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COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING A TOUR, JULY 13TH, 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
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. Once again I see

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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 unremember'd pleasure; such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremember'd 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

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

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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, O, 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 turn'd to thee,

O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer through the woods,
How often has my spirit turn'd to thee!

And now, with gleams of half-extinguish'd 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,

2X That had no need of a remoter charm,

By thought supplied, nor any interest
Unborrow'd 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 follow'd; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense. For I have learn'd
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,

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see p. 35 .72 seep.

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.

Nor, perchance,
If I were not thus taught, should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:

For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. O, yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform

7. This is rather mystical, perhaps, and may be thought by some to savour of Pan. theism. But Wordsworth was fond of contemplating all Nature, material and immaterial, as being pervaded by a living, quickening, intelligent Soul, a conscious beauty-making Power; which, after all, may be only another term for the Divine Omnipresence.

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The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the Moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;

And let the misty mountain-winds be free
To blow against thee and, in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind.
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place

For all sweet sounds and harmonies; O, then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,

Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,

And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance,-
If I should be where I no more can hear

Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence,-wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; and that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came
Unwearied in that service; rather say
With warmer love,-O, with far deeper zeal
Of holier love! Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me

More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake. [1798.

8 This is decidedly one of Wordsworth's most characteristic strains. It was given to the world in his first volume of Lyrical Ballads, 1798, and may be not unjustly said to have inaugurated a new era in English Poetry. Perhaps a more original vein was never struck by any uninspired hand: certainly England had not produced any thing approaching it in originality since the days of Milton. The enthusiastic worship of Nature here displayed may seem excessive to some; though this very excess, if such it be, constitutes, in part, the unique and peculiar charm of the poem. To the poet's early love of Nature, as kindled and fed by the Takes and streams and mountains of his native region, there had succeeded a course of brain-tugging speculations: the French Revolution had, for a time, quite unsphered his mind, and whirled him far out of his proper orbit into a region where his more genial faculties could not breathe; he had lost his better self, and almost broken his heart among the problems started by the events of the time. While in this state of exile from his true intellectual home, he was restored to the society of his sister, whose influence won him back to his first love; and in this poem we have, preeminently, his first transports of returning health, his fullest outpourings of rapture on regaining his heart's home. In his notes dictated at the age of seventy-three, we have the following: "No poem of mine was composed under circumstances more pleasant for me to remember than this. I

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66

LAODAMIA.

WITH Sacrifice before the rising morn

Vows have I made by fruitless hope inspired; 9.
And from th' infernal Gods, 'mid shades forlorn

Of night, my slaughter'd Lord have I required:
Celestial pity I again implore;-

Restore him to my sight,- great Jove, restore!"

So speaking, and by fervent love endow'd

With faith, the Suppliant heavenward lifts her hands;
While, like the Sun emerging from a cloud,

Her countenance brightens, and her eye expands;
Her bosom heaves and spreads, her stature grows;
And she expects the issue in repose

O terror! what hath she perceived? - O joy!
What doth she look on? whom doth she behold?
Her Hero slain upon the beach of Troy?
His vital presence? his corporeal mould?
It is, if sense deceive her not, - 'tis He!
And a God leads him, wingèd Mercury!-

Mild Hermes spake, and touch'd her with his wand nagie

That calms all fear: "Such grace hath crown'd thy prayer,
Laodamía! that at Jove's command

Thy Husband walks the paths of upper air:

He comes to tarry with thee three hours' space;
Accept the gift, behold him face to face!"

Forth sprang th' impassion'd Queen her Lord to clasp;
Again that consummation she essay'd;
But unsubstantial Form eludes her grasp
As often as that eager grasp was made.
The Phantom parts,-but parts to re-unite,
And re-assume his place before her sight.

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 Bris tol."

9 In this piece, as also in Dion, the author worked, and with most happy success, a vein which he had not before touched. Both of the poems are as classical in the style and manner as they are in the subjects. Though the poet carries to them his own mode of thought, as he needs must do, still there is nothing of his personality in them: he transports himself as completely into the old mythological point of view as any Greek or Roman poet could have done. About the time he was writing them, he was attending a good deal to the education of his son John, and helping to prepare him for the University; and this put him upon reperusing the principal Latin poets. Lamb, in one of his letters to Wordsworth, has the following: “Laodamia is a very original poem; I mean original with reference to your own manner. You have nothing like it. I should have seen it in a strange place, and greatly admired it, but not suspected its derivation."

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