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 | |
| Of towns and cities, I have owed to them, | 5 |
| 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 | |
| Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps, | 10 |
| 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 | |
| To them I may have owed another gift | 15 |
| Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood | |
| In which the burthen of the mystery, | |
| In which the heavy and the weary weight | |
| Of all this unintelligible world, | |
| Is lightened:—that serene and blessed mood | 20 |
| In which the affections gently lead us on,— | |
| Until, the breath of this corporeal frame, | |
| And even the motion of our human blood, | |
| Almost suspended, we are laid asleep | |
| In body, and become a living soul: | 25 |
| While with an eye made quiet by the power | |
| Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, | |
| We see into the life of things. * * * * * I have learned | |
| To look on nature, not as in the hour | |
| Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes | 30 |
| The still, sad music of humanity, | |
| Nor harsh, nor grating, though of ample power | |
| To chasten and subdue. And I have felt | |
| A presence that disturbs me with the joy | |
| Of elevated thoughts: a sense sublime | 35 |
| Of something far more deeply interfused, | |
| Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, | |
| And the round ocean, and the living air, | |
| And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: | |
| A motion and a spirit, that impels | 40 |
| All thinking things, all objects of all thought, | |
| And rolls through all things. | |
| |
