No More Learning

--Ed. ]



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SUB-FOOTNOTES ON THE TEXT


[Sub-Footnote a: This stanza, which was deleted from every edition of
'Peter Bell' after the two of 1819, was prefixed by Shelley to his poem
of 'Peter Bell the Third', and many of his contemporaries thought that
it was an invention of Shelley's. See the note which follows this poem,
p. 50. Crabb Robinson wrote in his 'Diary', June 6, 1812:

"Mrs. Basil Montagu told me she had no doubt she had suggested this
image to Wordsworth by relating to him an anecdote. A person, walking
in a friend's garden, looking in at a window, saw a company of ladies
at a table near the window, with countenances _fixed_. In an instant
he was aware of their condition, and broke the window. He saved them
from incipient suffocation. "

Wordsworth subsequently said that he had omitted the stanza only in
deference to the "unco guid. " Crabb Robinson remonstrated with him
against its exclusion. --Ed. ]





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LINES,[A] COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, ON REVISITING THE
BANKS OF THE WYE DURING A TOUR, JULY 13, 1798 [B]


Composed July 1798. --Published 1798


[July 1798. No poem of mine was composed under circumstances more
pleasant for me to remember than this.
I began it upon leaving Tintern,
after crossing the Wye, and concluded it just as I was entering Bristol
in the evening, after a ramble of four or five days, with my sister. Not
a line of it was altered, and not any part of it written down till I
reached Bristol. It was published almost immediately after in the little
volume of which so much has been said in these Notes, the "Lyrical
Ballads," as first published at Bristol by Cottle. --I. F. ]


Included among the "Poems of the Imagination. "--Ed.



Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! [C] and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft [1] inland murmur. [D]--Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, 5
That [2] 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 10
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. [3] Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines 15
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! [E]
With some uncertain notice, as might seem
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, 20
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 [4]
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye: 25
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, [5] 30
With tranquil restoration:--feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence [6]
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts 35
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight 40
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened:--that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,--
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood 45
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. 50
If this
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh!