The Pony, Betty, and her Boy,
Wind slowly through the woody dale;
And who is she, betimes abroad,

That hobbles up the steep rough road?
Who is it, but old Susan Gale?

Long time lay Susan lost in thought ; 1
And many dreadful fears beset her,
Both for her Messenger and Nurse:
And, as her mind grew worse and worse,
Her body-it grew better.

She turned, she tossed herself in bed,

On all sides doubts and terrors met her;

Point after point did she discuss;
And, while her mind was fighting thus,
Her body still grew better.

"Alas! what is become of them?
These fears can never be endured;
I'll to the wood."-The word scarce said,
Did Susan rise up from her bed,
As if by magic cured.

Away she goes up hill and down,

And to the wood at length is come;

She spies her Friends, she shouts a greeting;
Oh me it is a merry meeting

As ever was in Christendom.

1 1827.

Long Susan lay deep lost in thought,

1798.

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.

LINES,

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
-Once again

With a soft inland murmur. 1*.

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
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,

1 1845.

With a sweet inland murmur.

1798.

2

1845.

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

1798.

Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves

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

Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire

The Hermit sits alone.

Those beauteous forms,

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

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,

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,