Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Henry Charles Beeching, ed. (1859–1919). Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse. 1903.

By William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

The Influence of Nature

From “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey”

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.