One moment now may give us more Some silent laws our hearts will make, To her fair works did Nature link hower, 1798. 1798. And from the blessed power that rolls Then come, my Sister! come, I pray, With speed put on your woodland dress; And bring no book : for this one day We 'll give to idleness. 1798. 1798. A WHIRL-BLAST FROM BEHIND THE HILL Ez replies A WHIRL-BLAST from behind the hill Rushed o'er the wood with startiing sound; Then--all at once the air was still, And showers of hailstones pattered round. Where leafless oaks towered high above, I sat within an undergrove Or tallest hollies, tall and green; A fairer bower was never seen. From year to year the spacious floor With withered leaves is covered o'er, And all the year the bower is green, But see! where'er the hailstones drop The withered leaves all skip and hop; There's not a breeze-no breath of airYet here, and there, and everywhere Along the floor, beneath the shade By those embowering hollies made, The leaves in myriads jump and spring, As if with pipes and music rare Some Robin Good-fellow were there, And all those leaves, in festive glee, Were dancing to the minstrelsy. 1798. 1800. My sister! ('tis a wish of mine) Edward will come with you ;--and, pray, EXPOSTULATION AND REPLY Love, now a un sal birth, “WHY, William, on that old gr stone “Where are your books ?--that light be queathed To Beings else forlorn and blind! Up! up! and drink the spirit breathed From dead men to their kind. And hark ! how blithe the throstle sings ! things: “You look round on your Mother Earth, 1798. 1798. Enough of Science and of Art; LINES COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERY ABBEY, ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING A TOUR. JULY 13, 1798. No poem of mine was composed under circum. stances more pleasant for me to remember than this. I began it upon leaving Tintern, after crossing the Wye, and concluded it just its 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. (Iordsworth. The volume referred to is The Lyrical Ballads, as first published at Bristol by Cottle.) THE TABLES TURNED AN EVENING SCENE ON TIIE SAME SUBJECT UP!up ! my Friend, and quit your books; looks ; spread, Five years have past; five summers, with the length Of five long winters ! and again I hear These waters, rolling from their moun tain-springs With a soft inland murmur. L-Ouce 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 1 The river is not affected by the tides a few miles abuve Tiuteru. (Horustrurth, 1798.) seem sense 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 hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines Of sportive wood run wild : these pas toral farms, Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke Sent up, in silence, from among the trees ! With some uncertain notice, as might 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, per haps, s 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 oftIn 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 heartHow 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-extin guished 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 Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts That in this moment there is life and food And so i' dare to há pleti For future years. hope, Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first I came among these hills; when like a 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) To me was all in all.- I cannot paint What then I was. The sounding cata ract Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colors and their forms, were then to me An appetite ; a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, roe moon By thought supplied, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye.—That time is 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 beliere, Abundant recompense. For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing often times The still, sad music of humanity, Nor harslı 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 inter fused, 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 be hold From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye, and ear,--both what they half create, And what perceive; well pleased to recognize 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 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 privi lege, 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 The dreary intercourse of daily life. Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold Is full of blessings. Therefore let the Shine on thee in thy solitary walk : And let the misty mountain-winds be free To blow against thee : and, in after years, When these wild ecstasies shall be matured Into a sober pleasure ; when thy mind Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms, Thy memory be as a dwelling-place For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then, If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief, Should be thy portion, with what heal. ing thoughts Of tender joy wilt thou remember me, And these my exhortations ! Nor, per chanceIf I should be where I no more can hear Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams Of past existence--wilt thou then forget That on the banks of this delightful stream We stood together; and that I, so long A worshipper of Nature, hither came Unwearied in that service : rather say With warmer love-oh! with far deeper zeal Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then for get, Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me That after many wanderings, many years Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs, And this green pastoral landscape, were to me More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake! 1798. 1798. THE SIMPLON PASS me -BROOK and road Were, fellow-travellers in this gloomy Pass, And with them did we journey several hours At a slow step. The immeasurable height Of woods decaying, never to be decayed, The stationary blasts of waterfalls, And in the narrow rent, at every turn, Winds thwarting winds bewildered and forlorn, The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky, The rocks that muttered close upon our ears, Black drizzling crags that spake by the wayside As if a voice were in them, the sick sight And giddy prospect of the raving stream, The unfettered clouds and region of the heavens, Tumult and peace, the darkness and the lightWere all like workings of one mind, the features Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree, Characters of the great Apocalypse, The types and symbols of Eternity, Of first, and last, and midst, and without end. 1799. 1815. The passions that build up our human soul; Not with the mean and vulgar works of Man, But with high objects, with enduring things, With life and nature : purifying thus The elements of feeling and of thought, And sanctifying by such discipline Both pain and fear,--until we recognize A grandeur in the beatings of the heart. Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to With stinted kindness. In November days, When vapors rolling down the valleys made A lonely scene more lonesome ; among woods At noon; and 'mid the calm of summer nights, When by the margin of the trembling lake, Beveath the gloomy bills, homeward I went In solitude, such intercourse was mine : Mine was it in the fields both day and night, And by the waters, all the summer long. And in the frosty season, when the sun Was set, and, visible for many a mile, The cottage-windows through the twi liglot blazed, I beeded not the summons: happy time It was indeed for all of us; for me It was a time of rapture! Clear and loud The village-clock tolled six-I wheeled about, Proud and exulting like an untired horse That cares not for his home.--All shod with steel We hissed along the polished ice, in games Confederate, imitative of the chase And woodland pleasures,--the resound ing horn, The pack loud-chiming, and the hunted hare. So through the darkness and the cold we flew, And not a voice was idle: wit, the din Smitten, the precipices rang aloud : The leafless trees and every icy crag Tinkled like iron ; while far-distant hills Into the tumult sent an alien sound Of melancholy, not unnoticed while the stars, INFLUENCE OF NATURAL OBJECTS IN CALLING FORTH AND STRENGTHENING THE IMAGINATION IN BOYHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH WISDOM and Spirit of the universe ! Thou Soul, that art the Eternity of thought! And giv'st to forms and images a breath And everlasting motion ! not in vain, By day or star-light, thus from my first dawn |