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WAS it for this | |
| That one, the fairest of all rivers, loved | |
| To blend his murmurs with my nurse’s song, | |
| And from his alder shades and rocky falls, | |
| And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice | 5 |
| That flowed along my dreams? For this didst thou, | |
| O Derwent! winding among grassy holms | |
| Where I was looking on, a babe in arms, | |
| Make ceaseless music that composed my thoughts | |
| To more than infant softness, giving me | 10 |
| Amid the fretful dwellings of mankind | |
| A foretaste, a dim earnest, of the calm | |
| That Nature breathes among the hills and groves. | |
| When he had left the mountains and received | |
| On his smooth breast the shadow of those towers | 15 |
| That yet survive, a shattered monument | |
| Of feudal sway, the bright blue river passed | |
| Along the margin of our terrace walk; | |
| A tempting playmate whom we dearly loved. | |
| O, many a time have I, a five-years’ child, | 20 |
| In a small mill-race severed from his stream | |
| Made one long bathing of a summer’s day; | |
| Basked in the sun, and plunged and basked again | |
| Alternate, all a summer’s day, or scoured | |
| The sandy fields, leaping through flowery groves | 25 |
| Of yellow ragwort; or when rock and hill, | |
| The woods, and distant Skiddaw’s lofty height, | |
| Were bronzed with deepest radiance, stood alone | |
| Beneath the sky, as if I had been born | |
| On Indian plains, and from my mother’s hut | 30 |
| Had run abroad in wantonness, to sport, | |
| A naked savage, in the thunder-shower. | |
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