376. Lines

Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour July 13, 1798

William Wordsworth (1770—1850)

  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 hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, 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 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 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 thro’ 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.—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

  An appetite; a feeling and a love,

  That had no need of a remoter charm,

  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 believe,

  Abundant recompence. For I have learned

  To look on nature, not as in the hour

  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:

  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 recognise

  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 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,

  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 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

  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 those 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 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!