| 1 |
Five years have passed; five summers, with
the length |
| 2 |
Of five long winters! And again I hear |
| 3 |
These waters, rolling from their mountain
springs |
| 4 |
With a sweet inland murmur. Once again |
| 5 |
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
|
| 6 |
Which on a wild secluded scene impress |
| 7 |
Thoughts of more deep seclusion, and connect
|
| 8 |
The landscape with the quiet of the sky. |
| 9 |
The day is come when I again repose |
| 10 |
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view |
| 11 |
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
|
| 12 |
Which, at this season, with their unripe fruits,
|
| 13 |
Among the woods and copses lose themselves,
|
| 14 |
Nor, with their green and simple hue, disturb
|
| 15 |
The wild green landscape. Once again I see
|
| 16 |
These hedgerows -- hardly hedgerows, little
lines |
| 17 |
Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral
farms |
| 18 |
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
|
| 19 |
Sent up in silence from among the trees, |
| 20 |
With some uncertain notice, as might seem,
|
| 21 |
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
|
| 22 |
Or of some hermit's cave, where by his fire
|
| 23 |
The hermit sits alone. |
|
Though
absent long, |
| 24 |
These forms of beauty have not been to me
|
| 25 |
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye; |
| 26 |
But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din
|
| 27 |
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
|
| 28 |
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, |
| 29 |
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,
|
| 30 |
And passing even into my purer mind |
| 31 |
With tranquil restoration; feelings too |
| 32 |
Of unremembered pleasure -- such, perhaps,
|
| 33 |
As may have had no trivial influence |
| 34 |
On that best portion of a good man's life,
|
| 35 |
His little, nameless, unremembered acts |
| 36 |
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
|
| 37 |
To them I may have owed another gift, |
| 38 |
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood
|
| 39 |
In which the burden of the mystery, |
| 40 |
In which the heavy and the weary weight |
| 41 |
Of all this unintelligible world |
| 42 |
Is lightened -- that serene and blessed mood
|
| 43 |
In which the affections gently lead us on
|
| 44 |
Until the breath of this corporeal frame |
| 45 |
And even the motion of our human blood |
| 46 |
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep |
| 47 |
In body, and become a living soul; |
| 48 |
While with an eye made quiet by the power
|
| 49 |
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, |
| 50 |
We see into the life of things. |
|
If this |
| 51 |
Be but a vain belief -- yet oh, how oft |
| 52 |
In darkness, and amid the many shapes |
| 53 |
Of joyless daylight, when the fretful stir
|
| 54 |
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
|
| 55 |
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart, |
| 56 |
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee
|
| 57 |
Oh sylvan Wye! Thou wanderer through the woods,
|
| 58 |
How often has my spirit turned to thee! |
|
|
| 59 |
And now, with gleams of half-extinguished
thought, |
| 60 |
With many recognitions dim and faint |
| 61 |
And somewhat of a sad perplexity, |
| 62 |
The picture of the mind revives again; |
| 63 |
While here I stand, not only with the sense
|
| 64 |
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
|
| 65 |
That in this moment there is life and food
|
| 66 |
For future years. And so I dare to hope, |
| 67 |
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was
when first |
| 68 |
I came among these hills, when like a roe
|
| 69 |
I bounded o'er the mountains by the sides
|
| 70 |
Of the deep rivers and the lonely streams
|
| 71 |
Wherever nature led, more like a man |
| 72 |
Flying from something that he dreads than
one |
| 73 |
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature
then |
| 74 |
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days |
| 75 |
And their glad animal movements all gone by)
|
| 76 |
To me was all in all. |
|
I cannot paint |
| 77 |
What then I was. The sounding cataract |
| 78 |
Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock,
|
| 79 |
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
|
| 80 |
Their colours and their forms, were then to
me |
| 81 |
An appetite, a feeling and a love |
| 82 |
That had no need of a remoter charm |
| 83 |
By thought supplied, or any interest |
| 84 |
Unborrowed from the eye. That time is past,
|
| 85 |
And all its aching joys are now no more, |
| 86 |
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this |
| 87 |
Faint I, nor mourn, nor murmur; other gifts
|
| 88 |
Have followed -- for such loss, I would believe,
|
| 89 |
Abundant recompense. For I have learned |
| 90 |
To look on nature not as in the hour |
| 91 |
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
|
| 92 |
The still sad music of humanity, |
| 93 |
Not harsh nor grating, though of ample power
|
| 94 |
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt |
| 95 |
A presence that disturbs me with the joy |
| 96 |
Of elevated thoughts, a sense sublime |
| 97 |
Of something far more deeply interfused, |
| 98 |
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
|
| 99 |
And the round ocean, and the living air, |
| 100 |
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man --
|
| 101 |
A motion and a spirit that impels |
| 102 |
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
|
| 103 |
And rolls through all things. Therefore am
I still |
| 104 |
A lover of the meadows and the woods |
| 105 |
And mountains, and of all that we behold |
| 106 |
From this green earth, of all the mighty world
|
| 107 |
Of eye and ear (both what they half-create
|
| 108 |
And what perceive) -- well-pleased to recognize
|
| 109 |
In nature and the language of the sense, |
| 110 |
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
|
| 111 |
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
|
| 112 |
Of all my moral being. |
| |
|
| |
Nor, perchance, |
| 113 |
If I were not thus taught, should I the more
|
| 114 |
Suffer my genial spirits to decay; |
| 115 |
For thou art with me, here, upon the banks
|
| 116 |
Of this fair river -- thou, my dearest friend,
|
| 117 |
My dear, dear friend, and in thy voice I catch
|
| 118 |
The language of my former heart, and read
|
| 119 |
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
|
| 120 |
Of thy wild eyes. Oh, yet a little while |
| 121 |
May I behold in thee what I was once, |
| 122 |
My dear, dear sister! And this prayer I make,
|
| 123 |
Knowing that nature never did betray |
| 124 |
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
|
| 125 |
Through all the years of this our life, to
lead |
| 126 |
From joy to joy, for she can so inform |
| 127 |
The mind that is within us, so impress |
| 128 |
With quietness and beauty, and so feed |
| 129 |
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
|
| 130 |
Rash judgements, nor the sneers of selfish
men, |
| 131 |
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
|
| 132 |
The dreary intercourse of daily life, |
| 133 |
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
|
| 134 |
Our cheerful faith that all which we behold
|
| 135 |
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
|
| 136 |
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk, |
| 137 |
And let the misty mountain-winds be free |
| 138 |
To blow against thee. And in after-years,
|
| 139 |
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
|
| 140 |
Into a sober pleasure, when thy mind |
| 141 |
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms, |
| 142 |
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place |
| 143 |
For all sweet sounds and harmonies -- oh then
|
| 144 |
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief |
| 145 |
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
|
| 146 |
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me, |
| 147 |
And these my exhortations! Nor perchance,
|
| 148 |
If I should be where I no more can hear |
| 149 |
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these
gleams |
| 150 |
Of past existence, wilt thou then forget |
| 151 |
That on the banks of this delightful stream
|
| 152 |
We stood together; and that I, so long |
| 153 |
A worshipper of nature, hither came |
| 154 |
Unwearied in that service -- rather say |
| 155 |
With warmer love, oh with far deeper zeal
|
| 156 |
Of holier love! Nor wilt thou then forget
|
| 157 |
That, after many wanderings, many years |
| 158 |
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs
|
| 159 |
And this green pastoral landscape, were to
me |
| 160 |
More dear, both for themselves, and for thy
sake. |
