| |
| YE are the same, ye meadows and green banks, | |
| And pastures level to the river’s edge; | |
| Ye shores with poplar fringed in graceful ranks, | |
| And towns that nestle under rocky ledge; | |
| |
| Ye island-spots of greenery, fast embraced | 5 |
| By the dividing arms of this fair stream, | |
| Which, parting for a moment, meet in haste, | |
| And then in breadths of lake-like beauty gleam. | |
| |
| The quiet cattle, feeding quietly, | |
| They seem the very same I saw of yore; | 10 |
| And the same picture lives upon mine eye, | |
| Methinks, that lived upon mine eye before. | |
| |
| Fair were ye, seen of old; ye now are fair, | |
| As ye were then; and not a change appears, | |
| Unless that all doth stranger beauty wear, | 15 |
| This time beholden through a mist of tears. | |
| |
| For O ye streams, ye meadows, and ye hills, | |
| To which there cometh no mutation nigh, | |
| Strange trouble at your sight my bosom fills, | |
| You looking at me with this changeless eye. | 20 |
| |
| It troubles me that ye, unfeeling things, | |
| Should be exempted from our tears and fears, | |
| While we, the lords of nature and its kings, | |
| Servile remain to all the changeful years. | |
| |
| On this swift-sliding stream I sail once more, | 25 |
| Whose beauty brings unutterable pain; | |
| For ye who saw with me this sight before, | |
| Three were ye,—but, O, where are now the twain? | |
| |
| Ye are not here,—the floods, the hills, are here, | |
| They look on me with their unaltered eye; | 30 |
| Dowered with a strength eternal they appear, | |
| And we like weak, wan phantoms flitting by. | |
| |
