This View’s Poetry  


    “I wandered lonely as a cloud”    
         
   

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed — and gazed — but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

   
         
    William Wordsworth (1770-1850)    
    Norton Anthology of English Literature:
The Major Authors
(Sixth Edition) pp. 1381f
   

    The Two April Mornings    
         
    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,
  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
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,
  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:

“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
  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,
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
  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 e’er had loved before.

“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;
  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;
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:
  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.
   
         
    William Wordsworth (1770-1850)    
    The Golden Treasury (1875) CCLXXXI
ed. Francis T. Palgrave
   

    Triad    
         
    From the Silence of Time, Time’s Silence borrow.
In the heart of To-day is the word of To-morrow.
The Builders of Joy are the Children of Sorrow.
   
         
    William Sharp (1856-1902)    
    Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse p. 400    


  This View’s Poetry