« Poor victim! no idle intruder has stood

“ With o'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."

LINES

WRITTEN A FEW MILES ABOVE

TINTERN ABBEY, ON REVISITING THE PANKS OF THE WYE DURING

A TOUR,

July 13, 1798.

ز

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.

Though absent long, 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.

If this
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,