---

Скачать книгу

---

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.

      Nor, perchance,

       If I were not thus taught, should I the more

       Suffer my genial spirits to decay?

       For thou art with me, here, upon the banks

       Of this fair river; thou, my dearest Friend,

       My dear, dear Friend, and in thy voice I catch

       The language of my former heart, and read

       My former pleasures in the shooting lights

       Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while

       May I behold in thee what I was once,

       My dear, dear Sister! And this prayer I make,

       Knowing that Nature never did betray

       The heart that loved her; ‘tis her privilege,

       Through all the years of this our life, to lead

       From joy to joy: for she can so inform

       The mind that is within us, so impress

       With quietness and beauty, and so feed

       With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,

       Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,

       Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all

       The dreary intercourse of daily life,

       Shall e’er prevail against us, or disturb

       Our chearful faith that all which we behold

       Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon

       Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;

       And let the misty mountain winds be free

       To blow against thee: and in after years,

       When these wild ecstasies shall be matured

       Into a sober pleasure, when thy mind

       Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,

       Thy memory be as a dwelling-place

       For all sweet sounds and harmonies; Oh! then,

       If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,

       Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts

       Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,

       And these my exhortations! Nor perchance,

       If I should be, where I no more can hear

       Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams

       Of past existence, wilt thou then forget

       That on the banks of this delightful stream

       We stood together; and that I, so long

       A worshipper of Nature, hither came,

       Unwearied in that service: rather say

       With warmer love, oh! with far deeper zeal

       Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,

       That after many wanderings, many years

       Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,

       And this green pastoral landscape, were to me

       More dear, both for themselves, and for thy sake.

      VOLUME II

       Table of Contents

HART-LEAP

       Table of Contents

      Hart-Leap Well is a small spring of water, about five miles from Richmond in Yorkshire, and near the side of the road which leads from Richmond to Askrigg. Its name is derived from a remarkable chase, the memory of which is preserved by the monuments spoken of in the second Part of the following Poem, which monuments do now exist as I have there described them.

      The Knight had ridden down from Wensley moor

       With the slow motion of a summer’s cloud;

       He turn’d aside towards a Vassal’s door,

       And, “Bring another Horse!” he cried aloud.

      ”Another Horse!” — That shout the Vassal heard,

       And saddled his best steed, a comely Grey;

       Sir Walter mounted him; he was the third

       Which he had mounted on that glorious day.

      Joy sparkeled in the prancing Courser’s eyes;

       The horse and horsemen are a happy pair;

       But, though Sir Walter like a falcon flies,

       There is a doleful silence in the air.

      A rout this morning left Sir Walter’s Hall,

       That as they gallop’d made the echoes roar;

       But horse and man are vanish’d, one and all;

       Such race, I think, was never seen before.

      Sir Walter, restless as a veering wind,

       Calls to the few tired dogs that yet remain:

       Brach, Swift and Music, noblest of their kind,

       Follow, and weary up the mountain strain.

      The Knight halloo’d, he chid and cheer’d them on

       With suppliant gestures and upbraidings stern;

       But breath and eyesight fail, and, one by one,

       The dogs are stretch’d among the mountain fern.

      Where is the throng, the tumult of the chace?

       The bugles that so joyfully were blown?

       — This race it looks not like

---

Скачать книгу