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Home  »  The Oxford Book of English Verse  »  515. Lucy i

Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.

William Wordsworth. 1770–1850

515. Lucy i

STRANGE fits of passion have I known: 
  And I will dare to tell, 
But in the lover’s ear alone, 
  What once to me befell. 
 
When she I loved look’d every day         5
  Fresh as a rose in June, 
I to her cottage bent my way, 
  Beneath an evening moon. 
 
Upon the moon I fix’d my eye, 
All over the wide lea;  10
With quickening pace my horse drew nigh 
Those paths so dear to me. 
 
And now we reach’d the orchard-plot; 
And, as we climb’d the hill, 
The sinking moon to Lucy’s cot  15
Came near and nearer still. 
 
In one of those sweet dreams I slept, 
Kind Nature’s gentlest boon! 
And all the while my eyes I kept 
On the descending moon.  20
 
My horse moved on; hoof after hoof 
He raised, and never stopp’d: 
When down behind the cottage roof, 
At once, the bright moon dropp’d. 
 
What fond and wayward thoughts will slide  25
Into a lover’s head! 
‘O mercy!’ to myself I cried, 
‘If Lucy should be dead!’