| 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 sweet inland murmur.*—Once again | |
| Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, | |
| Which 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 | 10 |
| These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts, | |
| Which, at this season, with their unripe fruits, | |
| Among the woods and copses lose themselves, | |
| Nor, with their green and simple hue, disturb | |
| The wild green landscape. 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 wreathes of smoke | |
| Sent up, in silence, from among the trees, | |
| With some uncertain notice, as might seem, | 20 |
| Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, | |
| Or of some hermit's cave, where by his fire | |
The hermit sits alone.
| |
| Though absent long, | |
| These forms of beauty 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 | 30 |
| With tranquil restoration:—feelings too | |
| Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps, | |
| As may have had no 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 | 40 |
| Of all this unintelligible world | |
| Is lighten'd:—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.
| 50 |
| If this | |
| Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft, | |
| In darkness, and amid the many shapes | |
| Of joyless day-light; 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 through the wood | |
How often has my spirit turned to thee!
| |
| And now, with gleams of half-extinguish'd though[t,] | |
| With many recognitions dim and faint, | 60 |
| 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, | 70 |
| 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 cataract | |
| Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock, | |
| The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, | |
| Their colours and their forms, were then to me | 80 |
| An appetite: a feeling and a love, | |
| That had no need of a remoter charm, | |
| By thought supplied, or 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 believe, | |
| Abundant recompence. For I have learned | |
| To look on nature, not as in the hour | 90 |
| 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, | 100 |
| 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,* | |
| And what perceive; well pleased to recognize | |
| In nature and the language of the sense, | |
| The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, | 110 |
| 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 | 120 |
| 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, | 130 |
| Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all | |
| The dreary intercourse of daily life, | |
| Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb | |
| Our chearful faith that all which we behold | |
| Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon | |
| 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 | 140 |
| 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 healing thoughts | |
| Of tender joy wilt thou remember me, | |
| And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance, | |
| If 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 | 150 |
| 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 forget, | |
| 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. | 160 |