Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. IV. The Nineteenth Century: Wordsworth to Rossetti
William Wordsworth (17701850)The Two April Mornings
W
Uprose the morning sun;
And Matthew stopped, he looked, and said,
‘The will of God be done!’
With hair of glittering grey;
As blithe a man as you could see
On a spring holiday.
And by the steaming rills,
We travelled merrily, to pass
A day among the hills.
Then, from thy breast what thought,
Beneath so beautiful a sun,
So sad a sigh has brought?’
And fixing still his eye
Upon the eastern mountain-top,
To me he made reply:
Brings fresh into my mind
A day like this which I have left
Full thirty years behind.
Such colours, and no other,
Were in the sky, that April morn,
Of this the very brother.
Which that sweet season gave,
And, to the church-yard come, stopped short
Beside my daughter’s grave.
The pride of all the vale:
And then she sang;—she would have been
A very nightingale.
And yet I loved her more,
For so it seemed, than till that day
I e’er had loved before.
Beside the churchyard yew,
A blooming Girl, whose hair was wet
With points of morning dew.
Her brow was smooth and white:
To see a child so very fair,
It was a pure delight!
E’er tripped with foot so free;
She seemed as happy as a wave
That dances on the sea.
Which I could ill confine;
I looked at her, and looked again:
And did not wish her mine!’
Methinks, I see him stand,
As at that moment, with a bough
Of wilding in his hand.