(i) |
Strange fits of passion have I known : |
And I will dare to tell, |
But in the Lover’s ear alone, |
What once to me befell.
|
When she I loved looked every day |
Fresh as a rose in June, |
I to her cottage bent my way, |
Beneath an evening-moon.
|
Upon the moon I fixed my eye, |
All over the wide lea ; |
With quickening pace my horse drew nigh |
Those paths so dear to me.
|
And now we reached the orchard-plot ; |
And, as we climbed the hill, |
The sinking moon to Lucy’s cot |
Came near, and nearer still.
|
In one of those sweet dreams I slept, |
Kind Nature’s gentlest boon ! |
And all the while my eyes I kept |
On the descending moon.
|
My horse moved on ; hoof after hoof |
He raised, and never stopped : |
When down behind the cottage roof, |
At once, the bright moon dropped.
|
What fond and wayward thoughts will
slide |
Into a Lover’s head ! |
‘O mercy !’ to myself I cried, |
‘If Lucy should be dead !’
|
(ii) |
She dwelt among the untrodden ways |
Beside the springs of Dove, |
A Maid whom there were none to praise |
And very few to love :
|
A violet by a mossy stone |
Half hidden from the eye ! |
– Fair as a star, when only one |
Is shining in the sky.
|
She lived unknown, and few could know |
When Lucy ceased to be ; |
But she is in her grave, and, oh, |
The difference to me !
|
(iii) |
I travelled among unknown men, |
In lands beyond the sea ; |
Nor, England ! did I know till then |
What love I bore to thee.
|
’Tis past, that melancholy dream ! |
Nor will I quit thy shore |
A second time ; for still I seem |
To love thee more and more.
|
Among thy mountains did I feel |
The joy of my desire ; |
And she I cherished turned her wheel |
Beside an English fire.
|
Thy mornings showed, thy nights
concealed, |
The bowers where Lucy played ; |
And thine too is the last green field
|
That Lucy’s eyes surveyed.
|
(iv) |
Three years she grew in sun and shower, |
Then Nature said, ‘A lovelier flower |
On earth was never sown ; |
This Child I to myself will take ; |
She shall be mine, and I will make |
A lady of my own.
|
‘Myself will to my darling be |
Both law and impulse : and with me |
The Girl, in rock and plain, |
In earth and heaven, in glade and
bower, |
Shall feel an overseeing power |
To kindle or restrain.
|
‘She shall be sportive as the fawn |
That wild with glee across the lawn |
Or up the mountain springs ; |
And hers shall be the breathing balm, |
And hers the silence and the calm |
Of mute insensate things.
|
‘The floating clouds their state shall
lend |
To her ; for her the willow bend ; |
Nor shall she fail to see |
Even in the motions of the Storm |
Grace that shall mould the Maiden’s
form |
By silent sympathy.
|
‘The stars of midnight shall be dear |
To her ; and she shall lean her ear |
In many a secret place |
Where rivulets dance their wayward
round, |
And beauty born of murmuring sound |
Shall pass into her face.
|
‘And vital feelings of delight |
Shall rear her form to stately height, |
Her virgin bosom swell ; |
Such thoughts to Lucy I will give |
While she and I together live |
Here in this happy dell.’
|
Thus Nature spake – The work was done – |
How soon my Lucy’s race was run ! |
She died, and left to me |
This heath, this calm, and quiet scene
; |
The memory of what has been, |
And never more will be.
|
(v) |
A slumber did my spirit seal ; |
I had no human fears : |
She seemed a thing that could not feel |
The touch of earthly years.
|
No motion has she now, no force ; |
She neither hears nor sees ; |
Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course, |
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
|
William
Wordsworth |
Classic Poems |
|
[ Composed Upon Westminster Bridge September 3 ] [ Daffodils ] [ The Prelude ] [ Lucy ] [ Intimations of immortality ] [ The Solitary Reaper ] [ The world is too much with us ] [ My heart leaps up when I behold ] [ Milton ] [ Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg ] |