The owls have hardly sung their last, While our four travellers homeward wend; The owls have hooted all night long, And with the owls began my song, And with the owls must end.
For while they all were travelling home, Cried Betty," Tell us, Johnny, do, Where all this long night you have been, What you have heard, what you have seen: And, Johnny, mind you tell us true.'
Now Johnny all night long had heard The owls in tuneful concert strive; No doubt too he the moon had seen: For in the moonlight he had been From eight o'clock till five.
And thus, to Betty's question, he Made answer, like a traveller bold, (His very words I give to you,) "The cocks did crow to-whoo, to-whoo, And the sun did shine so cold!" -Thus answered Johnny in his glory, And that was all his travel's story.
COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING A TOUR.
[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.)]
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. 1 *—Once again Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, That 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, Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves 'Mid groves and copses.2 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! 3 With some uncertain notice, as might seem Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Among the woods and copses lose themselves, Nor with their green and simple hue, disturb The wild green landscape.
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
Among the woods and copses, nor disturb
The wild green landscape.
And the low copses-coming from the trees,
The river is not affected by the tides a few miles above Tintern. 1798.
Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire
Through a long absence, have not been to me 1 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 2 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
These forms of beauty have not been to me,
As may have had no trivial influence
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 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, 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
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 any interest Unborrowed from the eye.-That time is past, And all its aching joys are now no more, And all its dizzy raptures. Nor for this 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,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye, and ear,-both what they half create,* And what perceive; well pleased to recognise In nature and the language of the sense, The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being.
* This line has a close resemblance to an admirable line of Young's, the exact expression of which I do not recollect. 1798.
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