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. |