1
Five years have past; five summers, with the length
2 Of five long winters! and again I hear
3 These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
4 With a soft inland murmur.--Once again
5 Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
6 That on a wild secluded scene impress
7 Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
8 The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
9 The day is come when I again repose
10 Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
11 These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
12 Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
13 Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
14 'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
15 These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
16 Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,
17 Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
18 Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!
19 With some uncertain notice, as might seem
20 Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
21 Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire
22 The Hermit sits alone.
These beauteous forms,
23 Through a long absence, have not been to me
24 As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
25 But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
26 Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
27 In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
28 Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
29 And passing even into my purer mind
30 With tranquil restoration:--feelings too
31 Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
32 As have no slight or trivial influence
33 On that best portion of a good man's life,
34 His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
35 Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
36 To them I may have owed another gift,
37 Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
38 In which the burthen of the mystery,
39 In which the heavy and the weary weight
40 Of all this unintelligible world,
41 Is lightened:--that serene and blessed mood,
42 In which the affections gently lead us on,--
43 Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
44 And even the motion of our human blood
45 Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
46 In body, and become a living soul:
47 While with an eye made quiet by the power
48 Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
49 We see into the life of things.
If this
50 Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft--
51 In darkness and amid the many shapes
52 Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
53 Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
54 Have hung upon the beatings of my heart--
55 How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
56 O 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,
59 With many recognitions dim and faint,
60 And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
61 The picture of the mind revives again:
62 While here I stand, not only with the sense
63 Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
64 That in this moment there is life and food
65 For future years. And so I dare to hope,
66 Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
67 I came among these hills; when like a roe
68 I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
69 Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
70 Wherever nature led: more like a man
71 Flying from something that he dreads, than one
72 Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
73 (The coarser pleasures of my boyish days
74 And their glad animal movements all gone by)
75 To me was all in all.--I cannot paint
76 What then I was. The sounding cataract
77 Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
78 The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
79 Their colours and their forms, were then to me
80 An appetite; a feeling and a love,
81 That had no need of a remoter charm,
82 By thought supplied, not any interest
83 Unborrowed from the eye.--That time is past,
84 And all its aching joys are now no more,
85 And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
86 Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
87 Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
88 Abundant recompense. For I have learned
89 To look on nature, not as in the hour
90 Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
91 The still sad music of humanity,
92 Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
93 To chasten and subdue.--And I have felt
94 A presence that disturbs me with the joy
95 Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
96 Of something far more deeply interfused,
97 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
98 And the round ocean and the living air,
99 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
100 A motion and a spirit, that impels
101 All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
102 And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
103 A lover of the meadows and the woods
104 And mountains; and of all that we behold
105 From this green earth; of all the mighty world
106 Of eye, and ear,--both what they half create,
107 And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
108 In nature and the language of the sense
109 The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
110 The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
111 Of all my moral being.
Nor perchance,
112 If I were not thus taught, should I the more
113 Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
114 For thou art with me here upon the banks
115 Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
116 My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
117 The language of my former heart, and read
118 My former pleasures in the shooting lights
119 Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
120 May I behold in thee what I was once,
121 My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,
122 Knowing that Nature never did betray
123 The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
124 Through all the years of this our life, to lead
125 From joy to joy: for she can so inform
126 The mind that is within us, so impress
127 With quietness and beauty, and so feed
128 With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
129 Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
130 Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
131 The dreary intercourse of daily life,
132 Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
133 Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
134 Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
135 Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
136 And let the misty mountain-winds be free
137 To blow against thee: and, in after years,
138 When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
139 Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind
140 Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
141 Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
142 For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
143 If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
144 Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
145 Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
146 And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance--
147 If I should be where I no more can hear
148 Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
149 Of past existence--wilt thou then forget
150 That on the banks of this delightful stream
151 We stood together; and that I, so long
152 A worshipper
of Nature, hither came
153 Unwearied in that service: rather say
154 With warmer love--oh! with far deeper zeal
155 Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
156 That after many wanderings, many years
157 Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
158 And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
159 More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!
Together with the editors, the Department of English (University of Toronto), and the University of Toronto Press, the following individuals share copyright for the work that went into this edition:
Screen Design (Electronic Edition):
Sian Meikle (University of Toronto Library)
Scanning:
Sharine Leung (Centre for Computing in the Humanities)
Form:
unrhyming
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...."