O most ambitious Star! an inquest wrought
Within me when I recognised thy light;

A moment I was startled at the sight:

And, while I gazed, there came to me a thought

That I might step beyond my natural race

*

As thou seem'st now to do; might one day trace

Some ground not mine; and, strong her strength above,

My Soul, an Apparition in the place,

Tread there with steps that no one shall reprove!

1803.

FRENCH REVOLUTION, †

AS IT APPEARED TO ENTHUSIASTS AT ITS COMMENCEMENT.
REPRINTED FROM THE FRIEND."

OH! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!
For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
Upon our side, we who were strong in love!
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,

But to be young was very heaven !—Oh! times,
In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
The attraction of a country in romance!

When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights,
When most intent on making of herself
A prime Enchantress-to assist the work,
Which then was going forward in her name!
Not favoured spots alone, but the whole earth,

* That even I beyond my natural race

Might step as thou dost now: might one day trace.-Edit. 1815.

This short poem is an extract from Book XI. of "The Prelude," published since the author's death.

The beauty wore of promise, that which sets
(As at some moment might not be unfelt
Among the bowers of paradise itself)
The budding rose above the rose full blown.
What temper at the prospect did not wake
To happiness unthought of? The inert
Were roused, and lively natures rapt away!
They who had fed their childhood upon dreams,
The playfellows of fancy, who had made
All powers of swiftness, subtilty, and strength
Their ministers, who in lordly wise had stirred
Among the grandest objects of the sense,
And dealt with whatsoever they found there
As if they had within some lurking right
To wield it; they, too, who, of gentle mood,
Had watched all gentle motions, and to these
Had fitted their own thoughts, schemers more mild,
And in the region of their peaceful selves ;
Now was it that both found, the meek and lofty
Did both find, helpers to their heart's desire,
And stuff at hand, plastic as they could wish;
Were called upon to exercise their skill,
Not in Utopia, subterranean fields,

Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where !
But in the very world, which is the world
Of all of us, the place where in the end
We find our happiness, or not at all!

1805.

ECHOES.

YES, it was the mountain Echo,*
Solitary, clear, profound,

Answering to the shouting Cuckoo,
Giving to her sound for sound! †

Unsolicited reply

To a babbling wanderer sent;
Like her ordinary cry,

Like-but oh, how different!

Hears not also mortal Life?
Hear not we, unthinking Creatures!
Slaves of folly, love, or strife-
Voices of two different natures?

Have not we too ?-yes, we have
Answers, and we know not whence;
Echoes from beyond the grave,
Recognised intelligence !

Such rebounds our inward ear
Catches sometimes from afar-‡
Listen, ponder, hold them dear;
For of God,-of God they are.

* Yes! full surely 'twas the Echo.-Edit. 1815. Answering to Thee, shouting Cuckoo !

Giving to thee sound for sound.-Edit. 1815.

Such within ourselves we hear

Ofttimes, ours though sent from far.-Edit. 1815.

1806.

LINES,

COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING A TOUR.

FIVE years have past;

JULY 13, 1798.†

*

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

* Of all Wordsworth's earlier poems this one has probably made the deepest impression upon the philosophic mind of his time. It has also, on religious grounds, given rise to more objection than any other. His nephew and biographer says, that if the reflective reader, as is not improbable, should be of opinion that a "worshipper of Nature" is in danger of divinizing the creation, and of dishonouring the Creator, and that therefore some portions of this poem might be perverted to serve the purposes of a popular and pantheistic philosophy, he will remember that the author of the "Lines on Tintern Abbey " composed also the "Evening Voluntaries," and that he who professes himself an ardent votary of Nature has explained the sense in which he wishes these words to be understood, by saying that

"By grace divine,

Not otherwise, O Nature, we are thine."

"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, nor any part of it written down till I reached Bristol."— W. W. (See Life, I. 119.)

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

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,
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 unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence +
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,

* Though absent long

These forms of beauty, &c.-Edit. 1815.

As may have had no trivial influence.-Edit. 1815.