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110

Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born;
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight;
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine;
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.
It is right it should be so;
Man was made for joy and woe;
And, when this we rightly know,
Safely through the world we go.

We are led to believe a lie

When we see with not through the eye,

Which was born in a night to perish in a night
When the soul slept in beams of light.
God appears and God is light

To those poor souls who dwell in night;
But doth a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

1863

"Their graves are green, they may be seen,' The little maid replied,

'Twelve steps or more from my mother's

door,

125

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

WE ARE SEVEN

-A SIMPLE child,

That lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb, What should it know of death?

I met a little cottage girl:

She was eight years old, she said;

When it is light and fair,
I take my little porringer,
And eat my supper there.

'The first that died was sister Jane; In bed she moaning lay,

Till God released her of her pain;

And then she went away.

'So in the church-yard she was laid; And, when the grass was dry,

5

Together round her grave we played, My brother John and I.

55

LINES

COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY

FIVE years have past; five summers, with the length

Of five long winters! and again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountainsprings

With a soft inland murmur.

Once again

5

Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and con-
nect

The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view 10
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

15

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 25 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 30 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 Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust, 35 To them I may have owed another gift, Of aspect more sublime; that blessèd mood, In which the burthen of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world,

40

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

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, 65
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was

80

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,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this 85
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would be-
lieve,

Abundant recompense. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing often-
times

90