The Penguin Book of English Verse

by Paul Keegan

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 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 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 wood

  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 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,

  Not 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 cheerful 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.

  SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE Frost at Midnight

  The Frost performs its secret ministry,

  Unhelped by any wind. The owlet’s cry

  Came loud – and hark, again! loud as before.

  The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,

  Have left me to that solitude, which suits

  Abstruser musings: save that at my side

  My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.

  ’Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs

  And vexes meditation with its strange

  And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,

  This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,

  With all the numberless goings-on of life,

  Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame

  Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;

  Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,

  Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.

  Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature

  Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,

  Making it a companionable form,

  Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit

  By its own moods interprets, every where

  Echo or mirror seeking of itself,

  And makes a toy of Thought.

  But O! how oft,

  How oft, at school, with most believing mind,

  Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,

  To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft

  With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt

  Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,

  Whose bells, the poor man’s only music, rang

  From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,

  So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me

  With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear

  Most like articulate sounds of things to come!

  So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,

  Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!

  And so I brooded all the following morn,

  Awed by the stern preceptor’s face, mine eye

  Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:

  Save if the door half opened, and I snatched

  A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,

  For still I hoped to see the stranger’s face,

  Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,

  My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!

  Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,

  Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,

  Fill up the intersperséd vacancies

  And momentary pauses of the thought!

  My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart

  With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,

  And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,

  And in far other scenes! For I was reared

  In the great city, pent ’mid cloisters dim,

  And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.

  But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze

  By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags

  Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,

  Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores

  And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear

  The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible

  Of that eternal language, which thy God

  Utters, who from eternity doth teach

  Himself in all, and all things in himself.

  Great universal Teacher! he shall mould

  Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

  Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,

  Whether the summer clothe the general earth

  With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing

  Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch

  Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch

  Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall

  Heard only in the trances of the blast,

  Or if the secret ministry of frost

  Shall hang them up in silent icicles,

  Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

  1799 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH from The Two-Part Prelude of 1799

  Was it for this

  That one, the fairest of all rivers, loved

  To blend his murmurs with my nurse’s song,

  And from his alder shades and rocky falls,

  And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice

  That flowed along my dreams? For this didst thou,

  O Derwent, travelling over the green plains

  Near my ‘sweet birthplace’, didst thou, beauteous stream,

  Make ceaseless music through the night and day,

  Which with its steady cadence tempering

  Our human waywardness, composed my thoughts

  To more than infant softness, giving me

  Among the fretful dwellings of mankind

  A knowledge, a dim earnest, of the calm

  Which nature breathes among the fields and groves?

  Beloved Derwent, fairest of all streams,

  Was it for this that I, a four years’ child,

  A naked boy, among thy silent pools

  Made one long bathing of a summer’s day,

  Basked in the sun, or plunged into thy streams,

  Alternate, all a summer’s day, or coursed

  Over the sandy fields, and dashed the flowers

  Of yellow groundsel – or, when crag and hill,

  The woods, and distant Skiddaw’s lofty height,

  Were bronzed with a deep radiance, stood alone

  A naked savage in the thunder-shower?

  And afterwards (’twas in a later day,

  Though early), when upon the mountain-slope

  The frost and breath of frosty wind had snapped

  The last autumnal crocus, ’twas my joy

  To wander half the night among the cliffs

  And the smooth hollows where the woodcocks ran

  Along the moonlight turf. In thought and wish

  That time, my shoulder all with springes hung,

  I was a fell destroyer. Gentle powers,

  Who give us happiness and call it peace,