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images there.

      His bones are consumed, and his lifeblood is dried,

       With wishes the past to undo;

       And his crime, through the pains that o’erwhelm him, descried,

       Still blackens and grows on his view.

      When from the dark synod, or blood-reeking field,

       To his chamber the monarch is led,

       All soothers of sense their soft virtue shall yield,

       And quietness pillow his head.

      But if grief, self-consumed, in oblivion would doze,

       And conscience her tortures appease,

       ‘Mid tumult and uproar this man must repose;

       In the comfortless vault of disease.

      When his fetters at night have so press’d on his limbs,

       That the weight can no longer be borne,

       If, while a half-slumber his memory bedims,

       The wretch on his pallet should turn,

      While the jail-mastiff howls at the dull clanking chain,

       From the roots of his hair there shall start

       A thousand sharp punctures of cold-sweating pain,

       And terror shall leap at his heart.

      But now he half-raises his deep-sunken eye,

       And the motion unsettles a tear;

       The silence of sorrow it seems to supply,

       And asks of me why I am here.

      “Poor victim! no idle intruder has stood

       ”With o’erweening complacence our state to compare,

       “But one, whose first wish is the wish to be good,

       ”Is come as a brother thy sorrows to share.

      “At thy name though compassion her nature resign,

       ”Though in virtue’s proud mouth thy report be a stain,

       “My care, if the arm of the mighty were mine,

       ”Would plant thee where yet thou might’st blossom again.”

LINES WRITTEN A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING A TOUR, July 13, 1798

       Table of Contents

      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 weariness, 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 daylight; 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

      

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