25 2 / WILLIA M WORDSWORT H How sweet his music! on my life, There's more of wisdom in it. 15And hark! how blithe the throstle0 sings! He, too, is no mean preacher: Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your Teacher. song thrush 20She has a world of ready wealth, Our minds and hearts to bless? Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health, Truth breathed by cheerfulness. One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can. 25 Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; Our meddling intellect Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:? We murder to dissect. 30Enough of Science and of Art; Close up those barren leaves;0Come forth, and bring with you a heart That watches and receives. pages 1798 1798 The Thorn1 i 'There is a Thorn2?it looks so old, In truth, you'd find it hard to say
1. Arose out of my observing, on the ridge of Quantock Hill [in Somersetshire], on a stormy day, a thorn which I had often past, in calm and bright weather, without noticing it. I said to myself, 'Cannot I by some invention do as much to make this Thorn permanently an impressive object as the storm has made it to my eyes at this moment?' I began the poem accordingly, and composed it with great rapidity [Wordsworth's note, 1843]. In the prefatory Advertisement to the 1798 Lyrical Ballads Wordsworth wrote, 'The poem of the Thorn .. . is not supposed to be spoken in the author's own person: the character of the loquacious narrator will sufficiently shew itself in the course of the story.' In the editions of 1800-05 he elaborated in a separate note that reads, in part: 'The character which I have here introduced speaking is sufficiently common. The Reader will perhaps have a general notion of it, if he has ever known a man, a Captain of a small trading vessel, for example, who, being past the middle age of life, had retired upon an annuity or small independent income to some village or country town of which he was not a native. . . . Such men, having little to do, become credulous and talkative from indolence; and from the same cause . . . they are prone to superstition. On which account it appeared to me proper to select a character like this to exhibit some of the general laws by which superstition acts upon the mind. Superstitious men are almost always men of slow faculties and deep feelings: their minds are not loose but adhesive; they have a reasonable share of imagination, by which word I mean the faculty which produces impressive effects out of simple elements. .. . It was my wish in this poem to show the manner in which such men cleave to the same ideas; and to follow the turns of passion .. . by which their conversation is swayed. . . . There is a numerous class of readers who imagine that the same words cannot be repeated without tautology: this is a great error. . . . Words, a Poet's words more particularly, ought to be weighed in the balance of feeling and not measured by the space they occupy upon paper.'
2. Hawthorn, a thorny shrub or small tree.
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THE THORN / 253
How it could ever have been young,
It looks so old and grey. Not higher than a two years' child It stands erect, this aged Thorn; No leaves it has, no prickly points; It is a mass of knotted joints, A wretched thing forlorn.
It stands erect, and like a stone With lichens is it overgrown.
2
'Like rock or stone, it is o'ergrown, With lichens to the very top, And hung with heavy tufts of moss,
A melancholy crop: Up from the earth these mosses creep, And this poor Thorn they clasp it round So close, you'd say that they are bent With plain and manifest intent
To drag it to the ground; And all have joined in one endeavour To bury this poor Thorn for ever.
3 'High on a mountain's highest ridge, Where oft the stormy winter gale
Cuts like a scythe, while through the clouds It sweeps from vale to vale; Not five yards from the mountain path, This Thorn you on your left espy; And to the left, three yards beyond, You see a little muddy pond Of water?never dry Though but of compass small, and bare To thirsty suns and parching air.
4 'And, close beside this aged Thorn, There is a fresh and lovely sight, A beauteous heap, a hill of moss, Just half a foot in height. All lovely colours there you see, All colours that were ever seen;
And mossy network too is there, As if by hand of lady fair The work had woven been; And cups, the darlings of the eye, So deep is their vermilion dye.
5 'Ah me! what lovely tints are there Of olive green and scarlet bright, In spikes, in branches, and in stars, Green, red, and pearly white! This heap of earth o'ergrown with moss,
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25 4 / WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
50 Which close beside the Thorn you see, So fresh in all its beauteous dyes, Is like an infant's grave in size, As like as like can be: But never, never any where,
55 An infant's grave was half so fair.
6
'Now would you see this aged Thorn, This pond, and beauteous hill of moss, You must take care and choose your time The mountain when to cross.
60 For oft there sits between the heap So like an infant's grave in size, And that same pond of which I spoke, A Woman in a scarlet cloak, And to herself she cries,
65 'Oh misery! oh misery! Oh woe is me! oh misery!'
7 'At all times of the day and night This wretched Woman thither goes; And she is known to every star,
70 And every wind that blows; And there, beside the Thorn, she sits When the blue daylight's in the skies, And when the whirlwind's on the hill, Or frosty air is keen and still,
75 And to herself she cries, 'Oh misery! oh misery! Oh woe is me! oh misery!' '
8
'Now wherefore, thus, by day and night, In rain, in tempest, and in snow,
so Thus to the dreary mountain-top Does this poor Woman go? And why sits she beside the Thorn When the
