{"id":38,"date":"2021-06-04T14:08:27","date_gmt":"2021-06-04T18:08:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/poetryandpoetics2024\/chapter\/william-wordsworth\/"},"modified":"2024-08-08T15:53:48","modified_gmt":"2024-08-08T19:53:48","slug":"william-wordsworth","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/poetryandpoetics2024\/chapter\/william-wordsworth\/","title":{"raw":"William Wordsworth","rendered":"William Wordsworth"},"content":{"raw":"

Composed upon Westminster Bridge<\/h1>\nEarth has not any thing to show more fair:\nDull would he be of soul who could pass by\nA sight so touching in its majesty:\nThis City now doth, like a garment, wear\nThe beauty of the morning; silent, bare,\nShips, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie\nOpen unto the fields, and to the sky;\nAll bright and glittering in the smokeless air.\nNever did sun more beautifully steep\nIn his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;\nNe'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!\nThe river glideth at his own sweet will:\nDear God! the very houses seem asleep;\nAnd all that mighty heart is lying still!\n

London, 1802<\/h1>\nMilton! thou shouldst be living at this hour;\nEngland hath need of thee: she is a fen\nOf stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,\nFireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,\nHave forfeited their ancient English dower\nOf inward happiness. We are selfish men;\nOh! raise us up, return to us again;\nAnd give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.\nThy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart;\nThou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:\nPure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,\nSo didst thou travel on life\u2019s common way,\nIn cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart\nThe lowliest duties on herself did\u00a0lay.\n

Tintern Abbey<\/h1>\nFive years have past; five summers, with the length\nOf five long winters! and again I hear\nThese waters, rolling from their mountain-springs\nWith a soft inland murmur.\u2014Once again\nDo I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,\nThat on a wild secluded scene impress\nThoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect\nThe landscape with the quiet of the sky.\nThe day is come when I again repose\nHere, under this dark sycamore, and view\nThese plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,\nWhich at this season, with their unripe fruits,\nAre clad in one green hue, and lose themselves\n'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see\nThese hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines\nOf sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,\nGreen to the very door; and wreaths of smoke\nSent up, in silence, from among the trees!\nWith some uncertain notice, as might seem\nOf vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,\nOr of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire\nThe Hermit sits alone.\n\nThese beauteous forms,\nThrough a long absence, have not been to me\nAs is a landscape to a blind man's eye:\nBut oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din\nOf towns and cities, I have owed to them\nIn hours of weariness, sensations sweet,\nFelt in the blood, and felt along the heart;\nAnd passing even into my purer mind,\nWith tranquil restoration:\u2014feelings too\nOf unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,\nAs have no slight or trivial influence\nOn that best portion of a good man's life,\nHis little, nameless, unremembered, acts\nOf kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,\nTo them I may have owed another gift,\nOf aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,\nIn which the burthen of the mystery,\nIn which the heavy and the weary weight\nOf all this unintelligible world,\nIs lightened:\u2014that serene and blessed mood,\nIn which the affections gently lead us on,\u2014\nUntil, the breath of this corporeal frame\nAnd even the motion of our human blood\nAlmost suspended, we are laid asleep\nIn body, and become a living soul:\nWhile with an eye made quiet by the power\nOf harmony, and the deep power of joy,\nWe see into the life of things.\n\nIf this\nBe but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft\u2014\nIn darkness and amid the many shapes\nOf joyless daylight; when the fretful stir\nUnprofitable, and the fever of the world,\nHave hung upon the beatings of my heart\u2014\nHow oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,\nO sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods,\nHow often has my spirit turned to thee!\n\nAnd now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,\nWith many recognitions dim and faint,\nAnd somewhat of a sad perplexity,\nThe picture of the mind revives again:\nWhile here I stand, not only with the sense\nOf present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts\nThat in this moment there is life and food\nFor future years. And so I dare to hope,\nThough changed, no doubt, from what I was when first\nI came among these hills; when like a roe\nI bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides\nOf the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,\nWherever nature led: more like a man\nFlying from something that he dreads, than one\nWho sought the thing he loved. For nature then\n(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,\nAnd their glad animal movements all gone by)\nTo me was all in all.\u2014I cannot paint\nWhat then I was. The sounding cataract\nHaunted me like a passion: the tall rock,\nThe mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,\nTheir colours and their forms, were then to me\nAn appetite; a feeling and a love,\nThat had no need of a remoter charm,\nBy thought supplied, nor any interest\nUnborrowed from the eye.\u2014That time is past,\nAnd all its aching joys are now no more,\nAnd all its dizzy raptures. Not for this\nFaint I, nor mourn nor murmur, other gifts\nHave followed; for such loss, I would believe,\nAbundant recompence. For I have learned\nTo look on nature, not as in the hour\nOf thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes\nThe still, sad music of humanity,\nNor harsh nor grating, though of ample power\nTo chasten and subdue. And I have felt\nA presence that disturbs me with the joy\nOf elevated thoughts; a sense sublime\nOf something far more deeply interfused,\nWhose dwelling is the light of setting suns,\nAnd the round ocean and the living air,\nAnd the blue sky, and in the mind of man;\nA motion and a spirit, that impels\nAll thinking things, all objects of all thought,\nAnd rolls through all things. Therefore am I still\nA lover of the meadows and the woods,\nAnd mountains; and of all that we behold\nFrom this green earth; of all the mighty world\nOf eye, and ear,\u2014both what they half create,\nAnd what perceive; well pleased to recognise\nIn nature and the language of the sense,\nThe anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,\nThe guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul\nOf all my moral being.\n\nNor perchance,\nIf I were not thus taught, should I the more\nSuffer my genial spirits to decay:\nFor thou art with me here upon the banks\nOf this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,\nMy dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch\nThe language of my former heart, and read\nMy former pleasures in the shooting lights\nOf thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while\nMay I behold in thee what I was once,\nMy dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,\nKnowing that Nature never did betray\nThe heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,\nThrough all the years of this our life, to lead\nFrom joy to joy: for she can so inform\nThe mind that is within us, so impress\nWith quietness and beauty, and so feed\nWith lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,\nRash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,\nNor greetings where no kindness is, nor all\nThe dreary intercourse of daily life,\nShall e'er prevail against us, or disturb\nOur cheerful faith, that all which we behold\nIs full of blessings. Therefore let the moon\nShine on thee in thy solitary walk;\nAnd let the misty mountain-winds be free\nTo blow against thee: and, in after years,\nWhen these wild ecstasies shall be matured\nInto a sober pleasure; when thy mind\nShall be a mansion for all lovely forms,\nThy memory be as a dwelling-place\nFor all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,\nIf solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,\nShould be thy portion, with what healing thoughts\nOf tender joy wilt thou remember me,\nAnd these my exhortations! Nor, perchance\u2014\nIf I should be where I no more can hear\nThy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams\nOf past existence\u2014wilt thou then forget\nThat on the banks of this delightful stream\nWe stood together; and that I, so long\nA worshipper of Nature, hither came\nUnwearied in that service: rather say\nWith warmer love\u2014oh! with far deeper zeal\nOf holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,\nThat after many wanderings, many years\nOf absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,\nAnd this green pastoral landscape, were to me\nMore dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!\n

My Heart Leaps Up<\/h1>\nMy heart leaps up when I behold\nA rainbow in the sky:\nSo was it when my life began;\nSo is it now I am a man;\nSo be it when I shall grow old,\nOr let me die!\nThe Child is father of the Man;\nAnd I could wish my days to be\nBound each to each by natural piety.\n

Ode: Intimations of Immortality<\/h1>\nThere was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,\nThe earth, and every common sight\nTo me did seem\nApparelled in celestial light,\nThe glory and the freshness of a dream.\nIt is not now as it hath been of yore;\u2014\nTurn wheresoe'er I may,\nBy night or day,\nThe things which I have seen I now can see no more.\n\nThe rainbow comes and goes,\nAnd lovely is the rose;\nThe moon doth with delight\nLook round her when the heavens are bare;\nWaters on a starry night\nAre beautiful and fair;\nThe sunshine is a glorious birth;\nBut yet I know, where'er I go,\nThat there hath past away a glory from the earth.\n\nNow, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,\nAnd while the young lambs bound\nAs to the tabor's sound,\nTo me alone there came a thought of grief:\nA timely utterance gave that thought relief,\nAnd I again am strong.\nThe cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep,\u2014\nNo more shall grief of mine the season wrong:\nI hear the echoes through the mountains throng.\nThe winds come to me from the fields of sleep,\nAnd all the earth is gay;\nLand and sea\nGive themselves up to jollity,\nAnd with the heart of May\nDoth every beast keep holiday;\u2014\nThou child of joy,\nShout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy\nShepherd-boy!\nYe bless\u00e9d Creatures, I have heard the call\nYe to each other make; I see\nThe heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;\nMy heart is at your festival,\nMy head hath its coronal,\nThe fulness of your bliss, I feel\u2014I feel it all.\nO evil day! if I were sullen\nWhile Earth herself is adorning\nThis sweet May-morning;\nAnd the children are culling\nOn every side\nIn a thousand valleys far and wide\nFresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,\nAnd the babe leaps up on his mother's arm:\u2014\nI hear, I hear, with joy I hear!\n\u2014But there's a tree, of many, one,\nA single field which I have look'd upon,\nBoth of them speak of something that is gone:\nThe pansy at my feet\nDoth the same tale repeat:\nWhither is fled the visionary gleam?\nWhere is it now, the glory and the dream?\n\nOur birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;\nThe Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,\nHath had elsewhere its setting\nAnd cometh from afar;\nNot in entire forgetfulness,\nAnd not in utter nakedness,\nBut trailing clouds of glory do we come\nFrom God, who is our home:\nHeaven lies about us in our infancy!\nShades of the prison-house begin to close\nUpon the growing Boy,\nBut he beholds the light, and whence it flows,\nHe sees it in his joy;\nThe Youth, who daily farther from the east\nMust travel, still is Nature's priest,\nAnd by the vision splendid\nIs on his way attended;\nAt length the Man perceives it die away,\nAnd fade into the light of common day.\n\nEarth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;\nYearnings she hath in her own natural kind,\nAnd, even with something of a mother's mind,\nAnd no unworthy aim,\nThe homely nurse doth all she can\nTo make her foster-child, her inmate, Man,\nForget the glories he hath known,\nAnd that imperial palace whence he came.\n\nBehold the Child among his new-born blisses,\nA six years' darling of a pigmy size!\nSee, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,\nFretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,\nWith light upon him from his father's eyes!\nSee, at his feet, some little plan or chart,\nSome fragment from his dream of human life,\nShaped by himself with newly-learned art;\nA wedding or a festival,\nA mourning or a funeral;\nAnd this hath now his heart,\nAnd unto this he frames his song:\nThen will he fit his tongue\nTo dialogues of business, love, or strife;\nBut it will not be long\nEre this be thrown aside,\nAnd with new joy and pride\nThe little actor cons another part;\nFilling from time to time his 'humorous stage'\nWith all the Persons, down to palsied Age,\nThat life brings with her in her equipage;\nAs if his whole vocation\nWere endless imitation.\n\nThou, whose exterior semblance doth belie\nThy soul's immensity;\nThou best philosopher, who yet dost keep\nThy heritage, thou eye among the blind,\nThat, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,\nHaunted for ever by the eternal Mind,\u2014\nMighty Prophet! Seer blest!\nOn whom those truths rest\nWhich we are toiling all our lives to find,\nIn darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;\nThou, over whom thy Immortality\nBroods like the day, a master o'er a slave,\nA Presence which is not to be put by;\nTo whom the grave\nIs but a lonely bed, without the sense of sight\nOf day or the warm light,\nA place of thoughts where we in waiting lie;\nThou little child, yet glorious in the might\nOf heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,\nWhy with such earnest pains dost thou provoke\nThe years to bring the inevitable yoke,\nThus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?\nFull soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,\nAnd custom lie upon thee with a weight\nHeavy as frost, and deep almost as life!\n0 joy! that in our embers\nIs something that doth live,\nThat Nature yet remembers\nWhat was so fugitive!\nThe thought of our past years in me doth breed\nPerpetual benediction: not indeed\nFor that which is most worthy to be blest,\nDelight and liberty, the simple creed\nOf Childhood, whether busy or at rest,\nWith new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:\u2014\n\u2014Not for these I raise\nThe song of thanks and praise;\nBut for those obstinate questionings\nOf sense and outward things,\nFallings from us, vanishings,\nBlank misgivings of a creature\nMoving about in worlds not realized,\nHigh instincts, before which our mortal nature\nDid tremble like a guilty thing surprised:\nBut for those first affections,\nThose shadowy recollections,\nWhich, be they what they may,\nAre yet the fountain-light of all our day,\nAre yet a master-light of all our seeing;\nUphold us\u2014cherish\u2014and have power to make\nOur noisy years seem moments in the being\nOf the eternal Silence: truths that wake,\nTo perish never;\nWhich neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,\nNor man nor boy,\nNor all that is at enmity with joy,\nCan utterly abolish or destroy!\nHence, in a season of calm weather\nThough inland far we be,\nOur souls have sight of that immortal sea\nWhich brought us hither;\nCan in a moment travel thither\u2014\nAnd see the children sport upon the shore,\nAnd hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.\n\nThen, sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!\nAnd let the young lambs bound\nAs to the tabor's sound!\nWe, in thought, will join your throng,\nYe that pipe and ye that play,\nYe that through your hearts to-day\nFeel the gladness of the May!\nWhat though the radiance which was once so bright\nBe now for ever taken from my sight,\nThough nothing can bring back the hour\nOf splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;\nWe will grieve not, rather find\nStrength in what remains behind;\nIn the primal sympathy\nWhich having been must ever be;\nIn the soothing thoughts that spring\nOut of human suffering;\nIn the faith that looks through death,\nIn years that bring the philosophic mind.\n\nAnd O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,\nForebode not any severing of our loves!\nYet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;\nI only have relinquish'd one delight\nTo live beneath your more habitual sway;\nI love the brooks which down their channels fret\nEven more than when I tripp'd lightly as they;\nThe innocent brightness of a new-born day\nIs lovely yet;\nThe clouds that gather round the setting sun\nDo take a sober colouring from an eye\nThat hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;\nAnother race hath been, and other palms are won.\nThanks to the human heart by which we live,\nThanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,\nTo me the meanest flower that blows can give\nThoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.\n\n
\n\n

Sources<\/h2>\n\u201cComposed upon Westminster Bridge\u201d by William Wordsworth is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation<\/a>.\n\n\u201cLondon, 1802\u201d by William Wordsworth is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation<\/a>.\n\n\u201cTintern Abbey\u201d by William Wordsworth is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation<\/a>.\n\n\u201cMy heart leaps up when I behold\u201d by William Wordsworth is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry.org<\/a>.\n\n\u201cOde: Intimations of Immortality\u201d by William Wordsworth is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation<\/a>.","rendered":"

Composed upon Westminster Bridge<\/h1>\n

Earth has not any thing to show more fair:
\nDull would he be of soul who could pass by
\nA sight so touching in its majesty:
\nThis City now doth, like a garment, wear
\nThe beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
\nShips, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
\nOpen unto the fields, and to the sky;
\nAll bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
\nNever did sun more beautifully steep
\nIn his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
\nNe’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
\nThe river glideth at his own sweet will:
\nDear God! the very houses seem asleep;
\nAnd all that mighty heart is lying still!<\/p>\n

London, 1802<\/h1>\n

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour;
\nEngland hath need of thee: she is a fen
\nOf stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
\nFireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
\nHave forfeited their ancient English dower
\nOf inward happiness. We are selfish men;
\nOh! raise us up, return to us again;
\nAnd give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
\nThy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart;
\nThou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
\nPure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
\nSo didst thou travel on life\u2019s common way,
\nIn cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
\nThe lowliest duties on herself did\u00a0lay.<\/p>\n

Tintern Abbey<\/h1>\n

Five years have past; five summers, with the length
\nOf five long winters! and again I hear
\nThese waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
\nWith a soft inland murmur.\u2014Once again
\nDo I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
\nThat on a wild secluded scene impress
\nThoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
\nThe landscape with the quiet of the sky.
\nThe day is come when I again repose
\nHere, under this dark sycamore, and view
\nThese plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
\nWhich at this season, with their unripe fruits,
\nAre clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
\n‘Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
\nThese hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
\nOf sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,
\nGreen to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
\nSent up, in silence, from among the trees!
\nWith some uncertain notice, as might seem
\nOf vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
\nOr of some Hermit’s cave, where by his fire
\nThe Hermit sits alone.<\/p>\n

These beauteous forms,
\nThrough a long absence, have not been to me
\nAs is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:
\nBut oft, in lonely rooms, and ‘mid the din
\nOf towns and cities, I have owed to them
\nIn hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
\nFelt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
\nAnd passing even into my purer mind,
\nWith tranquil restoration:\u2014feelings too
\nOf unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
\nAs have no slight or trivial influence
\nOn that best portion of a good man’s life,
\nHis little, nameless, unremembered, acts
\nOf kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
\nTo them I may have owed another gift,
\nOf aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
\nIn which the burthen of the mystery,
\nIn which the heavy and the weary weight
\nOf all this unintelligible world,
\nIs lightened:\u2014that serene and blessed mood,
\nIn which the affections gently lead us on,\u2014
\nUntil, the breath of this corporeal frame
\nAnd even the motion of our human blood
\nAlmost suspended, we are laid asleep
\nIn body, and become a living soul:
\nWhile with an eye made quiet by the power
\nOf harmony, and the deep power of joy,
\nWe see into the life of things.<\/p>\n

If this
\nBe but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft\u2014
\nIn darkness and amid the many shapes
\nOf joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
\nUnprofitable, and the fever of the world,
\nHave hung upon the beatings of my heart\u2014
\nHow oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
\nO sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro’ the woods,
\nHow often has my spirit turned to thee!<\/p>\n

And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
\nWith many recognitions dim and faint,
\nAnd somewhat of a sad perplexity,
\nThe picture of the mind revives again:
\nWhile here I stand, not only with the sense
\nOf present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
\nThat in this moment there is life and food
\nFor future years. And so I dare to hope,
\nThough changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
\nI came among these hills; when like a roe
\nI bounded o’er the mountains, by the sides
\nOf the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
\nWherever nature led: more like a man
\nFlying from something that he dreads, than one
\nWho sought the thing he loved. For nature then
\n(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
\nAnd their glad animal movements all gone by)
\nTo me was all in all.\u2014I cannot paint
\nWhat then I was. The sounding cataract
\nHaunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
\nThe mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
\nTheir colours and their forms, were then to me
\nAn appetite; a feeling and a love,
\nThat had no need of a remoter charm,
\nBy thought supplied, nor any interest
\nUnborrowed from the eye.\u2014That time is past,
\nAnd all its aching joys are now no more,
\nAnd all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
\nFaint I, nor mourn nor murmur, other gifts
\nHave followed; for such loss, I would believe,
\nAbundant recompence. For I have learned
\nTo look on nature, not as in the hour
\nOf thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
\nThe still, sad music of humanity,
\nNor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
\nTo chasten and subdue. And I have felt
\nA presence that disturbs me with the joy
\nOf elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
\nOf something far more deeply interfused,
\nWhose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
\nAnd the round ocean and the living air,
\nAnd the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
\nA motion and a spirit, that impels
\nAll thinking things, all objects of all thought,
\nAnd rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
\nA lover of the meadows and the woods,
\nAnd mountains; and of all that we behold
\nFrom this green earth; of all the mighty world
\nOf eye, and ear,\u2014both what they half create,
\nAnd what perceive; well pleased to recognise
\nIn nature and the language of the sense,
\nThe anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
\nThe guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
\nOf all my moral being.<\/p>\n

Nor perchance,
\nIf I were not thus taught, should I the more
\nSuffer my genial spirits to decay:
\nFor thou art with me here upon the banks
\nOf this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
\nMy dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
\nThe language of my former heart, and read
\nMy former pleasures in the shooting lights
\nOf thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
\nMay I behold in thee what I was once,
\nMy dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,
\nKnowing that Nature never did betray
\nThe heart that loved her; ’tis her privilege,
\nThrough all the years of this our life, to lead
\nFrom joy to joy: for she can so inform
\nThe mind that is within us, so impress
\nWith quietness and beauty, and so feed
\nWith lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
\nRash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
\nNor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
\nThe dreary intercourse of daily life,
\nShall e’er prevail against us, or disturb
\nOur cheerful faith, that all which we behold
\nIs full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
\nShine on thee in thy solitary walk;
\nAnd let the misty mountain-winds be free
\nTo blow against thee: and, in after years,
\nWhen these wild ecstasies shall be matured
\nInto a sober pleasure; when thy mind
\nShall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
\nThy memory be as a dwelling-place
\nFor all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
\nIf solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
\nShould be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
\nOf tender joy wilt thou remember me,
\nAnd these my exhortations! Nor, perchance\u2014
\nIf I should be where I no more can hear
\nThy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
\nOf past existence\u2014wilt thou then forget
\nThat on the banks of this delightful stream
\nWe stood together; and that I, so long
\nA worshipper of Nature, hither came
\nUnwearied in that service: rather say
\nWith warmer love\u2014oh! with far deeper zeal
\nOf holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
\nThat after many wanderings, many years
\nOf absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
\nAnd this green pastoral landscape, were to me
\nMore dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!<\/p>\n

My Heart Leaps Up<\/h1>\n

My heart leaps up when I behold
\nA rainbow in the sky:
\nSo was it when my life began;
\nSo is it now I am a man;
\nSo be it when I shall grow old,
\nOr let me die!
\nThe Child is father of the Man;
\nAnd I could wish my days to be
\nBound each to each by natural piety.<\/p>\n

Ode: Intimations of Immortality<\/h1>\n

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
\nThe earth, and every common sight
\nTo me did seem
\nApparelled in celestial light,
\nThe glory and the freshness of a dream.
\nIt is not now as it hath been of yore;\u2014
\nTurn wheresoe’er I may,
\nBy night or day,
\nThe things which I have seen I now can see no more.<\/p>\n

The rainbow comes and goes,
\nAnd lovely is the rose;
\nThe moon doth with delight
\nLook round her when the heavens are bare;
\nWaters on a starry night
\nAre beautiful and fair;
\nThe sunshine is a glorious birth;
\nBut yet I know, where’er I go,
\nThat there hath past away a glory from the earth.<\/p>\n

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
\nAnd while the young lambs bound
\nAs to the tabor’s sound,
\nTo me alone there came a thought of grief:
\nA timely utterance gave that thought relief,
\nAnd I again am strong.
\nThe cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep,\u2014
\nNo more shall grief of mine the season wrong:
\nI hear the echoes through the mountains throng.
\nThe winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
\nAnd all the earth is gay;
\nLand and sea
\nGive themselves up to jollity,
\nAnd with the heart of May
\nDoth every beast keep holiday;\u2014
\nThou child of joy,
\nShout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy
\nShepherd-boy!
\nYe bless\u00e9d Creatures, I have heard the call
\nYe to each other make; I see
\nThe heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
\nMy heart is at your festival,
\nMy head hath its coronal,
\nThe fulness of your bliss, I feel\u2014I feel it all.
\nO evil day! if I were sullen
\nWhile Earth herself is adorning
\nThis sweet May-morning;
\nAnd the children are culling
\nOn every side
\nIn a thousand valleys far and wide
\nFresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
\nAnd the babe leaps up on his mother’s arm:\u2014
\nI hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
\n\u2014But there’s a tree, of many, one,
\nA single field which I have look’d upon,
\nBoth of them speak of something that is gone:
\nThe pansy at my feet
\nDoth the same tale repeat:
\nWhither is fled the visionary gleam?
\nWhere is it now, the glory and the dream?<\/p>\n

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
\nThe Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
\nHath had elsewhere its setting
\nAnd cometh from afar;
\nNot in entire forgetfulness,
\nAnd not in utter nakedness,
\nBut trailing clouds of glory do we come
\nFrom God, who is our home:
\nHeaven lies about us in our infancy!
\nShades of the prison-house begin to close
\nUpon the growing Boy,
\nBut he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
\nHe sees it in his joy;
\nThe Youth, who daily farther from the east
\nMust travel, still is Nature’s priest,
\nAnd by the vision splendid
\nIs on his way attended;
\nAt length the Man perceives it die away,
\nAnd fade into the light of common day.<\/p>\n

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
\nYearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
\nAnd, even with something of a mother’s mind,
\nAnd no unworthy aim,
\nThe homely nurse doth all she can
\nTo make her foster-child, her inmate, Man,
\nForget the glories he hath known,
\nAnd that imperial palace whence he came.<\/p>\n

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
\nA six years’ darling of a pigmy size!
\nSee, where ‘mid work of his own hand he lies,
\nFretted by sallies of his mother’s kisses,
\nWith light upon him from his father’s eyes!
\nSee, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
\nSome fragment from his dream of human life,
\nShaped by himself with newly-learned art;
\nA wedding or a festival,
\nA mourning or a funeral;
\nAnd this hath now his heart,
\nAnd unto this he frames his song:
\nThen will he fit his tongue
\nTo dialogues of business, love, or strife;
\nBut it will not be long
\nEre this be thrown aside,
\nAnd with new joy and pride
\nThe little actor cons another part;
\nFilling from time to time his ‘humorous stage’
\nWith all the Persons, down to palsied Age,
\nThat life brings with her in her equipage;
\nAs if his whole vocation
\nWere endless imitation.<\/p>\n

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
\nThy soul’s immensity;
\nThou best philosopher, who yet dost keep
\nThy heritage, thou eye among the blind,
\nThat, deaf and silent, read’st the eternal deep,
\nHaunted for ever by the eternal Mind,\u2014
\nMighty Prophet! Seer blest!
\nOn whom those truths rest
\nWhich we are toiling all our lives to find,
\nIn darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
\nThou, over whom thy Immortality
\nBroods like the day, a master o’er a slave,
\nA Presence which is not to be put by;
\nTo whom the grave
\nIs but a lonely bed, without the sense of sight
\nOf day or the warm light,
\nA place of thoughts where we in waiting lie;
\nThou little child, yet glorious in the might
\nOf heaven-born freedom on thy being’s height,
\nWhy with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
\nThe years to bring the inevitable yoke,
\nThus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
\nFull soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
\nAnd custom lie upon thee with a weight
\nHeavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
\n0 joy! that in our embers
\nIs something that doth live,
\nThat Nature yet remembers
\nWhat was so fugitive!
\nThe thought of our past years in me doth breed
\nPerpetual benediction: not indeed
\nFor that which is most worthy to be blest,
\nDelight and liberty, the simple creed
\nOf Childhood, whether busy or at rest,
\nWith new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:\u2014
\n\u2014Not for these I raise
\nThe song of thanks and praise;
\nBut for those obstinate questionings
\nOf sense and outward things,
\nFallings from us, vanishings,
\nBlank misgivings of a creature
\nMoving about in worlds not realized,
\nHigh instincts, before which our mortal nature
\nDid tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
\nBut for those first affections,
\nThose shadowy recollections,
\nWhich, be they what they may,
\nAre yet the fountain-light of all our day,
\nAre yet a master-light of all our seeing;
\nUphold us\u2014cherish\u2014and have power to make
\nOur noisy years seem moments in the being
\nOf the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
\nTo perish never;
\nWhich neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
\nNor man nor boy,
\nNor all that is at enmity with joy,
\nCan utterly abolish or destroy!
\nHence, in a season of calm weather
\nThough inland far we be,
\nOur souls have sight of that immortal sea
\nWhich brought us hither;
\nCan in a moment travel thither\u2014
\nAnd see the children sport upon the shore,
\nAnd hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.<\/p>\n

Then, sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
\nAnd let the young lambs bound
\nAs to the tabor’s sound!
\nWe, in thought, will join your throng,
\nYe that pipe and ye that play,
\nYe that through your hearts to-day
\nFeel the gladness of the May!
\nWhat though the radiance which was once so bright
\nBe now for ever taken from my sight,
\nThough nothing can bring back the hour
\nOf splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
\nWe will grieve not, rather find
\nStrength in what remains behind;
\nIn the primal sympathy
\nWhich having been must ever be;
\nIn the soothing thoughts that spring
\nOut of human suffering;
\nIn the faith that looks through death,
\nIn years that bring the philosophic mind.<\/p>\n

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
\nForebode not any severing of our loves!
\nYet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
\nI only have relinquish’d one delight
\nTo live beneath your more habitual sway;
\nI love the brooks which down their channels fret
\nEven more than when I tripp’d lightly as they;
\nThe innocent brightness of a new-born day
\nIs lovely yet;
\nThe clouds that gather round the setting sun
\nDo take a sober colouring from an eye
\nThat hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality;
\nAnother race hath been, and other palms are won.
\nThanks to the human heart by which we live,
\nThanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
\nTo me the meanest flower that blows can give
\nThoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.<\/p>\n

\n

Sources<\/h2>\n

\u201cComposed upon Westminster Bridge\u201d by William Wordsworth is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cLondon, 1802\u201d by William Wordsworth is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cTintern Abbey\u201d by William Wordsworth is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy heart leaps up when I behold\u201d by William Wordsworth is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cOde: Intimations of Immortality\u201d by William Wordsworth is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"menu_order":3,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-38","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry"],"part":33,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/poetryandpoetics2024\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/38","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/poetryandpoetics2024\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/poetryandpoetics2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/poetryandpoetics2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/poetryandpoetics2024\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/38\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/poetryandpoetics2024\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/38\/revisions\/39"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/poetryandpoetics2024\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/33"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/poetryandpoetics2024\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/38\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/poetryandpoetics2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/poetryandpoetics2024\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=38"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/poetryandpoetics2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=38"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/poetryandpoetics2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=38"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}