Y eye, descending from the hill, surveys Where Thames among the wanton valleys strays;

Thames, the most loved of all the ocean's

sons

By his old sire, to his embraces runs,
Hasting to pay his tribute to the sea,
Like mortal life to meet eternity.
Though with those streams he no remem-
brance hold,

Whose foam is amber and their gravel gold,
His genuine and less guilty wealth to explore,
Search not his bottom, but survey his shore,
O'er which he kindly spreads his spacious
wing,

And hatches plenty for the ensuing spring,
And then destroys it with too fond a stay,
Like mothers which their infants overlay;
Nor with a sudden and impetuous wave,

LINES.

(Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye.)

IVE years have past; 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,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and con-
nect

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,

gave.

No unexpected inundations spoil

The mower's hopes, nor mock the plowman's toil,

But God-like his unwearied bounty flows; First loves to do, then loves the good he does. Nor are his blessings to his banks confined, But free and common, as the sea or wind.

Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves

Among the woods and copses, nor disturb
The wild green landscape. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little

lines

Of sportive woods run wild; these pastoral farms,

Green to the very door; and wreaths 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.

These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, 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 have no slight or 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 lightened; 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-extinguished 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 pleasant 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 side
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 colors 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 recompense. 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, the soul
Of all my moral being.

Nor, perchance,