Beneath that hill of moss so fair. 20 210 'I've heard, the moss is spotted red With drops of that poor infant's blood; But kill a new-born infant thus, I do not think she could! 215220Some say, if to the pond you go, And fix on it a steady view, The shadow of a babe you trace, A baby and a baby's face, And that it looks at you; Whene'er you look on it, 'tis plain The baby looks at you again. 21 'And some had sworn an oath that she Should be to public justice brought; And for the little infant's bones 225With spades they would have sought. But instantly the hill of moss Before their eyes began to stir! And, for full fifty yards around, The grass?it shook upon the ground!
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25 8 / WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Yet all do still aver 230 The little Babe lies buried there, Beneath that hill of moss so fair.
22
'I cannot tell how this may be, But plain it is the Thorn is bound With heavy tufts of moss that strive
235 To drag it to the ground; And this I know, full many a time, When she was on the mountain high, By day, and in the silent night, When all the stars shone clear and bright,
240 That I have heard her cry, 'Oh misery! oh misery! Oh woe is me! oh misery!' '
Mar.?Apr. 1798 1798
Lines'
Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798
Five 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 soft inland murmur.2?Once again
5 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
IO 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
15 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!
1. No poem of mine was composed under circumstances more pleasant for me to remember than this. I began it upon leaving Tintern, after crossing the Wye, and concluded it just as I was entering Bristol in the evening, after a ramble of 4 or 5 days, with my sister. Not a line of it was altered, and not any part of it written down till I reached Bristol [Wordsworth's note, 1843]. The poem was printed as the last item in Lyrical Ballads. Wordsworth had first visited the Wye valley and the ruins of Tintern Abbey, in Monmouthshire, while on a solitary walking tour in August 1793, when he was twenty-three years old. (See 'Tintern
Abbey, Tourism, and Romantic Landscape' at Norton Literature Online.) The puzzling difference between the present landscape and the remembered 'picture of the mind' (line 61) gives rise to an intricately organized meditation, in which the poet reviews his past, evaluates the present, and (through his sister as intermediary) anticipates the future; he ends by rounding back quietly on the scene that had been his point of departure.
2. The river is not affected by the tides a few miles above Tintern [Wordsworth's note, 1798 ff.]. Until 1845 the text had 'sweet' for 'soft,' meaning fresh, not salty.
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TINTER N ABBE Y / 25 9 With some uncertain notice, as might seem 20 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: 25 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, 30 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 35 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 burthen0 of the mystery, burden In which the heavy and the weary weight 40 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 45 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 50 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? 55 How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee, O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods, How often has my spirit turned to thee! And now, with gleams of half- extinguished thought, With many recognitions dim and faint, 60 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 65 For future years. And so I dare to hope, Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
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26 0 / WILLIA M WORDSWORT H I came among these hills; when like a roe? deer I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams, 70 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) 75 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 so An appetite; a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye.?That time is past, And all its aching joys are now no more, 85 And all its dizzy raptures.3 Not for this Faint0 I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts lose heart Have followed; for such loss, I would believe, Abundant recompense. For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour 90 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 95 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: ioo 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 105 From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye, and ear,?both what they half create,4 And what perceive; well pleased to recognise In nature and the language of the sense, The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, no The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being.
