I sit upon this old grey stone,
LINES COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING A TOUR JULY 13, 1798
Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a soft inland murmur. Once again Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, That on a wild secluded scene impress Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect The landscape with the quiet of the sky. The day is come when I again repose Here, under this dark sycamore, and view These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard- tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits, Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves 'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see These hedgerows, hardly hedgerows, little lines Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms, Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke Sent up, in silence, from among the trees! With some uncertain notice, as might seem Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, 20 Or of some hermit's cave, where by his fire The hermit sits alone.
These beauteous forms, Through a long absence, have not been to me As is a landscape to a blind man's eye: But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din Of towns and cities, I have owed to them In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; And passing even into my purer mind, With tranquil restoration:- feelings too Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps, As have no slight or trivial influence On that best portion of a good man's life, His little, nameless, unremembered acts Of kindness and of love Nor less, I trust, To them I may have owed another gift, Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood, In which the burthen of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened: that serene and blessed mood In which the affections gently lead us on, Until, the breath of this corporeal frame And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul: While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things.
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft- In darkness and amid the many shapes Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, Have hung upon the beatings of my heart - How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee, O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods, How often has my spirit turned to thee!
An appetite; a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye. That time is
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this Faint I, nor mourn, nor murmur; other gifts Have followed; for such loss, I would believe, Abundant recompense. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime, Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; A motion and a spirit, that impels
Of eye, and ear, — both what they half create, And what perceive; well pleased to recognise In nature and the language of the sense, The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being.
If I were not thus taught, should I the more Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me here upon the banks Of this fair river; thou my dearest friend, My dear, dear friend; and in thy voice I catch
I came among these hills; when like a roe I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams, Wherever nature led: more like a man Flying from something that he dreads, than one Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
The language of my former heart, and read My former pleasures in the shooting lights Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while May I behold in thee what I was once, My dear, dear sister! and this prayer I make, Knowing that Nature never did betray The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege, Through all the years of this our life, to lead From joy to joy: for she can so inform The mind that is within us, so impress With quietness and beauty, and so feed With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out By help of dreams can breed such fear and awe As falls upon us often when we look Into our minds, into the mind of Man My haunt, and the main region of my song. - Beauty - a living Presence of the earth, Surpassing the most fair ideal forms Which craft of delicate Spirits hath composed From earth's materials - waits upon my steps; Pitches her tents before me as I move, An hourly neighbour. Paradise, and groves Elysian, Fortunate Fields - - like those of old Sought in the Atlantic Main - why should they be
A history only of departed things, Or a mere fiction of what never was? For the discerning intellect of Man, When wedded to this goodly universe
In love and holy passion, shall find these A simple produce of the common day. - I, long before the blissful hour arrives, Would chant, in lonely peace, the spousal verse Of this great consummation: and, by words Which speak of nothing more than what we are, Would I arouse the sensual from their sleep Of death, and win the vacant and the vain To noble raptures; while my voice proclaims How exquisitely the individual mind (And the progressive powers perhaps no less Of the whole species) to the external world Is fitted:- and how exquisitely, too— Theme this but little heard of among men - The external world is fitted to the mind; And the creation (by no lower name
Can it be called) which they with blended might Accomplish: this is our high argument.
Thou bringest unto me a tale
« PreviousContinue » |