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 © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the 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
Other poems by William Wordsworth
