By all the Heavens thou hast in Him,
Fair sister of the Seraphim!
By all of Him we have in thee,
Leave nothing of myself in me :
Let me so read thy life, that I
Unto all life of mine may die !
152. THE CHALLENGE OF MAY
QUHEN Merchè wes with variand windis past,
And Apprylè had with hir silver schouris
Tane leif at Nature with ane orient blast,
And lusty May, that muddir is of flouris,
Had maid the birdis to begyn thair houris 1
Amang the tendir flouris reid and quhyt,
Quhois armony to heir it was delyt :
In bed at morrow sleiping as I lay,
Me thocht Aurora, with hir cristall ene
In at the window lukit by the day.
And halsit 2 me, with visage paill and grene ;
On quhois hand a lark sang fro the splene,3
Awak, luvaris, out of your slomering :
Se hou the lusty morrow dois up-spring!"
Me thocht fresch May befoir my bed up stude,
In weid depaynt of mony diverss hew,
Sobir, benyng, and full of mansuetude,
In brycht atteir of flouris forgit new
Hevinly of color, quhyt, reid, broun and blew,
Balmit in dew, and gilt with Phebus bemys;
Quhill all the house illumyint of her lemys.4
1 Orisons.
2 Embraced.
4 Gleams, brightness.
"Slugird," scho said, "awak annone for schame!
And in my honour sum thing thou go wryt:
The lark hes done the mirry day proclame,
To raise up luvaris with confort and delyt ;
Yit nocht incressis thy curage to indyt,
Quhois hairt sum tyme hes glaid and blisfull bene,
Sangis to mak undir the levis grene.”
JENNY kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in.
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in:
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
Say that health and wealth have missed me, Say I'm growing old,—but add,
FIVE years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a soft inland murmur.-Once again
1 Not technically a "rondeau," though so called by the author.
2 The full title is, Lines composed a few miles above Tintern on revisiting the banks of the Wye, during a tour, July 13,
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
These hedgerows, hardly hedgerows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up in silence from among the trees,
With some uncertain notice, as might seem,
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some hermit's cave, where by his fire
The hermit sits alone.
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
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,
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,
Of aspect more sublime: that blessèd mood
In which the burden of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened :—that serene and blessèd mood
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;
While, with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
Be but a vain belief, yet O how oft
In darkness and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable and the fever of the world
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart;
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer through the woods,
How often has my spirit turned to thee!
And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again ;
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
And so I dare to hope: Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when
I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers and the lonely streams,
Wherever Nature led more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved.
For Nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by)
To me was all in all.—I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love
That had no need of a remoter charm
By thought supplied, or any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.-That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense. For I have learned
To look on Nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth: but hearing oftentimes
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
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
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
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