THE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH - VOL. 2 (Completed)

LINES, [A] COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, ON VISITING THE BANKS

Composed July 1798.--Published 1798

[July 1798. No poem of mine was composed under circumstances morepleasant for me to remember than this. I began it upon leaving Tintern,after crossing the Wye, and concluded it just as I was entering Bristolin the evening, after a ramble of four or five days, with my sister. Nota line of it was altered, and not any part of it written down till Ireached Bristol. It was published almost immediately after in the littlevolume of which so much has been said in these Notes, the "LyricalBallads," as first published at Bristol by Cottle.--I.F.]

Included among the "Poems of the Imagination."--Ed.

Five years have past; five summers, with the length

Of five long winters![C] and again I hear

These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs

With a soft [1] inland murmur. [D]--

Once again Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,

That [2] 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. [3] 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! [E]

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 [4]

As is a landscape to a blind man's eye: