Wordsworth Read Free Page A

calm
    Where all things else are still and motionless.
    And yet, even now, a little breeze, perchance
    Escaped from boisterous winds that rage without,
    Has entered, by the sturdy oaks unfelt,
    But to its gentle touch how sensitive
    Is the light ash! that, pendent from the brow
    Of yon dim cave, in seeming silence makes
    A soft eye-music of slow-waving boughs,
    Powerful almost as vocal harmony
    To stay the wanderer’s steps and soothe his thoughts.
LINES COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING A TOUR. JULY 13, 1798
    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 soft inland murmur. – 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,
    Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
    ’Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
    These hedgerows, hardly hedgerows, 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 burden 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 through 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)
    To me was all in all.