I bear away my recompence.

In spots like these it is we prize

Our Memory: feel that she hath eyes:
Then, why should I be loth to stir?

I feel this place was made for her;
To give new pleasure like the past,
Continued long as life shall last.

65

70

Nor am I loth, though pleased at heart,

Sweet Highland Girl! from thee to part:

For I, methinks, till I grow old,

75

As fair before me shall behold,

As I do now, the cabin small,
The lake, the bay, the waterfall;
And Thee, the Spirit of them all!

TO A SKY-LARK.

Up with me! up with me into the clouds!
For thy song, Lark, is strong;

Up with me, up with me into the clouds!
Singing, singing,

With clouds and sky about thee ringing,

Lift me, guide me till I find

5

That spot which seems so to thy mind!

I have walked through wildernesses dreary
And to-day my heart is weary ;

Had I now the wings of a Faery,

Up to thee would I fly.

There is madness about thee, and joy divine
In that song of thine;

Lift me, guide me high and high

To thy banqueting-place in the sky.

Joyous as morning

Thou art laughing and scorning;

Thou hast a nest for thy love and thy rest,

ΙΟ

15

And, though little troubled with sloth,
Drunken Lark! thou would'st be loth

To be such a traveller as I.

Happy, happy Liver,

With a soul as strong as a mountain river
Pouring out praise to the Almighty Giver,
Joy and jollity be with us both!

Alas! my journey, rugged and uneven,

Through prickly moors or dusty ways must wind;
But hearing thee, or others of thy kind,

As full of gladness and as free of heaven,

I, with my fate contented, will plod on,

And hope for higher raptures, when life's day is done.

TO THE CUCKOO.

O BLITHE New-comer! I have heard,

I hear thee and rejoice.

O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird,

Or but a wandering Voice?

While I am lying on the grass

Thy twofold shout I hear,

From hill to hill it seems to pass,

At once far off, and near.

20

25

30

5

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

5

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

ΙΟ

'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,

40

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

45

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

50

Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart-
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,

55

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,

60

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

65

70

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,

75

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,

80

now no more,

Not for this

By thought supplied, nor any interest
Unborrowed from the eye. - That time is past,
And all its aching joys are
And all its dizzy raptures.
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense. 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,

85

90