With earnest feeling I shall pray For thee when I am far away: For never saw I mien, or face, In which more plainly I could trace Benignity and home-bred sense Ripening in perfect innocence. Here scattered, like a random seed, Remote from men, Thou dost not need The embarrassed look of shy distress, And maidenly shamefacedness: Thou wear'st upon thy forehead clear The freedom of a Mountaineer: A face with gladness overspread! Soft smiles, by human kindness bred! And seemliness complete, that sways Thy courtesies, about thee plays ; With no restraint, but such as springs From quick and eager visitings Of thoughts that lie beyond the reach Of thy few words of English speech: A bondage sweetly brooked, a strife That gives thy gestures grace and life! So have I, not unmoved in mind, Seen birds of tempest-loving kind-Thus beating up against the wind. What hand but would a garland cull For thee who art so beautiful? O happy pleasure! here to dwell Beside thee in some heathy dell; Adopt your homely ways, and dress, A Shepherd, thou a Shepherdess! But I could frame a wish for thee More like a grave reality: Thou art to me but as a wave Of the wild sea; and I would have Some claim upon thee, if I could, Though but of common neighborhood. What joy to hear thee, and to see! Thy elder Brother I would be, Thy Father--anything to thee! Now thanks to Heaven! that of its grace Hath led me to this lonely place. 1803. 1807. STEPPING WESTWARD While my Fellow-traveller and I were walking by the side of Loch Ketterine, one fine evening after sunset, in our road to a Hut where, in the course of our Tour, we had been hospitably entertained some weeks before, we met, in one of the loneliest parts of that solitary region, two well-dressed Women, one of whom said to us by way of greeting, "What, you are stepping westward? (Wordsworth.) "What, you are stepping westward ?' Yea." -Twould be a wildish destiny, The dewy ground was dark and cold; I liked the greeting; 't was a sound The very sound of courtesy: THE SOLITARY REAPER BEHOLD her, single in the field, No Nightingale did ever chant A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard Will no one tell me what she sings?- Or is it some more humble lay, Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, "Whate'er the theme, the maiden sang YARROW UNVISITED See the various Poems the scene of which is laid upon the banks of the Yarrow; in particuar, the exquisite Ballad of Hamilton beginning "Busk ye, busk ye, my bonny, bonny Bride,-Busk ve busk ye, my winsome Marrow !-" (Wordsworth). FROM Stirling castle we had seen Had trod the banks of Clyde, and Tay, "Let Yarrow folk, frae Selkirk town, But we will downward with the Tweed, "There's Galla Water, Leader Haughs, The lintwhites sing in chorus ; "What's Yarrow but a river bare, That glides the dark hills under? There are a thousand such elsewhere As worthy of your wonder." -Strange words they seemed of slight and scorn My True-love sighed for sorrow; I thus could speak of Yarrow ! "Oh! green," said I, "are Yarrow's holms, And sweet is Yarrow flowing! Fair hangs the apple frae the rock, "Let beeves and home-bred kine partake "Be Yarrow stream unseen, unknown! The treasured dreams of times long past, "If Care with freezing years should I re "In my Ode on the Intimations of Immortality in Childhood, I do not profess to give a literal representation of the state of the affections and of the moral being in childhood. cord my own feelings at that time--my absolute spirituality, my all-soulness,' if I may so speak. At that time I could not believe that I should lie down quietly in the grave, and that my body would moulder into dust." (Wordsworth in conversation; Knight's Life of Wordsworth, II, 326.) I THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing Boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows. He sees it in his joy; The Youth, who daily farther from the Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither, Can in a moment travel thither, And see the Children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. X Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song! And let the young Lambs bound As to the tabor's sound! We in thought will join your throng, Ye that pipe and ye that play, Ye that through your hearts to-day Feel the gladness of the May! What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now forever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find Which having been must ever be; In the faith that looks through In years that bring the philosophic mind. Thanks to the human heart by which we live, Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for 1803-6. 1807. tears. TO THE CUCKOO O BLITHE New-comer! I have heard, O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird, Though babbling only to the Vale, Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring! No bird, but an invisible thing, A voice, a mystery; The same whom in my school-boy days I listened to; that Cry Which made me look a thousand ways To seek thee did I often rove And I can listen to thee yet; O blessed Bird! the earth we pace An unsubstantial, faery place; 1804. 1807. SHE WAS A PHANTOM OF DELIGHT Written at Town-end, Grasmere. The germ of this poem was four lines composed as a part of the verses on the Highland Girl. Though beginning in this way, it was written from my heart. as is sufficiently obvious. (Wordsworth.) SHE was a Phantom of delight When first she gleamed upon my sight |