"Poor victim! no idle intruder has stood
"Witho'erweening complacence our state to compare,
"But one, whose first wish is the wish to be good, " Is come as a brother thy sorrows to share.
"At thy name though compassion her nature resign, "Though in virtue's proud mouth thy report be a stain,
"My care, if the arm of the mighty were mine,
"Would plant thee where yet thou might'st blossom again."
WRITTEN A FEW MILES ABOVE
ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING
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 Here, under this dark sycamore, and view These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts, Which, at this season, with their unripe fruits, Among the woods and copses lose themselves, Nor, with their green and simple hue, 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 wreathes of smoke Sent up, in silence, from among the trees, And the low copses—coming from 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 lighten'd:—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 through the woods, How often has my spirit turned to thee!
And now, with gleams of half-extinguish'd thought,
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