1. LINES WRITTEN A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING A TOUR, July 13, 1798.
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.[4]--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 hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
17
Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms
18
Green to the very door; and wreathes 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.
25
These forms of beauty have not been to me,
26
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
27
But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din
28
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
29
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
30
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,
31
And passing even into my purer mind
32
With tranquil restoration:--feelings too
33
Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps,
34
As may have had no trivial influence
35
On that best portion of a good man's life;
36
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
37
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
38
To them I may have owed another gift,
39
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
40
In which the burthen of the mystery,
41
In which the heavy and the weary weight
42
Of all this unintelligible world
43
Is lighten'd:--that serene and blessed mood,
44
In which the affections gently lead us on,
45
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame,
46
And even the motion of our human blood
47
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
48
In body, and become a living soul:
49
While with an eye made quiet by the power
50
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
51
We see into the life of things.
53
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft,
54
In darkness, and amid the many shapes
55
Of joyless day-light; when the fretful stir
56
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
57
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart,
58
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee
59
O sylvan Wye! Thou wanderer through the woods,
60
How often has my spirit turned to thee!
61
And now, with gleams of half-extinguish'd thought,
62
With many recognitions dim and faint,
63
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
64
The picture of the mind revives again:
65
While here I stand, not only with the sense
66
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
67
That in this moment there is life and food
68
For future years. And so I dare to hope
69
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was, when first
70
I came among these hills; when like a roe
71
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
72
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
73
Wherever nature led; more like a man
74
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
75
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
76
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
77
And their glad animal movements all gone by,)
78
To me was all in all.--I cannot paint
79
What then I was. The sounding cataract
80
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
81
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
82
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
83
An appetite: a feeling and a love,
84
That had no need of a remoter charm,
85
By thought supplied, or any interest
86
Unborrowed from the eye.--That time is past,
87
And all its aching joys are now no more,
88
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
89
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur: other gifts
90
Have followed, for such loss, I would believe,
91
Abundant recompence. For I have learned
92
To look on nature, not as in the hour
93
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
94
The still, sad music of humanity,
95
Not harsh nor grating, though of ample power
96
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
97
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
98
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
99
Of something far more deeply interfused,
100
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
101
And the round ocean, and the living air,
102
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
103
A motion and a spirit, that impels
104
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
105
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
106
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
107
And mountains; and of all that we behold
108
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
109
Of eye and ear, both what they half-create,[5]
110
And what perceive; well pleased to recognize
111
In nature and the language of the sense,
112
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
113
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
114
Of all my moral being.
116
If I were not thus taught, should I the more
117
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
118
For thou art with me, here, upon the banks
119
Of this fair river; thou, my dearest Friend,
120
My dear, dear Friend, and in thy voice I catch
121
The language of my former heart, and read
122
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
123
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
124
May I behold in thee what I was once,
125
My dear, dear Sister! And this prayer I make,
126
Knowing that Nature never did betray
127
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
128
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
129
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
130
The mind that is within us, so impress
131
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
132
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
133
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
134
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
135
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
136
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
137
Our chearful faith that all which we behold
138
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
139
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
140
And let the misty mountain winds be free
141
To blow against thee: and in after years,
142
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
143
Into a sober pleasure, when thy mind
144
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
145
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
146
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; Oh! then,
147
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
148
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
149
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
150
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance,
151
If I should be, where I no more can hear
152
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
153
Of past existence, wilt thou then forget
154
That on the banks of this delightful stream
155
We stood together; and that I, so long
156
A worshipper of Nature, hither came,
157
Unwearied in that service: rather say
158
With warmer love, oh! with far deeper zeal
159
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
160
That after many wanderings, many years
161
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
162
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
163
More dear, both for themselves, and for thy sake.
164
Footnote 4 :The river is not affected by the tides a few miles above Tintern.
|
