William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks
of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798
1Five years have past; five summers, with the length
2Of five long winters! and again I hear
3These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
4With a soft inland murmur.--Once again
5Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
6That on a wild secluded scene impress
7Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
8The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
9The day is come when I again repose
10Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
11These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
12Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
13Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
14'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
15These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
16Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,
17Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
18Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!
19With some uncertain notice, as might seem
20Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
21Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire
22The Hermit sits alone.
22
These beauteous forms,
23Through a long absence, have not been to me
24As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
25But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
26Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
27In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
28Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
29And passing even into my purer mind
30With tranquil restoration:--feelings too
31Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
32As have no slight or trivial influence
33On that best portion of a good man's life,
34His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
35Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
36To them I may have owed another gift,
37Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
38In which the burthen of the mystery,
39In which the heavy and the weary weight
40Of all this unintelligible world,
41Is lightened:--that serene and blessed mood,
42In which the affections gently lead us on,--
43Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
44And even the motion of our human blood
45Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
46In body, and become a living soul:
47While with an eye made quiet by the power
48Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
49We see into the life of things.
49
If this
50Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft-51In darkness and amid the many shapes
52Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
53Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
54Have hung upon the beatings of my heart-55How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
56O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods,
57
How often has my spirit turned to thee!
58 And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
59With many recognitions dim and faint,
60And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
61The picture of the mind revives again:
62While here I stand, not only with the sense
63Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
64That in this moment there is life and food
65For future years. And so I dare to hope,
66Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
67I came among these hills; when like a roe
68I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
69Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
70Wherever nature led: more like a man
71Flying from something that he dreads, than one
72Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
73(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days
74And their glad animal movements all gone by)
75To me was all in all.--I cannot paint
76What then I was. The sounding cataract
77Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
78The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
79Their colours and their forms, were then to me
80An appetite; a feeling and a love,
81That had no need of a remoter charm,
82By thought supplied, not any interest
83Unborrowed from the eye.--That time is past,
84And all its aching joys are now no more,
85And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
86Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
87Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
88Abundant recompense. For I have learned
89To look on nature, not as in the hour
90Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
91The still sad music of humanity,
92Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
93To chasten and subdue.--And I have felt
94A presence that disturbs me with the joy
95Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
96Of something far more deeply interfused,
97Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
98And the round ocean and the living air,
99And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
100A motion and a spirit, that impels
101All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
102And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
103A lover of the meadows and the woods
104And mountains; and of all that we behold
105From this green earth; of all the mighty world
106Of eye, and ear,--both what they half create,
107And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
108In nature and the language of the sense
109The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
110The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
111Of all my moral being.
111
Nor perchance,
112If I were not thus taught, should I the more
113Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
114For thou art with me here upon the banks
115Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
116My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
117The language of my former heart, and read
118My former pleasures in the shooting lights
119Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
120May I behold in thee what I was once,
121My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,
122Knowing that Nature never did betray
123The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
124Through all the years of this our life, to lead
125From joy to joy: for she can so inform
126The mind that is within us, so impress
127With quietness and beauty, and so feed
128With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
129Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
130Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
131The dreary intercourse of daily life,
132Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
133Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
134Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
135Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
136And let the misty mountain-winds be free
137To blow against thee: and, in after years,
138When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
139Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind
140Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
141Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
142For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
143If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
144Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
145Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
146And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance-147If I should be where I no more can hear
148Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
149Of past existence--wilt thou then forget
150That on the banks of this delightful stream
151We stood together; and that I, so long
152A worshipper of Nature, hither came
153Unwearied in that service: rather say
154With warmer love--oh! with far deeper zeal
155Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
156That after many wanderings, many years
157Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
158And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
159More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!
Notes
1] First published in 1798, as the concluding poem of Lyrical Ballads. Composed on July 13,
1798, while Wordsworth and his sister were returning by the valley of the Wye, in south
Wales, to Bristol after a walking tour of several days. "Not a line of it was altered and not any
part of it written down till I reached Bristol." The poems planned for Lyrical Ballads were
already in the hands of the printer in Bristol when Tintern Abbey, so different in theme and
style, was added to the volume.
152] In a letter of 1815 to a friend, Wordsworth denied that he was "A worshipper of Nature."
He blamed the misunderstanding on "A passionate expression, uttered incautiously in the
poem upon the Wye...."
Online text copyright © 2005, Ian Lancashire for the Department of English, University of
Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of
Toronto Libraries.
Original text: William Wordsworth and S. T. Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads (London: J. and A.
Arch, 1798). No. 4. (Victoria College Library, Toronto). Photographic facsimile edition
(Kobe, Japan: Konan Joshi Gakuen, 1980). PR 5869 L9 1798A C. 1 Robarts Library.
First publication date: 1798
RPO poem editor: J. R. MacGillivray
RP edition: 3RP 2.328.
Recent editing: 2:2002/3/15
Rhyme: unrhyming
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
The child is father of the man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
(Wordsworth, "My Heart Leaps Up")
1There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
2 The earth, and every common sight,
3
To me did seem
4
Apparelled in celestial light,
5
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
6It is not now as it hath been of yore;-7
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
8
By night or day.
9The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
10
The Rainbow comes and goes,
11
And lovely is the Rose,
12
The Moon doth with delight
13 Look round her when the heavens are bare,
14
Waters on a starry night
15
Are beautiful and fair;
16 The sunshine is a glorious birth;
17 But yet I know, where'er I go,
18That there hath past away a glory from the earth.
19Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
20 And while the young lambs bound
21
As to the tabor's sound,
22To me alone there came a thought of grief:
23A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
24
And I again am strong:
25The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
26No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
27I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng,
28 The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
29
And all the earth is gay;
30
Land and sea
31
Give themselves up to jollity,
32
And with the heart of May
33
Doth every Beast keep holiday;-34
Thou Child of Joy,
35Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy.
36Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call
37 Ye to each other make; I see
38The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
39 My heart is at your festival,
40
My head hath its coronal,
41The fulness of your bliss, I feel--I feel it all.
42
Oh evil day! if I were sullen
43
While Earth herself is adorning,
44
This sweet May-morning,
45
And the Children are culling
46
On every side,
47
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
48
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
49And the Babe leaps up on his Mother's arm:-50
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
51
--But there's a Tree, of many, one,
52A single field which I have looked upon,
53Both of them speak of something that is gone;
54
The Pansy at my feet
55
Doth the same tale repeat:
56Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
57Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
58Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
59The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
60
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
61
And cometh from afar:
62
Not in entire forgetfulness,
63
And not in utter nakedness,
64But trailing clouds of glory do we come
65
From God, who is our home:
66Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
67Shades of the prison-house begin to close
68
Upon the growing Boy,
69But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
70
He sees it in his joy;
71The Youth, who daily farther from the east
72
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
73
And by the vision splendid
74
Is on his way attended;
75At length the Man perceives it die away,
76And fade into the light of common day.
77Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
78Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
79And, even with something of a Mother's mind,
80
And no unworthy aim,
81
The homely Nurse doth all she can
82To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man,
83
Forget the glories he hath known,
84And that imperial palace whence he came.
85Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
86A six years' Darling of a pigmy size!
87See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
88Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
89With light upon him from his father's eyes!
90See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
91Some fragment from his dream of human life,
92Shaped by himself with newly-learn{`e}d art
93
A wedding or a festival,
94
A mourning or a funeral;
95
And this hath now his heart,
96
And unto this he frames his song:
97
Then will he fit his tongue
98To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
99
But it will not be long
100
Ere this be thrown aside,
101
And with new joy and pride
102The little Actor cons another part;
103Filling from time to time his "humorous stage"
104With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,
105That Life brings with her in her equipage;
106
As if his whole vocation
107
Were endless imitation.
108Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
109
Thy Soul's immensity;
110Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep
111Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,
112That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
113Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,-114
Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!
115
On whom those truths do rest,
116Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
117In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
118Thou, over whom thy Immortality
119Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave,
120A Presence which is not to be put by;
121Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
122Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
123Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
124The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
125Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
126Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,
127And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
128Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
129
O joy! that in our embers
130
Is something that doth live,
131
That Nature yet remembers
132What was so fugitive!
133The thought of our past years in me doth breed
134Perpetual benediction: not indeed
135For that which is most worthy to be blest;
136Delight and liberty, the simple creed
137Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,
138With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:-139
Not for these I raise
140
The song of thanks and praise
141
But for those obstinate questionings
142
Of sense and outward things,
143
Fallings from us, vanishings;
144
Blank misgivings of a Creature
145Moving about in worlds not realised,
146High instincts before which our mortal Nature
147Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
148
But for those first affections,
149
Those shadowy recollections,
150
Which, be they what they may
151Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
152Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
153
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
154Our noisy years seem moments in the being
155Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
156
To perish never;
157Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
158
Nor Man nor Boy,
159Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
160Can utterly abolish or destroy!
161
Hence in a season of calm weather
162
Though inland far we be,
163Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea
164
Which brought us hither,
165
Can in a moment travel thither,
166And see the Children sport upon the shore,
167And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
168Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
169
And let the young Lambs bound
170
As to the tabor's sound!
171We in thought will join your throng,
172
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
173
Ye that through your hearts to-day
174
Feel the gladness of the May!
175What though the radiance which was once so bright
176Be now for ever taken from my sight,
177
Though nothing can bring back the hour
178Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
179
We will grieve not, rather find
180
Strength in what remains behind;
181
In the primal sympathy
182
Which having been must ever be;
183
In the soothing thoughts that spring
184
Out of human suffering;
185
In the faith that looks through death,
186In years that bring the philosophic mind.
187And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
188Forebode not any severing of our loves!
189Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
190I only have relinquished one delight
191To live beneath your more habitual sway.
192I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,
193Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
194The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
195
Is lovely yet;
196The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
197Do take a sober colouring from an eye
198That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
199Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
200Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
201Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
202To me the meanest flower that blows can give
203Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
Notes
1] Wordsworth recorded that "two years at least passed between the writing of the four first
stanzas and the remaining part." Begun on Saturday, March 27, 1802: "At breakfast William
wrote part of an ode." The poem was evidently finished in some form down to the end of the
fourth stanza by April 4 when Coleridge composed the first version of his Dejection: An Ode,
which echoed phrases from his friend's new poem. After two years, Wordsworth completed
his ode, by early in 1804. Long afterwards, in 1843, he remarked of the poem: "Nothing was
more difficult for me in childhood than to admit the notion of death as a state applicable to my
own being.... with a feeling congenial to this, I was often unable to think of external things as
having external existence, and I communed with all that I saw as something not apart from,
but inherent in, my own immaterial nature. Many times while going to school have I grasped
at a wall or tree to recall myself from this abyss of idealism to the reality. At that time I was
afraid of such processes. In later periods of life I have deplored, as we have all reason to do, a
subjugation of an opposite character, and have rejoiced over the remembrances, as is
expressed in the lines--'obstinate questionings/Of sense and outward things,/Fallings from us,
vanishings" etc." For the general idea of the poem, cf. Vaughan's Retreat. The three
preliminary lines are from Wordsworth's brief poem beginning "My heart leaps up,"
composed on March 26, 1802, the day before the beginning of the ode.
86] Six years: in Poems, 1807, "four years." Throughout the stanza, Wordsworth seems to
have had young Hartley Coleridge in mind.
Online text copyright © 2005, Ian Lancashire for the Department of English, University of
Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of
Toronto Libraries.
Original text: William Wordsworth, Poems in Two Volumes (1807). See The Manuscript of
William Wordsworth's Poems, in Two Volumes (1807): A Facsimile (London: British Library,
1984). bib MASS (Massey College Library, Toronto).
First publication date: 1807
RPO poem editor: J. R. MacGillivray
RP edition: 3RP 2.377.
Recent editing: 2:2002/3/20*1:2002/11/3
Composition date: 27 March 1802 - 1804
Composition date note: March 27, 1802-early 1804
Rhyme: irregularly rhyming
http://www.uoregon.edu/~rbear/ballads.html