Written a few miles above TINTERN ABBEY, on revisiting the banks of the W'YE during a Tour.
Five years have passed; 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
* The river is not affected by the tides a few miles above Tintern.
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 Among the woods and copses, nor 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 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 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, 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 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.
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 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
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was,
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 nie 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, or any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.-That time is past,
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