, leave <br />Thy fragments to the bramble and the rose; <br />There let the vernal slow-worm sun himself, <br />And let the redbreast hop from stone to stone.<br /><br />William Wordsworth<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/inscriptions-written-with-a-slate-pencil-upon-a/
