William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Georgian Verse. 1909.
Strange Fits of Passion Have I KnownWilliam Wordsworth (17701850)
S
And I will dare to tell,
But in the Lover’s ear alone,
What once to me befell.
Fresh as a rose in June,
I to her cottage bent my way,
Beneath the evening-moon.
All over the wide lea;
With quickening pace my horse drew nigh
Those paths so dear to me.
And, as we climbed the hill,
The sinking moon to Lucy’s cot
Came near, and nearer still.
Kind Nature’s gentlest boon!
And all the while my eyes I kept
On the descending moon.
He raised, and never stopped:
When down behind the cottage roof,
At once, the bright moon dropped.
Into a Lover’s head!—
‘O mercy!’ to myself I cried,
‘If Lucy should be dead!’