Beneath the moon, yet shining fair,
As careless as if nothing were,
Sits upright on a feeding horse?

Unto his horse-there feeding free,
He seems, I think, the rein to give ;
Of moon or stars he takes no heed;
Of such we in romances read:

'Tis Johnny! Johnny! as I live.
And that's the very Pony, too!
Where is she, where is Betty Foy?
She hardly can sustain her fears;
The roaring waterfall she hears,
And cannot find her Idiot Boy.

Your Pony's worth his weight in gold:
Then calm your terrors, Betty Foy!
She's coming from among the trees,
And now all full in view she sees
Him whom she loves, her Idiot Boy.

And Betty sees the Pony too :
Why stand you thus, good Betty Foy?
It is no goblin, 'tis no ghost,
'Tis he whom you so long have lost,
He whom you love, your Idiot Boy.

She looks again-her arms are up-
She screams-she cannot move for joy ;
She darts, as with a torrent's force,
She almost has o'erturned the Horse,
And fast she holds her Idiot Boy.

And Johnny burrs, and laughs aloud;
Whether in cunning or in joy
I cannot tell; but while he laughs,
Betty a drunken pleasure quaffs
To hear again her Idiot Boy.

And now she's at the Pony's tail,
And now is at the Pony's head,-
On that side now, and now on this;
And, almost stifled with her bliss,
A few sad tears does Betty shed.

She kisses o'er and o'er again
Him whom she loves, her Idiot Boy;
She's happy here, is happy there,
She is uneasy every where ;
Her limbs are all alive with joy.

She pats the Pony, where or when
She knows not, happy Betty Foy!
The little Pony glad may be,
But he is milder far than she,
You hardly can perceive his joy.

"Oh! Johnny, never mind the Doctor;
You've done your best, and that is all :"
She took the reins, when this was said,
And gently turned the Pony's head
From the loud waterfall.

By this the stars were almost gone, The moon was setting on the hill, So pale you scarcely looked at her : The little birds began to stir, Though yet their tongues were still.

The Pony, Betty, and her Boy,
Wind slowly through the woody dale;
And who is she, betimes abroad,
That hobbles up the steep rough road?
Who is it, but old Susan Gale?

Long time lay Susan lost in thought;
And many dreadful fears beset her,
Both for her Messenger and Nurse ;
And, as her mind grew worse and worse,
Her body-it grew better.

She turned, she tossed herself in bed,
On all sides doubts and terrors met her;
Point after point did she discuss;
And, while her mind was fighting thus,
Her body still grew better.

"Alas! what is become of them?
These fears can never be endured;
I'll to the wood."-The word scarce said,
Did Susan rise up from her bed,
As if by magic cured.

Away she goes up hill and down,

And to the wood at length is come;

She spies her Friends, she shouts a greet

ing;

Oh me! it is a merry meeting

As ever was in Christendom.

The owls have hardly sung their last,

While our four travellers homeward wend;
The owls have hooted all night long,
And with the owls began my song,
And with the owls must end.

For while they all were travelling home,
Cried Betty, "Tell us, Johnny, do,
Where all this long night you have been,
What you have heard, what you have

seen:

And, Johnny, mind you tell us true."

COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING A TOUR. JULY 13, 1798

No poem of mine was composed under circumstances more pleasant for me to remember than this. I began it upon leaving Tintern, after crossing the Wye, and concluded it just as I was entering Bristol in the evening, after a ramble of four or five days, with my Sister. Not a line of it was altered, and not any part of it written down till I reached Bristol. It was published almost immediately after in the little volume of which so much has been said in these Notes.-(The Lyrical Ballads, as first published at Bristol by Cottle.)

FIVE years have past; five summers, with the length

Of five long winters! and again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountainsprings

With a soft inland murmur.1-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,

1 The river is not affected by the tides a few miles above Tintern.

Are clad in one green hue, and lose them. selves

'Mid groves and copses.

Once again I see These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, 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, 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.

If this

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! And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,

With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again :
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing
thoughts

That in this moment there is life and food

For future years. And so I dare to hope, Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first

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 coarser pleasures of my boyish days, And their glad animal movements all gone by)

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
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore
am I still

A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty
world

Of eye, and ear, both what they half create, 1

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.

Nor perchance,

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

Their colours and their forms, were then to

me

read

past,

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 recompence. 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,

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,

power

To chasten and subdue. And I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy

1 This line has a close resemblance to an admirable line of Young's, the exact expression of which I do not recollect.

The aged beggar coming, quits her work, And lifts the latch for him that he may pass.

The post-boy, when his rattling wheels o'ertake

The aged Beggar in the woody lane, Shouts to him from behind; and if, thus warned,

The old man does not change his course, the boy

Turns with less noisy wheels to the roadside,

And passes gently by, without a curse

Upon his lips, or anger at his heart.

He travels on, a solitary Man; His age has no companion.

ground

On the

His eyes are turned, and, as he moves along

They move along the ground; and, ever

more,

Instead of common and habitual sight
Of fields with rural works, of hill and dale,
And the blue sky, one little span of earth
Is all his prospect. Thus, from day to
day,

Bow-bent, his eyes for ever on the ground,
He plies his weary journey; seeing still,
And seldom knowing that he sees, some
straw,

Some scattered leaf, or marks which, in one track,

The nails of cart or chariot-wheel have left Impressed on the white road, in the same line,

At distance still the same.

Poor Traveller!

His staff trails with him; scarcely do his feet

Disturb the summer dust; he is so still
In look and motion, that the cottage curs,
Ere he has passed the door, will turn away,
Weary of barking at him. Boys and girls,
The vacant and the busy, maids and
youths,

by:

Him even the slow-paced waggon leaves behind.

But deem not this Man useless.Statesmen! ye

Who are so restless in your wisdom, ye Who have a broom still ready in your hands

To rid the world of nuisances; ye proud, Heart-swoln, while in your pride ye contemplate

Your talents, power, or wisdom, deem him

not

A burthen of the earth! 'Tis Nature's law

That none, the meanest of created things, Or forms created the most vile and brute, The dullest or most noxious, should exist Divorced from good-a spirit and pulse of good,

A life and soul, to every mode of being Inseparably linked. Then be assured That least of all can aught-that ever owned

The heaven-regarding eye and front sublime Which man is born to- sink, howe'er

depressed,

So low as to be scorned without a sin;
Without offence to God cast out of view;
Like the dry remnant of a garden-flower
Whose seeds are shed, or as an implement
Worn out and worthless. While from
door to door,

This old Man creeps, the villagers in him
Behold a record which together binds
Past deeds and offices of charity,
Else unremembered, and so keeps alive
The kindly mood in hearts which lapse of
years,

And that half-wisdom half-experience gives,
Make slow to feel, and by sure steps resign
To selfishness and cold oblivious cares.
Among the farms and solitary huts,
Hamlets and thinly-scattered villages.
Where'er the aged Beggar takes his rounds,
The mild necessity of use compels

To acts of love; and habit does the work Of reason; yet prepares that after-joy Which reason cherishes. And thus the

soul,

By that sweet taste of pleasure unpursued,
Doth find herself insensibly disposed
To virtue and true goodness.