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 lighten’d: — 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 woods,
How often has my spirit turned to thee!
And now, with gleams, of half-extinguish’d 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,
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, 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 chearful 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.
VOLUME II
HART-LEAP WELL
Hart-Leap Well is a small spring of water, about five miles from Richmond in Yorkshire, and near the side of the road which leads from Richmond to Askrigg. Its name is derived from a remarkable chase, the memory of which is preserved by the monuments spoken of in the second Part of the following Poem, which monuments do now exist as I have there described them.
The Knight had ridden down from Wensley moor
With the slow motion of a summer’s cloud;
He turn’d aside towards a Vassal’s door,
And, “Bring another Horse!” he cried aloud.
”Another Horse!” — That shout the Vassal heard,
And saddled his best steed, a comely Grey;
Sir Walter mounted him; he was the third
Which he had mounted on that glorious day.
Joy sparkeled in the prancing Courser’s eyes;
The horse and horsemen are a happy pair;
But, though Sir Walter like a falcon flies,
There is a doleful silence in the air.
A rout this morning left Sir Walter’s Hall,
That as they gallop’d
made the echoes roar;
But horse and man are vanish’d, one and all;
Such race, I think, was never seen before.
Sir Walter, restless as a veering wind,
Calls to the few tired dogs that yet remain:
Brach, Swift and Music, noblest of their kind,
Follow, and weary up the mountain strain.
The Knight halloo’d, he chid and cheer’d them on
With suppliant gestures and upbraidings stern;
But breath and eye-sight fail, and, one by one,
The dogs are stretch’d among the mountain fern.
Where is the throng, the tumult of the chace?
The bugles that so joyfully were blown?
— This race it looks not like an earthly race;
Sir Walter and the Hart are left alone.
The poor Hart toils along the mountain side;
I will not stop to tell how far he fled,
Nor will I mention by what death he died;
But now the Knight beholds him lying dead.
Dismounting then, he lean’d against a thorn;
He had no follower, dog, nor man, nor boy:
He neither smack’d his whip, nor blew his horn,
But gaz’d upon the spoil with silent joy.
Close to the thorn on which Sir Walter lean’d,
Stood his dumb partner in this glorious act;
Weak as a lamb the hour that it is yean’d,
And foaming like a mountain cataract.
Upon his side the Hart was lying stretch’d:
His nose half-touch’d a spring beneath a hill,
And with the last deep groan his breath had fetch’d
The waters of the spring were trembling still.
And now, too happy for repose or rest,
Was never man in such a joyful case,
Sir Walter walk’d all round, north, south and west,
And gaz’d, and gaz’d upon that darling place.
And turning up the hill, it was at least
Nine roods of sheer ascent, Sir Walter found
Three several marks which with his hoofs the beast
Had left imprinted on the verdant ground.
Sir Walter wiped his face, and cried, “Till now
Such sight was never seen by living eyes:
Three leaps have borne him from this lofty brow,
Down to the very fountain where he lies.”
I’ll build a Pleasure-house upon this spot,
And a small Arbour, made for rural joy;
Twill be the traveller’s shed, the pilgrim’s cot,
A place of love for damsels that are coy.
A cunning Artist will I have to frame
A bason for that fountain in the dell;
And they, who do make mention of the same,
From this day forth, shall call it Hart-leap Well.
And, gallant brute! to make thy praises known,
Another monument shall here be rais’d;
Three several pillars, each a rough hewn stone,
And planted where thy hoofs the turf have graz’d.
And in the summer-time when days are long,
I will come hither with my paramour,
And with the dancers, and the minstrel’s song,
We will make merry in that pleasant bower.
Till the foundations of the mountains fail
My mansion with its arbour shall endure,
— The joy of them who till the fields of Swale,
And them who dwell among the woods of Ure.
Then home he went, and left the Hart, stone-dead,
With breathless nostrils stretch’d above the spring.
And soon the Knight perform’d what he had said,
The fame whereof through many a land did ring.
Ere thrice the moon into her port had steer’d,
A cup of stone receiv’d the living well;
Three pillars of rude stone Sir Walter rear’d,
And built a house of pleasure in the dell.
And near the fountain, flowers of stature tall
With trailing plants and trees were intertwin’d,
Which soon composed a little sylvan hall,
A leafy shelter from the sun and wind.
And thither, when the summer days were long,
Sir Walter journey’d with his paramour;
And with the dancers and the minstrel’s song
Made merriment within that pleasant bower.
The Knight, Sir Walter, died in course of time,
And his bones lie in his paternal vale. —
But there is matter for a second rhyme,
And I to this would add another tale.
PART SECOND.
The moving accident is not my trade.
To curl the blood I have no ready arts;
’Tis my delight, alone in summer shade,
To pipe a simple song to thinking hearts,
As I from Hawes to Richmond did repair,
It chanc’d that I saw standing in a dell
Three aspins at three corners of a square,
And one, not four yards distant, near a well.
What this imported I could ill divine,
And, pulling now the rein my horse to stop,
I saw three pillars standing in a line,
The last stone pillar on a dark hill-top.
The trees were grey, with neither arms nor head;
Half-wasted the square mound of tawny green;
So that you just might say, as then I said,
”Here in old time the hand of man has been.”
I look’d upon the hills both far and near;
More doleful place did never eye survey;
It seem’d as if the spring-time came not here,
And Nature here were willing to decay.
I stood in various thoughts and fancies lost,
When one who was in Shepherd’s garb attir’d,
Came up the hollow. Him did I accost,
And what this place might be I then inquir’d.
The Shepherd stopp’d, and that same story told
Which in my former rhyme I have rehears’d.
”A jolly place,” said he, “in times of old,
But something ails it now; the spot is curs’d.”
You see these lifeless stumps of aspin wood,
Some say that they are beeches, others elms,
These were the Bower; and here a Mansion stood,
The finest palace of a hundred realms.
The arbour does its own condition tell,
You see the stones, the fountain, and the stream,
But as to the great Lodge, you might as well
Hunt half a day for a forgotten dream.
There’s neither dog nor heifer, horse nor sheep,
Will wet his lips within that cup of stone;
And, oftentimes, when all are fast asleep,
This water doth send forth a dolorous groan.
Some say that here a murder has been done,
And blood cries out for blood: but, for my part,
I’ve guess’d, when I’ve been sitting in the sun,
That it was all for that unhappy Hart.
What thoughts must through the creature’s brain have pass’d!
To this place from the stone upon the steep
Are but three bounds, and look, Sir, at this last!
O Master! it has been a cruel leap.
For thirteen hours he ran a desperate race;
And in my simple mind we cannot tell
What cause the Hart might have to love this place,
And come and make his death-bed near the well.
Here on the grass perhaps asleep he sank,
Lull’d by this fountain in the summer-tide;
This water was perhaps the first he drank
When he had wander’d from his mother’s side.
In April here beneath the scented thorn
He heard the birds their
morning carols sing,
And he, perhaps, for aught we know, was born
Not half a furlong from that self-same spring.
But now here’s neither grass nor pleasant shade;
The sun on drearier hollow never shone:
So will it be, as I have often said,
Till trees, and stones, and fountain all are gone.
Grey-headed Shepherd, thou hast spoken well;
Small difference lies between thy creed and mine;
This beast not unobserv’d by Nature fell,
His death was mourn’d by sympathy divine.
The Being, that is in the clouds and air,
That is in the green leaves among the groves.
Maintains a deep and reverential care
For them the quiet creatures whom he loves.
The Pleasure-house is dust: — behind, before,
This, is no common waste, no common gloom;
But Nature, in due course of time, once more
Shall here put on her beauty and her bloom.
She leaves these objects to a slow decay
That what we are, and have been, may be known;
But, at the coming of the milder day,
These monuments shall all be overgrown.
One lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide,
Taught both by what she shews, and what conceals,
Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.
There was a Boy, ye knew him well, ye Cliffs
And Islands of Winander! many a time,
At evening, when the stars had just begun
To move along the edges of the hills,
Rising or setting, would he stand alone,
Beneath the trees, or by the glimmering lake,
And there, with fingers interwoven, both hands
Press’d closely palm to palm and to his mouth
Uplifted, he, as through an instrument,
Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls
That they might answer him. And they would shout
Across the wat’ry vale and shout again
Responsive to his call, with quivering peals,
And long halloos, and screams, and echoes loud
Redoubled and redoubled, a wild scene
Of mirth and jocund din. And, when it chanced
That pauses of deep silence mock’d his skill,
Then, sometimes, in that silence, while he hung
Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprize
Has carried far into his heart the voice
Of mountain torrents, or the visible scene
Would enter unawares into his mind
With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,
Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, receiv’d
Into the bosom of the steady lake.
Fair are the woods, and beauteous is the spot,
Delphi Complete Works of William Wordsworth Page 32
