Peter went forth with him straightway;
And, with due care, ere break of day,
Together they brought back the Corse.

And many years did this poor Ass,
Whom once it was my luck to see
Cropping the shrubs of Leming-Lane,
Help by his labour to maintain
The Widow and her family.

And Peter Bell, who, till that night,

Had been the wildest of his clan,

Forsook his crimes, renounced 1 his folly,

And, after ten months' melancholy,

Became a good and honest man.*

1 1832.

repressed

1125

1130

1135

1819.

*The first and second editions of Peter Bell (1819) contained, as frontispiece, an engraving by J. C. Bromley, after a picture by Sir George Beaumont. In 1807, Wordsworth wrote to Sir George: "I am quite delighted to hear of your picture for Peter Bell. But remember that no poem of mine will ever be popular, and I am afraid that the sale of 'Peter' would not carry the expense of engraving... The people would love the poem of Peter Bell, but the public (a very different thing) will never love it." Some days before Wordsworth's Peter Bell was issued in 1819, another Peter Bell was published by Messrs. Taylor and Hessey. It was a parody written by J. Hamilton Reynolds, and issued as Peter Bell, a Lyrical Ballad, with the sentence on its title page, "I do affirm that I am the real Simon Pure." The preface, which follows, is too paltry to quote; and the stanzas which make up the poem contain allusions to the more trivial of the early "Lyrical Ballads" (Betty Foy, Harry Gill, etc.). Wordsworth's Peter Bell was published about a week later; and Shelley afterwards published his Peter Bell the Third. Charles Lamb wrote to Wordsworth, in May 1819: "Dear Wordsworth-I received a copy of Peter Bell a week ago, and I hope the author will not be offended if I say I do not much relish it. The humour, if it is meant for humour, is forced; and then the price!-sixpence would have been dear for it. Mind, I do not mean your Peter Bell, but a Peter Bell, which preceded it about a week, and is in every bookseller's shop window in London, the type and paper nothing differing from the true one, the preface signed W. W., and the supplementary preface quoting, as the author's words, an extract from the supplementary preface to the Lyrical Ballads.' Is there no law against these rascals? I would have this Lambert Simnel whipt at the cart's tail." (The Letters of Charles Lamb, edited by A. Ainger, vol. ii. p. 20.)

Barron Field wrote on the title-page of his copy of the edition of Peter Bell, 1819, "And his carcase was cast in the way, and the ass stood by it." 1 Kings xiii. 24.-ED..

LINES,*

COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING A TOUR, JULY 13, 1798 †

Composed July 1798.-Published 1798

[July 1798. No poem of mine was composed under circumstances more pleasant for me to remember than this. I began it upon leaving Tintern, after crossing the Wye, and concluded it just as I was entering Bristol in the evening, after a ramble of four or five days, with my sister. Not a line of it was altered, and not any part of it written down till I reached Bristol. It was published almost immediately after in the little volume of which so much has been said in these Notes, the " 'Lyrical Ballads," as first published at Bristol by Cottle.—I. F.]

Included among the "Poems of the Imagination.”—ED.

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 soft1 inland murmur. §-Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,

That 2 on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect

5

* I have not ventured to call this Poem an Ode; but it was written with a hope that in the transitions, and the impassioned music of the versification would be found the principal requisites of that species of composition.

W. W. 1800.

The title in 1798 was Lines, written a few miles, etc. assumed its final form.-ED.

In 1815 it

Compare the Fenwick note to the poem Guilt and Sorrow (vol. i. p. 78). This visit, five years before, was on his way from "Sarum plain," on foot and alone-after parting with his friend William Calvert-to visit another friend, Robert Jones, in Wales.-ED.

The river is not affected by the tides a few miles above Tintern.W. W. 1798.

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
'Mid groves and copses.1 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 2
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,3
With tranquil restoration :-feelings too

1 1845.

with their unripe fruits,

Among the woods and copses lose themselves,
Nor, with their green and simple hue, disturb
The wild green landscape.

ΙΟ

14

20

25

30

1798.

Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
Among the woods and copses, nor disturb

1802.

2 1827.

Though absent long,

These forms of beauty have not been to me,

3 1798.

inmost mind,

1798.

MS.

* In the edition of 1798, an additional line is here introduced, but it is deleted in the errata. It is

And the low copses-coming from the trees.

ED.

Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,

As have no slight or trivial influence 1
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.

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
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, 2

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

60

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

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,
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, nor 1 any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.-That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. * Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompence. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour

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70

75

80

85

Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,

Nor 2 harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt

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