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Float near me; do not yet depart!
Dead times revive in thee.

Thou bring'st, gay creature as thou art!
A solemn image to my heart—
My father's family!

Oh! pleasant, pleasant were the days,
The time when, in our childish plays,
My sister Emmeline and I

Together chased the butterfly!

IX.

TO A BUTTERFLY.

I've watched you now a full half hour
Self-poised upon that yellow flower;
And, little butterfly! indeed

I know not if you sleep or feed.
How motionless!-not frozen seas
More motionless! and then

What joy awaits you when the breeze
Hath found you out among the trees,
And calls you forth again!

1802.

This plot of orchard-ground is ours;
My trees they are, my sister's flowers.
Here rest your wings when they are weary;

Here lodge as in a sanctuary!

Come often to us; fear no wrong;

Sit near us on the bough!

We'll talk of sunshine and of song;

And summer days, when we were young;
Sweet childish days, that were as long
As twenty days are now.

X.

NUTTING.

It seems a day

1802.

(I speak of one from many singled out)
One of those heavenly days that cannot die;
When, in the eagerness of boyish hope
I left our cottage threshold, sallying forth
With a huge wallet o'er my shoulders slung,
A nutting-crook in hand: and turn'd my steps
Towards some far distant wood, a figure quaint,
Trick'd out in proud disguise of cast-off weeds

Which for that service had been husbanded,
By exhortation of my frugal dame-

Motley accoutrement; of power to smile

At thorns, and brakes, and brambles,-and in truth,
More ragged than need was! O'er pathless rocks,
Through beds of matted fern and tangled thickets,
Forcing my way, I came to one dear nook
Unvisited, where not a broken bough

Droop'd with its wither'd leaves, ungracious sign.
Of devastation, but the hazels rose

Tall and erect, with tempting clusters hung,
A virgin scene! A little while I stood,
Breathing with such suppression of the heart
As joy delights in; and, with wise restraint
Voluptuous, fearless of a rival, eyed

The banquet--or beneath the trees I sate
Among the flowers, and with the flowers I play'd;
A temper known to those, who, after long
And weary expectation, have been bless'd
With sudden happiness beyond all hope.
Perhaps it was a bower beneath whose leaves
The violets of five seasons reappear
And fade, unseen by any human eye;
Where fairy water-breaks do murmur on
Forever; and I saw the sparkling foam,
And-with my cheek on one of those green stones
That, fleeced with moss, beneath the shady trees,
Lay round me, scatter'd like a flock of sheep-
I heard the murmur and the murmuring sound,
In that sweet mood when pleasure loves to pay
Tribute to ease; and, of its joy secure,
The heart luxuriates with indifferent things,
Wasting its kindliness on stocks and stones,
And on the vacant air. Then up I rose,

And dragg'd to earth both branch and bough, with crash
And merciless ravage; and the shady nook

Of hazels, and the green and moss bower,
Deform'd and sullied, patiently gave up
Their quiet being; and, unless I now

Confound my present feelings with the past,
Even then, when from the bower I turn'd away
Exulting rich beyond the wealth of kings,

I felt a sense of pain when I beheld

The silent trees and the intruding sky.

Then, dearest maiden! move along these shades
In gentleness of heart; with gentle hand
Touch-for there is a spirit in the woods.

1799.

LINES.

COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE.

["No poem of mine," says Wordsworth, "was composed under circumstances more pleasant for me to remember than this. I began it after leaving Tintern, after crossing the Wye, and concluded it just as I was entering Bristol in the evening, after a ramble of four or five days with my sister."]

FIVE years have pass'd; five summers, with the length

Of five long winters! and again I hear

These waters, rolling from their mountain springs
With a soft 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 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,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
'Mid groves and copses. 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 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 unremember'd pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremember'd acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,

*The river is not affected by the tides a few miles above Tintern.

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 wand'rer 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 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 morn 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 recognise
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

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