Five years have passed; five summers, with the length Of five long winters! and again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a sweet inland murmur.— Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, Which on a wild secluded scene impress Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose Here, under this dark sycamore, and view These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts, Which, at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Among the woods and copses lose themselves, Nor, with their green and simple hue, disturb The wild green landscape. Once again I see These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms Green to the very door; and wreathes of smoke Sent up, in silence, from among the trees, With some uncertain notice, as might seem,
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, Or of some hermit's cave, where by his fire The hermit sits alone. Though absent long.
These forms of beauty have not been to me, As is a landscape to a blind man's eye: But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of wariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart, And passing even into my purer mind, With tranquil restoration:— feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps, As may have had no trivial influence On that best portion of a good man's life; His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust, To them I may have owed another gift, Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood, In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world Is lighten'd:— that serene and blessed mood; In which the affections gently lead us on,
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame, And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things. If this
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft, In darkness, and amid the many shapes Of joyless day-light; when the fretful stir Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart, How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee O sylvan Wye! Thou wanderer through the woods, How often has my spirit turned to thee!
And now, with gleams, of half-extinguish'd thought, With many recognitions dim and faint, And somewhat of a sad perplexity, The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts That in this moment there is life and food For future years. And so I dare to hope
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was, when first I came among these hills; when like a roe I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led: more like a man Flying from something that he dreads, than one Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then ( The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by,) To me was all in all.— I cannot paint What then I was. The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colours and their forms, were then to me An appetite: a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, or any interest Unborrowed from the eye.— That time is past, And all its aching joys are now no more, And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur: other gifts Have followed, for such loss, I would believe Abundant recompence. For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man, A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods, And mountains; and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear; both what they half create, And what perceive; well pleased to recognize In nature and the language of the sense, The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being.
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