Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) (165 page)

My Heart Leaps Up

William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

MY heart leaps up when I behold
 
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began,
So is it now I am a man,
So be it when I shall grow old
  
5
 
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man:
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

The Two April Mornings

William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

WE walk’d along, while bright and red
Uprose the morning sun;
And Matthew stopp’d, he look’d, and said
‘The will of God be done!’

A village schoolmaster was he,
  
5
With hair of glittering gray;
As blithe a man as you could see
On a spring holiday.

And on that morning, through the grass
And by the steaming rills
  
10
We travell’d merrily, to pass
A day among the hills.

‘Our work,’ said I, ‘was well begun;
Then from thy breast what thought,
Beneath so beautiful a sun,
  
15
So sad a sigh has brought?’

A second time did Matthew stop;
And fixing still his eye
Upon the eastern mountain-top,
To me he made reply:
  
20

‘Yon cloud with that long purple cleft
Brings fresh into my mind
A day like this, which I have left
Full thirty years behind.

‘And just above yon slope of corn
  
25
Such colours, and no other,
Were in the sky that April morn
Of this the very brother.

‘With rod and line I sued the sport
Which that sweet season gave,
  
30
And coming to the church, stopp’d short
Beside my daughter’s grave.

‘Nine summers had she scarcely seen,
The pride of all the vale;
And then she sang: — she would have been
  
35
A very nightingale.

‘Six feet in earth my Emma lay;
And yet I loved her more —
For so it seem’d, — than till that day
I ne’er had loved before.
  
40

‘And turning from her grave, I met,
Beside the churchyard yew,
A blooming Girl, whose hair was wet
With points of morning dew.

‘A basket on her head she bare;
  
45
Her brow was smooth and white:
To see a child so very fair,
It was a pure delight!

‘No fountain from its rocky cave
E’er tripp’d with foot so free;
  
50
She seem’d as happy as a wave
That dances on the sea.

‘There came from me a sigh of pain
Which I could ill confine;
I look’d at her, and look’d again:
  
55
And did not wish her mine!’

 
— Matthew is in his grave, yet now
Methinks I see him stand
As at that moment, with a bough
Of wilding in his hand.
  
60

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

The Fountain

A Conversation

William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

WE talk’d with open heart, and tongue
Affectionate and true,
A pair of friends, though I was young,
And Matthew seventy-two.

We lay beneath a spreading oak,
  
5
Beside a mossy seat;
And from the turf a fountain broke
And gurgled at our feet.

‘Now, Matthew!’ said I, ‘let us match
This water’s pleasant tune
  
10
With some old border-song, or catch
That suits a summer’s noon.

‘Or of the church-clock and the chimes
Sing here beneath the shade
That half-mad thing of witty rhymes
  
15
Which you last April made!’

In silence Matthew lay, and eyed
The spring beneath the tree;
And thus the dear old man replied,
The gray-hair’d man of glee:
  
20

‘No check, no stay, this Streamlet fears,
How merrily it goes!
‘Twill murmur on a thousand years
And flow as now it flows.

‘And here, on this delightful day,
  
25
I cannot choose but think
How oft, a vigorous man, I lay
Beside this fountain’s brink.

‘My eyes are dim with childish tears,
My heart is idly stirr’d,
  
30
For the same sound is in my ears
Which in those days I heard.

‘Thus fares it still in our decay:
And yet the wiser mind
Mourns less for what Age takes away,
  
35
Than what it leaves behind.

‘The blackbird amid leafy trees,
The lark above the hill,
Let loose their carols when they please,
Are quiet when they will.
  
40

‘With Nature never do they wage
A foolish strife; they see
A happy youth, and their old age
Is beautiful and free:

‘But we are press’d by heavy laws;
  
45
And often, glad no more,
We wear a face of joy, because
We have been glad of yore.

‘If there be one who need bemoan
His kindred laid in earth,
  
50
The household hearts that were his own, —
It is the man of mirth.

‘My days, my friend, are almost gone,
My life has been approved,
And many love me; but by none
  
55
Am I enough beloved.’

‘Now both himself and me he wrongs,
The man who thus complains!
I live and sing my idle songs
Upon these happy plains:
  
60

‘And Matthew, for thy children dead
I’ll be a son to thee!’
At this he grasp’d my hand and said,
‘Alas! that cannot be.’

We rose up from the fountain-side;
  
65
And down the smooth descent
Of the green sheep-track did we glide,
And through the wood we went;

And ere we came to Leonard’s rock
He sang those witty rhymes
  
70
About the crazy old church-clock,
And the bewilder’d chimes.

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

Written in March

While resting on the Bridge at the foot of Brother’s Water

William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

 
THE COCK is crowing,
 
The stream is flowing,
 
The small birds twitter,
 
The lake doth glitter,
The green field sleeps in the sun;
  
5
 
The oldest and youngest
 
Are at work with the strongest;
 
The cattle are grazing,
 
Their heads never raising;
There are forty feeding like one!
  
10

 
Like an army defeated
 
The Snow hath retreated,
 
And now doth fare ill
 
On the top of the bare hill;
The Ploughboy is whooping — anon — anon:
  
15
 
There’s joy in the mountains;
 
There’s life in the fountains;
 
Small clouds are sailing,
 
Blue sky prevailing;
The rain is over and gone!
  
20

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

Nature and the Poet

Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm, painted by Sir George Beaumont

William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

I WAS thy neighbour once, thou rugged Pile!
Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee:
I saw thee every day; and all the while
Thy form was sleeping on a glassy sea.

So pure the sky, so quiet was the air!
  
5
So like, so very like, was day to day!
Whene’er I look’d, thy image still was there;
It trembled, but it never pass’d away.

How perfect was the calm! It seem’d no sleep,
No mood, which season takes away, or brings:
  
10
I could have fancied that the mighty Deep
Was even the gentlest of all gentle things.

Ah! then if mine had been the painter’s hand
To express what then I saw; and add the gleam,
The light that never was on sea or land,
  
15
The consecration, and the Poet’s dream. —

I would have planted thee, thou hoary pile,
Amid a world how different from this!
Beside a sea that could not cease to smile;
On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss.
  
20

A picture had it been of lasting ease,
Elysian quiet, without toil or strife;
No motion but the moving tide, a breeze,
Or merely silent Nature’s breathing life.

Such, in the fond illusion of my heart,
  
25
Such picture would I at that time have made;
And seen the soul of truth in every part,
A steadfast peace that might not be betray’d.

So once it would have been,— ’tis so no more;
I have submitted to a new control:
  
30
A power is gone, which nothing can restore;
A deep distress hath humanized my soul.

Not for a moment could I now behold
A smiling sea, and be what I have been:
The feeling of my loss will ne’er be old;
  
35
This, which I know, I speak with mind serene.

Then, Beaumont, Friend! who would have been the friend
If he had lived, of him whom I deplore,
This work of thine I blame not, but commend;
This sea in anger, and that dismal shore.
  
40

O ’tis a passionate work! — yet wise and well,
Well chosen is the spirit that is here;
That hulk which labours in the deadly swell,
This rueful sky, this pageantry of fear!

And this huge Castle, standing here sublime,
  
45
I love to see the look with which it braves,
 
— Cased in the unfeeling armour of old time —
The lightning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves.

 
— Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone,
Housed in a dream, at distance from the Kind!
  
50
Such happiness, wherever it be known
Is to be pitied; for ’tis surely blind.

But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer,
And frequent sights of what is to be borne!
Such sights, or worse, as are before me here: —
55
Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order