With earnest feeling I shall pray For thee when I am far away : For never saw I mien, or face, In which more plainly I could trace Benignity and home-bred sense Ripening in perfect innocence. Here scattered, like a random seed, Remote from men, Thou dost not need The embarrassed look of shy distress, And maidenly shamefacedness: Thou wear'st upon thy forehead clear The freedom of a Mountaineer: A face with gladness overspread! Soft smiles, by human kindness bred! And seemliness complete, that sways Thy courtesies, about thee plays ; With no restraint, but such as springs From quick and eager visitings Of thoughts that lie beyond the reach Of thy few words of English speech: A bondage sweetly brooked, a strife That gives thy gestures grace and life! So have I, not unmoved in mind, Seen birds of tempest-loving kindThus beating up against the wind. What hand but would a garland cull For thee who art so beautiful? O happy pleasure! here to dwell Beside thee in some heathy dell; Adopt your homely ways, and dress, A Shepherd, thou a Shepherdess! But I could frame a wish for thee More like a grave reality: Thou art to me but as a wave Of the wild sea; and I would have Some claim upon thee, if I could, Though but of common neighborhood. What joy to hear thee, and to see! Thy elder Brother I would be, Thy Father--anything to thee! Now thanks to Heaven! that of its grace Hath led me to this lonely place. 1803. 1807. STEPPING WESTWARD While my Fellow-traveller and I were walking by the side of Loch Ketterine, one fine evening after sunset, in our road to a Hut where, in the course of our Tour, we had been hospitably entertained some weeks before, we met, in one of the loneliest parts of that solitary region, two well-dressed Women, one of whom said to us by way of greeting, What, you are stepping westward? (Wordsworth.) "What, you are stepping westward ?" -"Yea." -Twould be a wildish destiny, In a strange Land, and far from home, The dewy ground was dark and cold; I liked the greeting; 't was a sound The very sound of courtesy : 1803. 1807. THE SOLITARY REAPER No Nightingale did ever chant A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard See the various Poems the scene of which is laid upon the banks of the Yarrow; in particu lar, the exquisite Ballad of Hamilton beginning "Busk ye, busk ye, my bonny, bonny Bride,-Busk ye, busk ye, my winsome Marrow !—" (Wordsworth). FROM Stirling castle we had seen "Let Yarrow folk, frae Selkirk town, There's Galla Water, Leader Haughs, The lintwhites sing in chorus ; "What's Yarrow but a river bare, 66 'Let beeves and home-bred kine partake The sweets of Burn-mill meadow; The swan on still St. Mary's Lake Float double, swan and shadow ! We will not see them; will not go, To-day, nor yet to-morrow, Enough if in our hearts we know There's such a place as Yarrow. "Be Yarrow stream unseen, unknown! It must, or we shall rue it : We have a vision of our own; The treasured dreams of times long past, "If Care with freezing years should INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD "In my Ode on the Intimations of Immortality in Childhood, I do not profess to give a literal representation of the state of the affections and of the moral being in childhood. I record my own feelings at that time--my absolute spirituality, my all-soulness,' if I may so speak. At that time I could not believe that I should lie down quietly in the grave, and that my body would moulder into dust." (Knight's Wordsworth, II, 326. See also, in the Encyclopædia Britannica, the article" Poetry.") I THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing Boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy; The Youth, who daily farther from the Forget the glories he hath known, And that imperial palace whence he came. VII Behold the Child among his new-born blisses, A six years' Darling of a pigmy size! See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies, Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses, With light upon him from his father's eyes! See, at his feet, some little plan or chart, Some fragment from his dream of human life, Shaped by himself with newly-learned art; A wedding or a festival, A mourning or a funeral; And this hath now his heart, And unto this he frames his song: Then will he fit his tongue To dialogues of business, love, or strife; But it will not be long Ere this be thrown aside, And with new joy and pride The little Actor cons another part; Filling from time to time his "humorous stage Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height, Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke The years to bring the inevitable yoke, Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight, And custom lie upon thee with a weight, Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life! IX O joy! that in our embers The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benediction: not indeed Delight and liberty, the simple creed Not for these I raise The song of thanks and praise; But for those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings; Blank misgivings of a Creature Moving about in worlds not realized, High instincts before which our mortal Nature Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised: But for those first affections, Those shadowy recollections, Which, be they what they may, Are yet the fountain light of all our day, Are yet a master light of all our seeing Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake, Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither, Can in a moment travel thither, And see the Children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. X Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song! And let the young Lambs bound Ye that through your hearts to-day Be now forever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find Which having been must ever be; In the faith that looks through In years that bring the philosophic mind. TO THE CUCKOO O BLITHE New-comer! I have heard, O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird, Though babbling only to the Vale, Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring! No bird, but an invisible thing, A voice, a mystery; The same whom in my school-boy days I listened to; that Cry Which made me look a thousand ways To seek thee did I often rove And I can listen to thee yet; O blessed Bird! the earth we pace An unsubstantial, faery place; 1802. 1807. SHE WAS A PHANTOM OF DELIGHT Written at Town-end, Grasmere. The germ of this poem was four lines composed as a part of the verses on the Highland Girl. Though beginning in this way, it was written from my heart, as is sufficiently obvious. (Wordsworth.) SHE was a Phantom of delight When first she gleamed upon my sight; |