William Wordsworth
Speak!
Why art thou silent! Is thy love a plant
Of such weak fibre that the treacherous air
Of absence withers what was once so fair?
Is there no debt to pay, no boon to grant?
Yet have my thoughts for thee been vigilant–
Bound to thy service with unceasing care,
The mind’s least generous wish a mendicant
For naught but what thy happiness could spare.
Speak — though this soft warm heart, once free to hold
A thousand tender pleasures, thine and mine,
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
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;
With quickening pace my horse drew nigh
Those paths so dear to me.
Lines Left Upon a Seat
Left upon a seat in a YEW-TREE, which stands near the
Lake of ESTHWAITE, on a desolate part of the shore,
yet commanding a beautiful prospect.
–Nay, Traveller! rest. This lonely yew-tree stands
Far from all human dwelling: what if here
No sparkling rivulet spread the verdant herb;
What if these barren boughs the bee not loves;
Yet, if the wind breathe soft, the curling waves,
That break against the shore, shall lull thy mind
By one soft impulse saved from vacancy.
–Who he was
That piled these stones, and with the mossy sod
First covered o’er and taught this aged tree
