William Wordsworth

“ First, last, and single in the breathing world,
It could not be more quiet: peace is here
Or no where; days unruffled by the gale
Of public news or private; years that pass
Forgetfully; uncalled upon to pay
The common penalties of mortal life.
Sickness, or accident, or grief, or pain
⁠On these and other kindred thoughts intent,
In silence by my Comrade's side I lay,
He also silent: when from out the heart
Of that profound Abyss a solemn Voice,
Or several Voices in one solemn sound,
Was heard—ascending: mournful, deep, and slow
The cadence, as of Psalms—a funeral dirge! ”

“ Pausing at will; our spirits braced, our thoughts
Pleasant as roses in the thickets blown,
And pure as dew bathing their crimson leaves.
⁠Mount slowly Sun! and may our journey lie
Awhile within the shadow of this hill,
This friendly hill, a shelter from thy beams!
Such is the summer Pilgrim's frequent wish;
And as that wish, with prevalence of thanks
For present good o'er fear of future ill,
Stole in among the morning's blither thoughts,
'Twas chased away: for, tow'rds the western side
Of the broad Vale, casting a casual glance,
We saw a throng of People;—wherefore met? ”

“ Through many a wood, and many an open ground,
In sunshine and in shade, in wet and fair,
Drooping, or blithe of heart, as might befal;
My best companions now the driving winds,
And now the "trotting brooks" and whispering trees,
And now the music of my own sad steps,
With many a short-lived thought that pass'd between,
And disappeared.—I journey'd back this way
Towards the wane of Summer; when the wheat
Was yellow; and the soft and bladed grass
Springing afresh had o'er the hay-field spread
Its tender verdure. At the door arrived,
I found that she was absent. ”

“ But, there, lay open to our daily haunt,
A range of unappropriated earth,
Where youth's ambitious feet might move at large;
Whence, unmolested Wanderers, we beheld
The shining Giver of the Day diffuse
His brightness, o'er a tract of sea and land
Gay as our spirits, free as our desires,
As our enjoyments boundless.—From these Heights
We dropped, at pleasure, into sylvan Combs;
Where arbours of impenetrable shade,
And mossy seats detained us side by side,
With hearts at ease, and knowledge in our hearts
"That all the grove and all the day was ours." ”

“ Reason, best Reason, is to imperfect Man
An effort only, and a noble aim;
A crown, an attribute of sovereign power,
Still to be courted—never to be won!
—Look forth, or each man dive into himself,
What sees he but a Creature too perturbed,
That is transported to excess; that yearns,
Regrets, or trembles, wrongly, or too much;
Hopes rashly, in disgust as rash recoils;
Battens on spleen, or moulders in despair.
Thus truth is missed, and comprehension fails;
And darkness and delusion round our path
Spread, from disease, whose subtile injury lurks
Within the very faculty of sight. ”

“ We, whose established and unfailing trust
Is in controuling Providence, admit
That through all stations human life abounds
With mysteries,—for if Faith were left untried
How could the might—that lurks within her—then
Be shewn? her glorious excellence—that ranks
Among the first of Powers and Virtues—proved?
Our system is not fashioned to preclude
That sympathy which you for others ask;
And I could tell, not travelling for my theme
Beyond the limits of these humble graves,
Of strange disasters; but I pass them by,
Loth to disturb what heaven hath hushed in peace. ”

“ Of the whole lake—in compass seen! Far off,
And yet conspicuous, stood the old Church-tower,
In majesty presiding o'er the Vale
And all her Dwellings; seemingly preserved
From the intrusion of a restless world
By rocks impassable and mountains huge.
⁠Soft heath this elevated spot supplied,
With resting-place of mossy stone;—and there
We sate reclined—admiring quietly
The frame and general aspect of the scene;
And each not seldom eager to make known
His own discoveries; or to favourite points
Directing notice, merely from a wish
To impart a joy, imperfect while unshared. ”

“ That it had sprung self-raised from earth, or grown
Out of the living rock, to be adorned
By Nature only; but, if thither led,
Ye would discover, then, a studious work
Of many fancies, prompting many hands.
—Brought from the woods the honeysuckle twines
Around the porch, and seems, in that trim place,
A Plant no longer wild; the cultured rose
There blossoms, strong in health, and will be soon
Roof-high; the wild pink crowns the garden wall,
And with the flowers are intermingled stones
Sparry and bright, the scatterings of the hills. ”

“ On every side encountered; in despite
Of the gross fictions, chaunted in the streets
By wandering Rhapsodists; and in contempt
Of doubt and bold denials hourly urged
Amid the wrangling Schools—a spirit hung,
Beautiful Region! o'er thy Towns and Farms,
Statues and Temples, and memorial Tombs;
And emanations were perceived; and acts
Of immortality, in Nature's course,
Exemplified by mysteries, that were felt
As bonds, on grave Philosopher imposed
And armed Warrior; and in every grove
A gay or pensive tenderness prevailed
When piety more awful had relaxed. ”

“ To serve the Will of feeble-bodied Man.
For with the sense of admiration blends
The animating hope that time may come
When strengthened, yet not dazzled, by the might
Of this dominion over Nature gained,
Men of all lands shall exercise the same
In due proportion to their Country's need;
Learning, though late, that all true glory rests,
All praise, all safety, and all happiness,
Upon the Moral law. Egyptian Thebes;
Tyre by the margin of the sounding waves;
Palmyra, central in the Desart, fell;
And the Arts died by which they had been raised. ”

“ Of days advancing tow'rds their utmost length,
And small birds singing to their happy mates.
Wild is the music of the autumnal wind
Among the faded woods; but these blithe notes
Strike the deserted to the heart;—I speak
Of what I know, and what we feel within.
—Beside the Cottage in which Ellen dwelt
Stands a tall ash-tree; to whose topmost twig
A Thrush resorts, and annually chaunts,
At morn and evening, from that naked perch,
While all the undergrove is thick with leaves,
A time-beguiling ditty, for delight
Of his fond partner, silent in the nest. ”

“ But the Writer of an Epitaph is not an Anatomist who dissects the internal frame of the mind; he is not even a Painter who executes a portrait at leisure and in entire tranquillity: his delineation, we must remember, is performed by the side of the Grave; and, what is more, the grave of one whom he loves and admires. What purity and brightness is that virtue clothed in, the image of which must no longer bless our living eyes! ”

“ When wanted most; a confidence impaired
So pitiably, that, having ceased to see
With bodily eyes, they are borne down by love
Of what is lost, and perish through regret.
Oh! no, full oft the innocent Sufferer sees
Too clearly; feels too vividly; and longs
To realize the Vision with intense
And overconstant yearning—there—there lies
The excess, by which the balance is destroyed.
Too, too contracted are these walls of flesh,
This vital warmth too cold, these visual orbs,
Though inconceivably endowed, too dim
For any passion of the soul that leads
To extacy ”

“ To climb upon its western side a Ridge
Pathless and smooth, a long and steep ascent;
As if the object of his quest had been
Some secret of the Mountains, Cavern, Fall
Of water—or some boastful Eminence,
Renowned for splendid prospect far and wide.
We clomb without a track to guide our steps;
And, on the summit, reached a heathy plain,
With a tumultuous waste of huge hill tops
Before us; savage region! and I walked
In weariness: when, all at once, behold!
Beneath our feet, a little lowly Vale,
A lowly Vale, and yet uplifted high
Among the mountains ”

“ My thirst I slaked, and from the chearless spot
Withdrawing, straightway to the shade returned
Where sate the Old Man on the Cottage bench;
And, while, beside him, with uncovered head,
I yet was standing, freely to respire,
And cool my temples in the fanning air,
Thus did he speak. "I see around me here
Things which you cannot see: we die, my Friend,
Nor we alone, but that which each man loved
And prized in his peculiar nook of earth
Dies with him, or is changed; and very soon
Even of the good is no memorial left. ”

“ I confess, with me the conviction is absolute, that, if the impression and sense of Death were not thus counterbalanced, such a hollowness would pervade the whole system of things, such a want of correspondence and consistency, a disproportion so astounding betwixt means and ends, that there could be no repose, no joy. Were we to grow up unfostered by this genial warmth, a frost would chill the spirit, so penetrating and powerful, that there could be no motions of the life of love ”

“ Yet oh! how disproportioned to the hopes
And expectations of self-flattering minds!
—The courteous Knight, whose bones are here interred,
Lived in an age conspicuous as our own
For strife and ferment in the minds of men;
Whence alteration, in the forms of things,
Various and vast. A memorable age!
Which did to him assign a pensive lot,
—To linger mid the last of those bright Clouds,
That, on the steady breeze of honour, sailed
In long procession calm and beautiful. ”

“ And, when the Ship was moored, I leapt ashore
Indignantly—resolved to be a Man,
Who, having o'er the past no power, would live
No longer in subjection to the past,
With abject mind—from a tyrannic Lord
Inviting penance, fruitlessly endured.
So like a Fugitive, whose feet have cleared
Some boundary, which his Followers may not cross
In prosecution of their deadly chace,
Respiring I looked round.—How bright the Sun,
How promising the Breeze! Can aught produced
In the old World compare, thought I, for power
And majesty with this gigantic Stream,
Sprung from the Desart? ”

“ Whose very sorrow is, that time hath shorn
His natural wings!—To Friendship let him turn
For succour; but perhaps he sits alone
On stormy waters, in a little Boat
That holds but him, and can contain no more!
Religion tells of amity sublime
Which no condition can preclude; of One
Who sees all suffering, comprehends all wants,
All weakness fathoms, can supply all needs:
But is that bounty absolute?—His gifts,
Are they not still, in some degree, rewards
For acts of service? Can his Love extend
To hearts that own not Him? ”

“ Each of these Sages was in Sympathy with the best feelings of our Nature; feelings which, though they seem opposite to each other, have another and a finer connection than that of contrast.—It is a connection formed through the subtle progress by which, both in the natural and the moral world, qualities pass insensibly into their contraries, and things revolve upon each other. As, in sailing upon the orb of this Planet, a voyage, towards the regions where the sun sets, conducts gradually to the quarter where we have been accustomed to behold it come forth at its rising ”

“ Might'st hold, on earth, communion undisturbed—
Who from the anarchy of dreaming sleep,
Or from its death-like void, with punctual care,
And touch as gentle as the morning light,
Restor'st us, daily, to the powers of sense,
And reason's steadfast rule—thou, thou alone
Art everlasting, and the blessed Spirits,
Which thou includest, as the Sea her Waves:
For adoration thou endurest; endure
For consciousness the motions of thy will ”

“ If, having walked with Nature threescore years,
And offered, far as frailty would allow,
My heart a daily sacrifice to Truth,
I now affirm of Nature and of Truth,
Whom I have served, that their Divinity
Revolts, offended at the ways of Men
Swayed by such motives, to such end employed;
Philosophers, who, when the human Soul
Is of a thousand faculties composed,
And twice ten thousand interests, do yet prize
This Soul, and the transcendent Universe,
No more than as a Mirror that reflects
To proud Self-love her own intelligence ”

“ In every grove were ringing, "War shall cease;
"Did ye not hear that conquest is abjured?
"Bring garlands, bring forth choicest flowers, to deck
"The Tree of Liberty."—My heart rebounded;
My melancholy Voice the chorus joined;
—"Be joyful all ye Nations, in all Lands,
"Ye that are capable of joy be glad!
"Henceforth, whate'er is wanting to yourselves
"In others ye shall promptly find;—and all
"Be rich by mutual and reflected wealth." ”

“ Of what it holds confines us to degrees
In excellence less difficult to reach,
And milder worth: nor need we travel far
From those to whom our last regards were paid
For such example.
⁠Almost at the root
Of that tall Pine, the shadow of whose bare
And slender stem, while here I sit at eve,
Oft stretches tow'rds me, like a long straight path
Traced faintly in the green sward; there, beneath
A plain blue Stone, a gentle Dalesman lies,
From whom, in early childhood, was withdrawn
The precious gift of hearing. He grew up
From year to year in loneliness of soul ”

“ The Wife, who rests beneath that turf, from which
I turned, that ye in mind might witness where,
And how her Spirit yet survives on Earth.
⁠The next three Ridges—those upon the left—
By close connexion with our present thoughts
Tempt me to add, in praise of humble worth,
Their brief and unobtrusive history.
—One Hillock, ye may note, is small and low,
Sunk almost to a level with the plain
By weight of time; the Others, undepressed,
Are bold and swelling. ”

“ Converse with heaven, nor yet depressed tow'rds earth,
But in projection carried, as she walked
For ever musing. Sunken were her eyes;
Wrinkled and furrowed with habitual thought
Was her broad forehead; like the brow of One
Whose visual nerve shrinks from a painful glare
Of overpowering light.—While yet a Child,
She, mid the humble Flowerets of the vale,
Towered like the imperial Thistle, not unfurnished
With its appropriate grace, yet rather framed
To be admired, than coveted and loved. ”

“ Those weeds, and the high spear-grass on that wall,
By mist and silent rain-drops silver'd o'er,
As once I passed, did to my heart convey
So still an image of tranquillity,
So calm and still, and looked so beautiful
Amid the uneasy thoughts which filled my min
That what we feel of sorrow and despair
From ruin and from change, and all the grief
The passing shews of Being leave behind,
Appeared an idle dream, that could not live
Where meditation was. I turned away
And walked along my road in happiness. ”