letters/poetry/wordsworth_lyrical_ballads.json

[
  {
    "title": "Lyrical Ballads,",
    "body": "WITH A FEW OTHER POEMS.",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Advertisement.",
    "body": "It is the honourable characteristic of Poetry that its materials are to\nbe found in every subject which can interest the human mind. The\nevidence of this fact is to be sought, not in the writings of Critics,\nbut in those of Poets themselves.\n\nThe majority of the following poems are to be considered as experiments.\nThey were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language\nof conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to\nthe purposes of poetic pleasure. Readers accustomed to the gaudiness and\ninane phraseology of many modern writers, if they persist in reading\nthis book to its conclusion, will perhaps frequently have to struggle\nwith feelings of strangeness and aukwardness: they will look round for\npoetry, and will be induced to enquire by what species of courtesy these\nattempts can be permitted to assume that title. It is desirable that\nsuch readers, for their own sakes, should not suffer the solitary word\nPoetry, a word of very disputed meaning, to stand in the way of their\ngratification; but that, while they are perusing this book, they should\nask themselves if it contains a natural delineation of human passions,\nhuman characters, and human incidents; and if the answer be favourable\nto the author’s wishes, that they should consent to be pleased in spite\nof that most dreadful enemy to our pleasures, our own pre-established\ncodes of decision.\n\nReaders of superior judgment may disapprove of the style in which many\nof these pieces are executed it must be expected that many lines and\nphrases will not exactly suit their taste. It will perhaps appear to\nthem, that wishing to avoid the prevalent fault of the day, the author\nhas sometimes descended too low, and that many of his expressions are\ntoo familiar, and not of sufficient dignity. It is apprehended, that the\nmore conversant the reader is with our elder writers, and with those in\nmodern times who have been the most successful in painting manners and\npassions, the fewer complaints of this kind will he have to make.\n\nAn accurate taste in poetry, and in all the other arts, Sir Joshua\nReynolds has observed, is an acquired talent, which can only be produced\nby severe thought, and a long continued intercourse with the best models\nof composition. This is mentioned not with so ridiculous a purpose as to\nprevent the most inexperienced reader from judging for himself; but\nmerely to temper the rashness of decision, and to suggest that if poetry\nbe a subject on which much time has not been bestowed, the judgment may\nbe erroneous, and that in many cases it necessarily will be so.\n\nThe tale of Goody Blake and Harry Gill is founded on a\nwell-authenticated fact which happened in Warwickshire. Of the other\npoems in the collection, it may be proper to say that they are either\nabsolute inventions of the author, or facts which took place within his\npersonal observation or that of his friends. The poem of the Thorn, as\nthe reader will soon discover, is not supposed to be spoken in the\nauthor’s own person: the character of the loquacious narrator will\nsufficiently shew itself in the course of the story. The Rime of the\nAncyent Marinere was professedly written in imitation of the _style_, as\nwell as of the spirit of the elder poets; but with a few exceptions, the\nAuthor believes that the language adopted in it has been equally\nintelligible for these three last centuries. The lines entitled\nExpostulation and Reply, and those which follow, arose out of\nconversation with a friend who was somewhat unreasonably attached to\nmodern books of moral philosophy.",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Contents.",
    "body": "  The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere\n\n  The Foster-Mother’s Tale\n\n  Lines left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree which stands near the Lake\n      of Esthwaite\n\n  The Nightingale, a Conversational Poem\n\n  The Female Vagrant\n\n  Goody Blake and Harry Gill\n\n  Lines written at a small distance from my House, and sent\n      by my little Boy to the Person to whom they are addressed\n\n  Simon Lee, the old Huntsman\n\n  Anecdote for Fathers\n\n  We are seven\n\n  Lines written in early spring\n\n  The Thorn\n\n  The last of the Flock\n\n  The Dungeon\n\n  The Mad Mother\n\n  The Idiot Boy\n\n  Lines written near Richmond, upon the Thames, at Evening\n\n  Expostulation and Reply\n\n  The Tables turned; an Evening Scene, on the same subject\n\n  Old Man travelling\n\n  The Complaint of a forsaken Indian Woman\n\n  The Convict\n\n  Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Argument.",
    "body": "How a Ship having passed the Line was driven by Storms to the cold\nCountry towards the South Pole; and how from thence she made her course\nto the tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific Ocean; and of the strange\nthings that befell; and in what manner the Ancyent Marinere came back to\nhis own Country.\n\n\nI.\n\n    It is an ancyent Marinere,\n      And he stoppeth one of three:\n    “By thy long grey beard and thy glittering eye\n      “Now wherefore stoppest me?\n\n    “The Bridegroom’s doors are open’d wide\n      “And I am next of kin;\n    “The Guests are met, the Feast is set,--\n      “May’st hear the merry din.--\n\n    But still he holds the wedding-guest--\n      There was a Ship, quoth he--\n    “Nay, if thou’st got a laughsome tale,\n      “Marinere! come with me.”\n\n    He holds him with his skinny hand,\n      Quoth he, there was a Ship--\n    “Now get thee hence, thou grey-beard Loon!\n      “Or my Staff shall make thee skip.”\n\n    He holds him with his glittering eye--\n      The wedding guest stood still\n    And listens like a three year’s child;\n      The Marinere hath his will.\n\n    The wedding-guest sate on a stone,\n      He cannot chuse but hear:\n    And thus spake on that ancyent man,\n      The bright-eyed Marinere.\n\n    The Ship was cheer’d, the Harbour clear’d--\n      Merrily did we drop\n    Below the Kirk, below the Hill,\n      Below the Light-house top.\n\n    The Sun came up upon the left,\n      Out of the Sea came he:\n    And he shone bright, and on the right\n      Went down into the Sea.\n\n    Higher and higher every day,\n      Till over the mast at noon--\n    The wedding-guest here beat his breast,\n      For he heard the loud bassoon.\n\n    The Bride hath pac’d into the Hall,\n      Red as a rose is she;\n    Nodding their heads before her goes\n      The merry Minstralsy.\n\n    The wedding-guest he beat his breast,\n      Yet he cannot chuse but hear:\n    And thus spake on that ancyent Man,\n      The bright-eyed Marinere.\n\n    Listen, Stranger! Storm and Wind,\n      A Wind and Tempest strong!\n    For days and weeks it play’d us freaks--\n      Like Chaff we drove along.\n\n    Listen, Stranger! Mist and Snow,\n      And it grew wond’rous cauld:\n    And Ice mast-high came floating by\n      As green as Emerauld.\n\n    And thro’ the drifts the snowy clifts\n      Did send a dismal sheen;\n    Ne shapes of men ne beasts we ken--\n      The Ice was all between.\n\n    The Ice was here, the Ice was there,\n      The Ice was all around:\n    It crack’d and growl’d, and roar’d and howl’d--\n      Like noises of a swound.\n\n    At length did cross an Albatross,\n      Thorough the Fog it came;\n    And an it were a Christian Soul,\n      We hail’d it in God’s name.\n\n    The Marineres gave it biscuit-worms,\n      And round and round it flew:\n    The Ice did split with a Thunder-fit;\n      The Helmsman steer’d us thro’.\n\n    And a good south wind sprung up behind,\n      The Albatross did follow;\n    And every day for food or play\n      Came to the Marinere’s hollo!\n\n    In mist or cloud on mast or shroud\n      It perch’d for vespers nine,\n    Whiles all the night thro’ fog-smoke white\n      Glimmer’d the white moon-shine.\n\n    “God save thee, ancyent Marinere!\n      “From the fiends that plague thee thus--\n    “Why look’st thou so?”--with my cross bow\n      I shot the Albatross.\n\n\nII.\n\n    The Sun came up upon the right,\n      Out of the Sea came he;\n    And broad as a weft upon the left\n      Went down into the Sea.\n\n    And the good south wind still blew behind,\n      But no sweet Bird did follow\n    Ne any day for food or play\n      Came to the Marinere’s hollo!\n\n    And I had done an hellish thing\n      And it would work ’em woe:\n    For all averr’d, I had kill’d the Bird\n      That made the Breeze to blow.\n\n    Ne dim ne red, like God’s own head,\n      The glorious Sun uprist:\n    Then all averr’d, I had kill’d th
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Iii.",
    "body": "    I saw a something in the Sky\n      No bigger than my fist;\n    At first it seem’d a little speck\n      And then it seem’d a mist:\n    It mov’d and mov’d, and took at last\n      A certain shape, I wist.\n\n    A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist!\n      And still it ner’d and ner’d;\n    And, an it dodg’d a water-sprite,\n      It plung’d and tack’d and veer’d.\n\n    With throat unslack’d, with black lips bak’d\n      Ne could we laugh, ne wail:\n    Then while thro’ drouth all dumb they stood\n    I bit my arm and suck’d the blood\n      And cry’d, A sail! a sail!\n\n    With throat unslack’d, with black lips bak’d\n      Agape they hear’d me call:\n    Gramercy! they for joy did grin\n    And all at once their breath drew in\n      As they were drinking all.\n\n    She doth not tack from side to side--\n      Hither to work us weal\n    Withouten wind, withouten tide\n      She steddies with upright keel.\n\n    The western wave was all a flame,\n      The day was well nigh done!\n    Almost upon the western wave\n      Rested the broad bright Sun;\n    When that strange shape drove suddenly\n      Betwixt us and the Sun.\n\n    And strait the Sun was fleck’d with bars\n      (Heaven’s mother send us grace)\n    As if thro’ a dungeon grate he peer’d\n      With broad and burning face.\n\n    Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat loud)\n      How fast she neres and neres!\n    Are those _her_ Sails that glance in the Sun\n      Like restless gossameres?\n\n    Are these _her_ naked ribs, which fleck’d\n      The sun that did behind them peer?\n    And are these two all, all the crew,\n      That woman and her fleshless Pheere?\n\n    _His_ bones were black with many a crack,\n      All black and bare, I ween;\n    Jet-black and bare, save where with rust\n    Of mouldy damps and charnel crust\n      They’re patch’d with purple and green.\n\n    _Her_ lips are red, _her_ looks are free,\n      _Her_ locks are yellow as gold:\n    Her skin is as white as leprosy,\n    And she is far liker Death than he;\n      Her flesh makes the still air cold.\n\n    The naked Hulk alongside came\n      And the Twain were playing dice;\n    “The Game is done! I’ve won, I’ve won!”\n      Quoth she, and whistled thrice.\n\n    A gust of wind sterte up behind\n      And whistled thro’ his bones;\n    Thro’ the holes of his eyes and the hole of his mouth\n      Half-whistles and half-groans.\n\n    With never a whisper in the Sea\n      Off darts the Spectre-ship;\n    While clombe above the Eastern bar\n    The horned Moon, with one bright Star\n      Almost atween the tips.\n\n    One after one by the horned Moon\n      (Listen, O Stranger! to me)\n    Each turn’d his face with a ghastly pang\n      And curs’d me with his ee.\n\n    Four times fifty living men,\n      With never a sigh or groan,\n    With heavy thump, a lifeless lump\n      They dropp’d down one by one.\n\n    Their souls did from their bodies fly,--\n      They fled to bliss or woe;\n    And every soul it pass’d me by,\n      Like the whiz of my Cross-bow.\n\n\nIV.\n\n    “I fear thee, ancyent Marinere!\n      “I fear thy skinny hand;\n    “And thou art long and lank and brown\n      “As is the ribb’d Sea-sand.\n\n    “I fear thee and thy glittering eye\n      “And thy skinny hand so brown”--\n    Fear not, fear not, thou wedding guest!\n      This body dropt not down.\n\n    Alone, alone, all all alone\n      Alone on the wide wide Sea;\n    And Christ would take no pity on\n      My soul in agony.\n\n    The many men so beautiful,\n      And they all dead did lie!\n    And a million million slimy things\n      Liv’d on--and so did I.\n\n    I look’d upon the rotting Sea,\n      And drew my eyes away;\n    I look’d upon the eldritch deck,\n      And there the dead men lay.\n\n    I look’d to Heaven, and try’d to pray;\n      But or ever a prayer had gusht,\n    A wicked whisper came and made\n      My heart as dry as dust.\n\n    I clos’d my lids and kept 
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "First Voice.",
    "body": "    “But tell me, tell me! speak again,\n      “Thy soft response renewing--\n    “What makes that ship drive on so fast?\n      “What is the Ocean doing?”",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Second Voice.",
    "body": "    “Still as a Slave before his Lord,\n      “The Ocean hath no blast:\n    “His great bright eye most silently\n      “Up to the moon is cast--\n\n    “If he may know which way to go,\n      “For she guides him smooth or grim.\n    “See, brother, see! how graciously\n      “She looketh down on him.”",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "First Voice.",
    "body": "    “But why drives on that ship so fast\n      “Withouten wave or wind?”\n          SECOND VOICE.\n    “The air is cut away before,\n      “And closes from behind.\n\n    “Fly, brother, fly! more high, more high,\n      “Or we shall be belated:\n    “For slow and slow that ship will go,\n      “When the Marinere’s trance is abated.”\n\n    I woke, and we were sailing on\n      As in a gentle weather:\n    ’Twas night, calm night, the moon was high;\n      The dead men stood together.\n\n    All stood together on the deck,\n      For a charnel-dungeon fitter:\n    All fix’d on me their stony eyes\n      That in the moon did glitter.\n\n    The pang, the curse, with which they died,\n      Had never pass’d away:\n    I could not draw my een from theirs\n      Ne turn them up to pray.\n\n    And in its time the spell was snapt,\n      And I could move my een:\n    I look’d far-forth, but little saw\n      Of what might else be seen.\n\n    Like one, that on a lonely road\n      Doth walk in fear and dread,\n    And having once turn’d round, walks on\n      And turns no more his head:\n    Because he knows, a frightful fiend\n      Doth close behind him tread.\n\n    But soon there breath’d a wind on me,\n      Ne sound ne motion made:\n    Its path was not upon the sea\n      In ripple or in shade.\n\n    It rais’d my hair, it fann’d my cheek,\n      Like a meadow-gale of spring--\n    It mingled strangely with my fears,\n      Yet it felt like a welcoming.\n\n    Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship,\n      Yet she sail’d softly too:\n    Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze--\n      On me alone it blew.\n\n    O dream of joy! is this indeed\n      The light-house top I see?\n    Is this the Hill? Is this the Kirk?\n      Is this mine own countrée?\n\n    We drifted o’er the Harbour-bar,\n      And I with sobs did pray--\n    “O let me be awake, my God!\n      “Or let me sleep alway!”\n\n    The harbour-bay was clear as glass,\n      So smoothly it was strewn!\n    And on the bay the moon light lay,\n      And the shadow of the moon.\n\n    The moonlight bay was white all o’er,\n      Till rising from the same,\n    Full many shapes, that shadows were,\n      Like as of torches came.\n\n    A little distance from the prow\n      Those dark-red shadows were;\n    But soon I saw that my own flesh\n      Was red as in a glare.\n\n    I turn’d my head in fear and dread,\n      And by the holy rood,\n    The bodies had advanc’d, and now\n      Before the mast they stood.\n\n    They lifted up their stiff right arms,\n      They held them strait and tight;\n    And each right-arm burnt like a torch,\n      A torch that’s borne upright.\n    Their stony eye-balls glitter’d on\n      In the red and smoky light.\n\n    I pray’d and turn’d my head away\n      Forth looking as before.\n    There was no breeze upon the bay,\n      No wave against the shore.\n\n    The rock shone bright, the kirk no less\n      That stands above the rock:\n    The moonlight steep’d in silentness\n      The steady weathercock.\n\n    And the bay was white with silent light,\n      Till rising from the same\n    Full many shapes, that shadows were,\n      In crimson colours came.\n\n    A little distance from the prow\n      Those crimson shadows were:\n    I turn’d my eyes upon the deck--\n      O Christ! what saw I there?\n\n    Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat;\n      And by the Holy rood\n    A man all light, a seraph-man,\n      On every corse there stood.\n\n    This seraph-band, each wav’d his hand:\n      It was a heavenly sight:\n    They stood as signals to the land,\n      Each one a lovely light:\n\n    This seraph-band, each wav’d his hand,\n      No voice did they impart--\n    No voice; but O! the silence sank,\n      Like music on my heart.\n\n    Eftsones I heard the dash of oars,\n      I heard the pilot’s cheer:\n    My head was turn’d perforce away\n      And I saw a boat appear.\n\n    Then vanish’d all the lovely lights;\n      The bodies rose an
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Vii.",
    "body": "    This Hermit good lives in that wood\n      Which slopes down to the Sea.\n    How loudly his sweet voice he rears!\n    He loves to talk with Marineres\n      That come from a far Contrée.\n\n    He kneels at morn and noon and eve--\n      He hath a cushion plump:\n    It is the moss, that wholly hides\n      The rotted old Oak-stump.\n\n    The Skiff-boat ne’rd: I heard them talk,\n      “Why, this is strange, I trow!\n    “Where are those lights so many and fair\n      “That signal made but now?\n\n    “Strange, by my faith!” the Hermit said--\n      “And they answer’d not our cheer.\n    “The planks look warp’d, and see those sails\n      “How thin they are and sere!\n    “I never saw aught like to them\n      “Unless perchance it were\n\n    “The skeletons of leaves that lag\n      “My forest brook along:\n    “When the Ivy-tod is heavy with snow,\n    “And the Owlet whoops to the wolf below\n      “That eats the she-wolf’s young.\n\n    “Dear Lord! it has a fiendish look”--\n      (The Pilot made reply)\n    “I am a-fear’d.--“Push on, push on!”\n      Said the Hermit cheerily.\n\n    The Boat came closer to the Ship,\n      But I ne spake ne stirr’d!\n    The Boat came close beneath the Ship,\n      And strait a sound was heard!\n\n    Under the water it rumbled on,\n      Still louder and more dread:\n    It reach’d the Ship, it split the bay;\n      The Ship went down like lead.\n\n    Stunn’d by that loud and dreadful sound,\n      Which sky and ocean smote:\n    Like one that hath been seven days drown’d\n      My body lay afloat:\n    But, swift as dreams, myself I found\n      Within the Pilot’s boat.\n\n    Upon the whirl, where sank the Ship,\n      The boat spun round and round:\n    And all was still, save that the hill\n      Was telling of the sound.\n\n    I mov’d my lips: the Pilot shriek’d\n      And fell down in a fit.\n    The Holy Hermit rais’d his eyes\n      And pray’d where he did sit.\n\n    I took the oars: the Pilot’s boy,\n      Who now doth crazy go,\n    Laugh’d loud and long, and all the while\n      His eyes went to and fro,\n    “Ha! ha!” quoth he--“full plain I see,\n      “The devil knows how to row.”\n\n    And now all in mine own Countrée\n      I stood on the firm land!\n    The Hermit stepp’d forth from the boat,\n      And scarcely he could stand.\n\n    “O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy Man!”\n      The Hermit cross’d his brow--\n    “Say quick,” quoth he, “I bid thee say\n      “What manner man art thou?”\n\n    Forthwith this frame of mine was wrench’d\n      With a woeful agony,\n    Which forc’d me to begin my tale\n      And then it left me free.\n\n    Since then at an uncertain hour,\n      Now oftimes and now fewer,\n    That anguish comes and makes me tell\n      My ghastly aventure.\n\n    I pass, like night, from land to land;\n      I have strange power of speech;\n    The moment that his face I see\n      I know the man that must hear me;\n      To him my tale I teach.\n\n    What loud uproar bursts from that door!\n      The Wedding-guests are there;\n    But in the Garden-bower the Bride\n      And Bride-maids singing are:\n    And hark the little Vesper-bell\n      Which biddeth me to prayer.\n\n    O Wedding-guest! this soul hath been\n      Alone on a wide wide sea:\n    So lonely ’twas, that God himself\n      Scarce seemed there to be.\n\n    O sweeter than the Marriage-feast,\n      ’Tis sweeter far to me\n    To walk together to the Kirk\n      With a goodly company.\n\n    To walk together to the Kirk\n      And all together pray,\n    While each to his great father bends,\n    Old men, and babes, and loving friends,\n      And Youths, and Maidens gay.\n\n    Farewell, farewell! but this I tell\n      To thee, thou wedding-guest!\n    He prayeth well who loveth well\n      Both man and bird and beast.\n\n    He prayeth best who loveth best,\n      All things both great and small:\n    For the dear God, who loveth us,\n      He made 
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Foster-Mother.",
    "body": "    I never saw the man whom you describe.",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Maria.",
    "body": "    ’Tis strange! he spake of you familiarly\n    As mine and Albert’s common Foster-mother.",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Foster-Mother.",
    "body": "    Now blessings on the man, whoe’er he be,\n    That joined your names with mine! O my sweet lady,\n    As often as I think of those dear times\n    When you two little ones would stand at eve\n    On each side of my chair, and make me learn\n    All you had learnt in the day; and how to talk\n    In gentle phrase, then bid me sing to you--\n    ’Tis more like heaven to come than what _has_ been.",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Maria.",
    "body": "    O my dear Mother! this strange man has left me\n    Troubled with wilder fancies, than the moon\n    Breeds in the love-sick maid who gazes at it,\n    Till lost in inward vision, with wet eye\n    She gazes idly!--But that entrance, Mother!",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Foster-Mother.",
    "body": "    Can no one hear? It is a perilous tale!",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Foster-Mother",
    "body": "            My husband’s father told it me,\n    Poor old Leoni!--Angels rest his soul!\n    He was a woodman, and could fell and saw\n    With lusty arm. You know that huge round beam\n    Which props the hanging wall of the old chapel?\n    Beneath that tree, while yet it was a tree\n    He found a baby wrapt in mosses, lined\n    With thistle-beards, and such small locks of wool\n    As hang on brambles. Well, he brought him home,\n    And reared him at the then Lord Velez’ cost.\n    And so the babe grew up a pretty boy,\n    A pretty boy, but most unteachable--\n    And never learnt a prayer, nor told a bead,\n    But knew the names of birds, and mocked their notes,\n    And whistled, as he were a bird himself:\n    And all the autumn ’twas his only play\n    To get the seeds of wild flowers, and to plant them\n    With earth and water, on the stumps of trees.\n    A Friar, who gathered simples in the wood,\n    A grey-haired man--he loved this little boy,\n    The boy loved him--and, when the Friar taught him,\n    He soon could write with the pen: and from that time,\n    Lived chiefly at the Convent or the Castle.\n    So he became a very learned youth.\n    But Oh! poor wretch!--he read, and read, and read,\n    ’Till his brain turned--and ere his twentieth year,\n    He had unlawful thoughts of many things:\n    And though he prayed, he never loved to pray\n    With holy men, nor in a holy place--\n    But yet his speech, it was so soft and sweet,\n    The late Lord Velez ne’er was wearied with him.\n    And once, as by the north side of the Chapel\n    They stood together, chained in deep discourse,\n    The earth heaved under them with such a groan,\n    That the wall tottered, and had well-nigh fallen\n    Right on their heads. My Lord was sorely frightened;\n    A fever seized him, and he made confession\n    Of all the heretical and lawless talk\n    Which brought this judgment: so the youth was seized\n    And cast into that hole. My husband’s father\n    Sobbed like a child--it almost broke his heart:\n    And once as he was working in the cellar,\n    He heard a voice distinctly; ’twas the youth’s,\n    Who sung a doleful song about green fields,\n    How sweet it were on lake or wild savannah,\n    To hunt for food, and be a naked man,\n    And wander up and down at liberty.\n    He always doted on the youth, and now\n    His love grew desperate; and defying death,\n    He made that cunning entrance I described:\n    And the young man escaped.",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Maria.",
    "body": "                               ’Tis a sweet tale:\n    Such as would lull a listening child to sleep,\n    His rosy face besoiled with unwiped tears.--\n    And what became of him?",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Foster-Mother.",
    "body": "                            He went on ship-board\n    With those bold voyagers, who made discovery\n    Of golden lands. Leoni’s younger brother\n    Went likewise, and when he returned to Spain,\n    He told Leoni, that the poor mad youth,\n    Soon after they arrived in that new world,\n    In spite of his dissuasion, seized a boat,\n    And all alone, set sail by silent moonlight\n    Up a great river, great as any sea,\n    And ne’er was heard of more: but ’tis supposed,\n    He lived and died among the savage men.",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lines Left Upon A Seat In A Yew-Tree Which Stands Near The Lake Of",
    "body": "ESTHWAITE, ON A DESOLATE PART OF THE SHORE, YET COMMANDING A\nBEAUTIFUL PROSPECT.\n\n\n    --Nay, Traveller! rest. This lonely yew-tree stands\n    Far from all human dwelling: what if here\n    No sparkling rivulet spread the verdant herb;\n    What if these barren boughs the bee not loves;\n    Yet, if the wind breathe soft, the curling waves,\n    That break against the shore, shall lull thy mind\n    By one soft impulse saved from vacancy.\n\n                                           --Who he was\n    That piled these stones, and with the mossy sod\n    First covered o’er, and taught this aged tree,\n    Now wild, to bend its arms in circling shade,\n    I well remember.--He was one who own’d\n    No common soul. In youth, by genius nurs’d,\n    And big with lofty views, he to the world\n    Went forth, pure in his heart, against the taint\n    Of dissolute tongues, ’gainst jealousy, and hate,\n    And scorn, against all enemies prepared,\n    All but neglect: and so, his spirit damped\n    At once, with rash disdain he turned away,\n    And with the food of pride sustained his soul\n    In solitude.--Stranger! these gloomy boughs\n    Had charms for him; and here he loved to sit,\n    His only visitants a straggling sheep,\n    The stone-chat, or the glancing sand-piper;\n    And on these barren rocks, with juniper,\n    And heath, and thistle, thinly sprinkled o’er,\n    Fixing his downward eye, he many an hour\n    A morbid pleasure nourished, tracing here\n    An emblem of his own unfruitful life:\n    And lifting up his head, he then would gaze\n    On the more distant scene; how lovely ’tis\n    Thou seest, and he would gaze till it became\n    Far lovelier, and his heart could not sustain\n    The beauty still more beauteous. Nor, that time,\n    Would he forget those beings, to whose minds,\n    Warm from the labours of benevolence,\n    The world, and man himself, appeared a scene\n    Of kindred loveliness: then he would sigh\n    With mournful joy, to think that others felt\n    What he must never feel: and so, lost man!\n    On visionary views would fancy feed,\n    Till his eye streamed with tears. In this deep vale\n    He died, this seat his only monument.\n\n    If thou be one whose heart the holy forms\n    Of young imagination have kept pure,\n    Stranger! henceforth be warned; and know, that pride,\n    Howe’er disguised in its own majesty,\n    Is littleness; that he, who feels contempt\n    For any living thing, hath faculties\n    Which he has never used; that thought with him\n    Is in its infancy. The man, whose eye\n    Is ever on himself, doth look on one,\n    The least of nature’s works, one who might move\n    The wise man to that scorn which wisdom holds\n    Unlawful, ever. O, be wiser thou!\n    Instructed that true knowledge leads to love,\n    True dignity abides with him alone\n    Who, in the silent hour of inward thought,\n    Can still suspect, and still revere himself,\n    In lowliness of heart.",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Conversational Poem, Written In April, 1798.",
    "body": "    No cloud, no relique of the sunken day\n    Distinguishes the West, no long thin slip\n    Of sullen Light, no obscure trembling hues.\n    Come, we will rest on this old mossy Bridge!\n    You see the glimmer of the stream beneath,\n    But hear no murmuring: it flows silently\n    O’er its soft bed of verdure. All is still,\n    A balmy night! and tho’ the stars be dim,\n    Yet let us think upon the vernal showers\n    That gladden the green earth, and we shall find\n    A pleasure in the dimness of the stars.\n    And hark! the Nightingale begins its song,\n    “Most musical, most melancholy”[1] Bird!\n    A melancholy Bird? O idle thought!\n    In nature there is nothing melancholy.\n    --But some night-wandering Man, whose heart was pierc’d\n    With the remembrance of a grievous wrong,\n    Or slow distemper or neglected love,\n    (And so, poor Wretch! fill’d all things with himself\n    And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale\n    Of his own sorrows) he and such as he\n    First nam’d these notes a melancholy strain;\n    And many a poet echoes the conceit,\n    Poet, who hath been building up the rhyme\n    When he had better far have stretch’d his limbs\n    Beside a brook in mossy forest-dell\n    By sun or moonlight, to the influxes\n    Of shapes and sounds and shifting elements\n    Surrendering his whole spirit, of his song\n    And of his fame forgetful! so his fame\n    Should share in nature’s immortality,\n    A venerable thing! and so his song\n    Should make all nature lovelier, and itself\n    Be lov’d, like nature!--But ’twill not be so;\n    And youths and maidens most poetical\n    Who lose the deep’ning twilights of the spring\n    In ball-rooms and hot theatres, they still\n    Full of meek sympathy must heave their sighs\n    O’er Philomela’s pity-pleading strains.\n    My Friend, and my Friend’s Sister! we have learnt\n    A different lore: we may not thus profane\n    Nature’s sweet voices always full of love\n    And joyance! ’Tis the merry Nightingale\n    That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates\n    With fast thick warble his delicious notes,\n    As he were fearful, that an April night\n    Would be too short for him to utter forth\n    His love-chant, and disburthen his full soul\n    Of all its music! And I know a grove\n    Of large extent, hard by a castle huge\n    Which the great lord inhabits not: and so\n    This grove is wild with tangling underwood,\n    And the trim walks are broken up, and grass,\n    Thin grass and king-cups grow within the paths.\n    But never elsewhere in one place I knew\n    So many Nightingales: and far and near\n    In wood and thicket over the wide grove\n    They answer and provoke each other’s songs--\n    With skirmish and capricious passagings,\n    And murmurs musical and swift jug jug\n    And one low piping sound more sweet than all--\n    Stirring the air with such an harmony,\n    That should you close your eyes, you might almost\n    Forget it was not day! On moonlight bushes,\n    Whose dewy leafits are but half disclos’d,\n    You may perchance behold them on the twigs,\n    Their bright, bright eyes, their eyes both bright and full,\n    Glistning, while many a glow-worm in the shade\n    Lights up her love-torch.\n\n                              A most gentle maid\n    Who dwelleth in her hospitable home\n    Hard by the Castle, and at latest eve,\n    (Even like a Lady vow’d and dedicate\n    To something more than nature in the grove)\n    Glides thro’ the pathways; she knows all their notes,\n    That gentle Maid! and oft, a moment’s space,\n    What time the moon was lost behind a cloud,\n    Hath heard a pause of silence: till the Moon\n    Emerging, hath awaken’d earth and sky\n    With one sensation, and those wakeful Birds\n    Have all burst forth in choral minstrelsy,\n    As if one quick and sudden Gale had swept\n    An hundred airy harps! And she hath watch’d\n    Many a Nightingale perch giddily\n    On blosmy twig still swinging from the breeze,
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Female Vagrant.",
    "body": "    By Derwent’s side my Father’s cottage stood,\n    (The Woman thus her artless story told)\n    One field, a flock, and what the neighbouring flood\n    Supplied, to him were more than mines of gold.\n    Light was my sleep; my days in transport roll’d:\n    With thoughtless joy I stretch’d along the shore\n    My father’s nets, or watched, when from the fold\n    High o’er the cliffs I led my fleecy store,\n    A dizzy depth below! his boat and twinkling oar.\n\n    My father was a good and pious man,\n    An honest man by honest parents bred,\n    And I believe that, soon as I began\n    To lisp, he made me kneel beside my bed,\n    And in his hearing there my prayers I said:\n    And afterwards, by my good father taught,\n    I read, and loved the books in which I read;\n    For books in every neighbouring house I sought,\n    And nothing to my mind a sweeter pleasure brought.\n\n    Can I forget what charms did once adorn\n    My garden, stored with pease, and mint, and thyme,\n    And rose and lilly for the sabbath morn?\n    The sabbath bells, and their delightful chime;\n    The gambols and wild freaks at shearing time;\n    My hen’s rich nest through long grass scarce espied;\n    The cowslip-gathering at May’s dewy prime;\n    The swans, that, when I sought the water-side,\n    From far to meet me came, spreading their snowy pride.\n\n    The staff I yet remember which upbore\n    The bending body of my active sire;\n    His seat beneath the honeyed sycamore\n    When the bees hummed, and chair by winter fire;\n    When market-morning came, the neat attire\n    With which, though bent on haste, myself I deck’d;\n    My watchful dog, whose starts of furious ire,\n    When stranger passed, so often I have check’d;\n    The red-breast known for years, which at my casement peck’d.\n\n    The suns of twenty summers danced along,--\n    Ah! little marked, how fast they rolled away:\n    Then rose a mansion proud our woods among,\n    And cottage after cottage owned its sway,\n    No joy to see a neighbouring house, or stray\n    Through pastures not his own, the master took;\n    My Father dared his greedy wish gainsay;\n    He loved his old hereditary nook,\n    And ill could I the thought of such sad parting brook.\n\n    But, when he had refused the proffered gold,\n    To cruel injuries he became a prey,\n    Sore traversed in whate’er he bought and sold:\n    His troubles grew upon him day by day,\n    Till all his substance fell into decay.\n    His little range of water was denied;[2]\n    All but the bed where his old body lay,\n    All, all was seized, and weeping, side by side,\n    We sought a home where we uninjured might abide.\n\n    Can I forget that miserable hour,\n    When from the last hill-top, my sire surveyed,\n    Peering above the trees, the steeple tower,\n    That on his marriage-day sweet music made?\n    Till then he hoped his bones might there be laid,\n    Close by my mother in their native bowers:\n    Bidding me trust in God, he stood and prayed,--\n    I could not pray:--through tears that fell in showers,\n    Glimmer’d our dear-loved home, alas! no longer ours!\n\n    There was a youth whom I had loved so long,\n    That when I loved him not I cannot say.\n    ’Mid the green mountains many and many a song\n    We two had sung, like little birds in May.\n    When we began to tire of childish play\n    We seemed still more and more to prize each other:\n    We talked of marriage and our marriage day;\n    And I in truth did love him like a brother,\n    For never could I hope to meet with such another.\n\n    His father said, that to a distant town\n    He must repair, to ply the artist’s trade.\n    What tears of bitter grief till then unknown!\n    What tender vows our last sad kiss delayed!\n    To him we turned:--we had no other aid.\n    Like one revived, upon his neck I wept,\n    And her whom he had loved in joy, he said\n    He well could love in grief: his faith he kept;\n    And in a quiet home once more my father slept.\n\n    F
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Goody Blake, And Harry Gill, A True Story.",
    "body": "    Oh! what’s the matter? what’s the matter?\n    What is’t that ails young Harry Gill?\n    That evermore his teeth they chatter,\n    Chatter, chatter, chatter still.\n    Of waistcoats Harry has no lack,\n    Good duffle grey, and flannel fine;\n    He has a blanket on his back,\n    And coats enough to smother nine.\n\n    In March, December, and in July,\n    “Tis all the same with Harry Gill;\n    The neighbours tell, and tell you truly,\n    His teeth they chatter, chatter still.\n    At night, at morning, and at noon,\n    ’Tis all the same with Harry Gill;\n    Beneath the sun, beneath the moon,\n    His teeth they chatter, chatter still.\n\n    Young Harry was a lusty drover,\n    And who so stout of limb as he?\n    His cheeks were red as ruddy clover,\n    His voice was like the voice of three.\n    Auld Goody Blake was old and poor,\n    Ill fedd she was, and thinly clad;\n    And any man who pass’d her door,\n    Might see how poor a hut she had.\n\n    All day she spun in her poor dwelling,\n    And then her three hours’ work at night!\n    Alas! ’twas hardly worth the telling,\n    It would not pay for candle-light.\n    --This woman dwelt in Dorsetshire,\n    Her hut was on a cold hill-side,\n    And in that country coals are dear,\n    For they come far by wind and tide.\n\n    By the same fire to boil their pottage,\n    Two poor old dames, as I have known,\n    Will often live in one small cottage,\n    But she, poor woman, dwelt alone.\n    ’Twas well enough when summer came,\n    The long, warm, lightsome summer-day,\n    Then at her door the _canty_ dame\n    Would sit, as any linnet gay.\n\n    But when the ice our streams did fetter,\n    Oh! then how her old bones would shake!\n    You would have said, if you had met her,\n    ’Twas a hard time for Goody Blake.\n    Her evenings then were dull and dead;\n    Sad case it was, as you may think,\n    For very cold to go to bed,\n    And then for cold not sleep a wink.\n\n    Oh joy for her! when e’er in winter\n    The winds at night had made a rout,\n    And scatter’d many a lusty splinter,\n    And many a rotten bough about.\n    Yet never had she, well or sick,\n    As every man who knew her says,\n    A pile before-hand, wood or stick,\n    Enough to warm her for three days.\n\n    Now, when the frost was past enduring,\n    And made her poor old bones to ache,\n    Could any thing be more alluring,\n    Than an old hedge to Goody Blake?\n    And now and then, it must be said,\n    When her old bones were cold and chill,\n    She left her fire, or left her bed,\n    To seek the hedge of Harry Gill.\n\n    Now Harry he had long suspected\n    This trespass of old Goody Blake,\n    And vow’d that she should be detected,\n    And he on her would vengeance take.\n    And oft from his warm fire he’d go,\n    And to the fields his road would take,\n    And there, at night, in frost and snow,\n    He watch’d to seize old Goody Blake.\n\n    And once, behind a rick of barley,\n    Thus looking out did Harry stand;\n    The moon was full and shining clearly,\n    And crisp with frost the stubble-land.\n    --He hears a noise--he’s all awake--\n    Again?--on tip-toe down the hill\n    He softly creeps--’Tis Goody Blake,\n    She’s at the hedge of Harry Gill.\n\n    Right glad was he when he beheld her:\n    Stick after stick did Goody pull,\n    He stood behind a bush of elder,\n    Till she had filled her apron full.\n    When with her load she turned about,\n    The bye-road back again to take,\n    He started forward with a shout,\n    And sprang upon poor Goody Blake.\n\n    And fiercely by the arm he took her,\n    And by the arm he held her fast,\n    And fiercely by the arm he shook her,\n    And cried, “I’ve caught you then at last!”\n    Then Goody, who had nothing said,\n    Her bundle from her lap let fall;\n    And kneeling on the sticks, she pray’d\n    To God that is the judge of all.\n\n    She pray’d, her wither’d hand uprearing,\n    While Harry held her by the arm--\n    <EFBFBD><EFBFBD>
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lines Written At A Small Distance From My House, And Sent By My Little",
    "body": "BOY TO THE PERSON TO WHOM THEY ARE ADDRESSED.\n\n\n   It is the first mild day of March:\n   Each minute sweeter than before,\n   The red-breast sings from the tall larch\n   That stands beside our door.\n\n   There is a blessing in the air,\n   Which seems a sense of joy to yield\n   To the bare trees, and mountains bare,\n   And grass in the green field.\n\n   My Sister! (’tis a wish of mine)\n   Now that our morning meal is done,\n   Make haste, your morning task resign;\n   Come forth and feel the sun.\n\n   Edward will come with you, and pray,\n   Put on with speed your woodland dress,\n   And bring no book, for this one day\n   We’ll give to idleness.\n\n   No joyless forms shall regulate\n   Our living Calendar:\n   We from to-day, my friend, will date\n   The opening of the year.\n\n   Love, now an universal birth.\n   From heart to heart is stealing,\n   From earth to man, from man to earth,\n   --It is the hour of feeling.\n\n   One moment now may give us more\n   Than fifty years of reason;\n   Our minds shall drink at every pore\n   The spirit of the season.\n\n   Some silent laws our hearts may make,\n   Which they shall long obey;\n   We for the year to come may take\n   Our temper from to-day.\n\n   And from the blessed power that rolls\n   About, below, above;\n   We’ll frame the measure of our souls,\n   They shall be tuned to love.\n\n   Then come, my sister! come, I pray,\n   With speed put on your woodland dress,\n   And bring no book; for this one day\n   We’ll give to idleness.",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Simon Lee, The Old Huntsman, With An Incident In Which He Was Concerned.",
    "body": "    In the sweet shire of Cardigan,\n    Not far from pleasant Ivor-hall,\n    An old man dwells, a little man,\n    I’ve heard he once was tall.\n    Of years he has upon his back,\n    No doubt, a burthen weighty;\n    He says he is three score and ten,\n    But others say he’s eighty.\n\n    A long blue livery-coat has he,\n    That’s fair behind, and fair before;\n    Yet, meet him where you will, you see\n    At once that he is poor.\n    Full five and twenty years he lived\n    A running huntsman merry;\n    And, though he has but one eye left,\n    His cheek is like a cherry.\n\n    No man like him the horn could sound.\n    And no man was so full of glee;\n    To say the least, four counties round\n    Had heard of Simon Lee;\n    His master’s dead, and no one now\n    Dwells in the hall of Ivor;\n    Men, dogs, and horses, all are dead;\n    He is the sole survivor.\n\n    His hunting feats have him bereft\n    Of his right eye, as you may see:\n    And then, what limbs those feats have left\n    To poor old Simon Lee!\n    He has no son, he has no child,\n    His wife, an aged woman,\n    Lives with him, near the waterfall,\n    Upon the village common.\n\n    And he is lean and he is sick,\n    His little body’s half awry\n    His ancles they are swoln and thick\n    His legs are thin and dry.\n    When he was young he little knew\n    Of husbandry or tillage;\n    And now he’s forced to work, though weak,\n    --The weakest in the village.\n\n    He all the country could outrun,\n    Could leave both man and horse behind;\n    And often, ere the race was done,\n    He reeled and was stone-blind.\n    And still there’s something in the world\n    At which his heart rejoices;\n    For when the chiming hounds are out,\n    He dearly loves their voices!\n\n    Old Ruth works out of doors with him,\n    And does what Simon cannot do;\n    For she, not over stout of limb,\n    Is stouter of the two.\n    And though you with your utmost skill\n    From labour could not wean them,\n    Alas! ’tis very little, all\n    Which they can do between them.\n\n    Beside their moss-grown hut of clay,\n    Not twenty paces from the door,\n    A scrap of land they have, but they\n    Are poorest of the poor.\n    This scrap of land he from the heath\n    Enclosed when he was stronger;\n    But what avails the land to them,\n    Which they can till no longer?\n\n    Few months of life has he in store,\n    As he to you will tell,\n    For still, the more he works, the more\n    His poor old ancles swell.\n    My gentle reader, I perceive\n    How patiently you’ve waited,\n    And I’m afraid that you expect\n    Some tale will be related.\n\n    O reader! had you in your mind\n    Such stores as silent thought can bring,\n    O gentle reader! you would find\n    A tale in every thing.\n    What more I have to say is short,\n    I hope you’ll kindly take it;\n    It is no tale; but should you think,\n    Perhaps a tale you’ll make it.\n\n    One summer-day I chanced to see\n    This old man doing all he could\n    About the root of an old tree,\n    A stump of rotten wood.\n    The mattock totter’d in his hand;\n    So vain was his endeavour\n    That at the root of the old tree\n    He might have worked for ever.\n\n    “You’re overtasked, good Simon Lee,\n    Give me your tool” to him I said;\n    And at the word right gladly he\n    Received my proffer’d aid.\n    I struck, and with a single blow\n    The tangled root I sever’d,\n    At which the poor old man so long\n    And vainly had endeavour’d.\n\n    The tears into his eyes were brought,\n    And thanks and praises seemed to run\n    So fast out of his heart, I thought\n    They never would have done.\n    --I’ve heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds\n    With coldness still returning.\n    Alas! the gratitude of men\n    Has oftner left me mourning.",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Anecdote For Fathers Shewing How The Art Of Lying May Be Taught.",
    "body": "    I have a boy of five years old,\n    His face is fair and fresh to see;\n    His limbs are cast in beauty’s mould,\n    And dearly he loves me.\n\n    One morn we stroll’d on our dry walk,\n    Our quiet house all full in view,\n    And held such intermitted talk\n    As we are wont to do.\n\n    My thoughts on former pleasures ran;\n    I thought of Kilve’s delightful shore,\n    My pleasant home, when spring began,\n    A long, long year before.\n\n    A day it was when I could bear\n    To think, and think, and think again;\n    With so much happiness to spare,\n    I could not feel a pain.\n\n    My boy was by my side, so slim\n    And graceful in his rustic dress!\n    And oftentimes I talked to him,\n    In very idleness.\n\n    The young lambs ran a pretty race;\n    The morning sun shone bright and warm;\n    “Kilve,” said I, “was a pleasant place,\n    “And so is Liswyn farm.\n\n    “My little boy, which like you more,”\n    I said and took him by the arm--\n    “Our home by Kilve’s delightful shore,\n    “Or here at Liswyn farm?”\n\n    “And tell me, had you rather be,”\n    I said and held him by the arm,\n    “At Kilve’s smooth shore by the green sea,\n    “Or here at Liswyn farm?”\n\n    In careless mood he looked at me,\n    While still I held him by the arm,\n    And said, “At Kilve I’d rather be\n    “Than here at Liswyn farm.”\n\n    “Now, little Edward, say why so;\n    My little Edward, tell me why;”\n    “I cannot tell, I do not know,”\n    “Why this is strange,” said I.\n\n    “For, here are woods and green-hills warm;\n    “There surely must some reason be\n    “Why you would change sweet Liswyn farm\n    “For Kilve by the green sea.”\n\n    At this, my boy, so fair and slim,\n    Hung down his head, nor made reply;\n    And five times did I say to him,\n    “Why? Edward, tell me why?”\n\n    His head he raised--there was in sight,\n    It caught his eye, he saw it plain--\n    Upon the house-top, glittering bright,\n    A broad and gilded vane.\n\n    Then did the boy his tongue unlock,\n    And thus to me he made reply;\n    “At Kilve there was no weather-cock,\n    “And that’s the reason why.”\n\n    Oh dearest, dearest boy! my heart\n    For better lore would seldom yearn,\n    Could I but teach the hundredth part\n    Of what from thee I learn.",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "We Are Seven.",
    "body": "    A simple child, dear brother Jim,\n    That lightly draws its breath,\n    And feels its life in every limb,\n    What should it know of death?\n\n    I met a little cottage girl,\n    She was eight years old, she said;\n    Her hair was thick with many a curl\n    That cluster’d round her head.\n\n    She had a rustic, woodland air,\n    And she was wildly clad;\n    Her eyes were fair, and very fair,\n    --Her beauty made me glad.\n\n    “Sisters and brothers, little maid,\n    “How many may you be?”\n    “How many? seven in all,” she said,\n    And wondering looked at me.\n\n    “And where are they, I pray you tell?”\n    She answered, “Seven are we,\n    “And two of us at Conway dwell,\n    “And two are gone to sea.\n\n    “Two of us in the church-yard lie,\n    “My sister and my brother,\n    “And in the church-yard cottage, I\n    “Dwell near them with my mother.”\n\n    “You say that two at Conway dwell,\n    “And two are gone to sea,\n    “Yet you are seven; I pray you tell\n    “Sweet Maid, how this may be?”\n\n    Then did the little Maid reply,\n    “Seven boys and girls are we;\n    “Two of us in the church-yard lie,\n    “Beneath the church-yard tree.”\n\n    “You run about, my little maid,\n    “Your limbs they are alive;\n    “If two are in the church-yard laid,\n    “Then ye are only five.”\n\n    “Their graves are green, they may be seen,”\n    The little Maid replied,\n    “Twelve steps or more from my mother’s door,\n    “And they are side by side.\n\n    “My stockings there I often knit,\n    “My ’kerchief there I hem;\n    “And there upon the ground I sit--\n    “I sit and sing to them.\n\n    “And often after sunset, Sir,\n    “When it is light and fair,\n    “I take my little porringer,\n    “And eat my supper there.\n\n    “The first that died was little Jane;\n    “In bed she moaning lay,\n    “Till God released her of her pain,\n    “And then she went away.\n\n    “So in the church-yard she was laid,\n    “And all the summer dry,\n    “Together round her grave we played,\n    “My brother John and I.\n\n    “And when the ground was white with snow,\n    “And I could run and slide,\n    “My brother John was forced to go,\n    “And he lies by her side.”\n\n    “How many are you then,” said I,\n    “If they two are in Heaven?”\n    The little Maiden did reply,\n    “O Master! we are seven.”\n\n    “But they are dead; those two are dead!\n    “Their spirits are in heaven!”\n    ’Twas throwing words away; for still\n    The little Maid would have her will,\n    And said, “Nay, we are seven!”",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lines Written In Early Spring.",
    "body": "    I heard a thousand blended notes,\n    While in a grove I sate reclined,\n    In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts\n    Bring sad thoughts to the mind.\n\n    To her fair works did nature link\n    The human soul that through me ran;\n    And much it griev’d my heart to think\n    What man has made of man.\n\n    Through primrose-tufts, in that sweet bower,\n    The periwinkle trail’d its wreathes;\n    And ’tis my faith that every flower\n    Enjoys the air it breathes.\n\n    The birds around me hopp’d and play’d:\n    Their thoughts I cannot measure,\n    But the least motion which they made,\n    It seem’d a thrill of pleasure.\n\n    The budding twigs spread out their fan,\n    To catch the breezy air;\n    And I must think, do all I can,\n    That there was pleasure there.\n\n    If I these thoughts may not prevent,\n    If such be of my creed the plan,\n    Have I not reason to lament\n    What man has made of man?",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Thorn.",
    "body": "I.\n\n    There is a thorn; it looks so old,\n    In truth you’d find it hard to say,\n    How it could ever have been young,\n    It looks so old and grey.\n    Not higher than a two-years’ child,\n    It stands erect this aged thorn;\n    No leaves it has, no thorny points;\n    It is a mass of knotted joints,\n    A wretched thing forlorn.\n    It stands erect, and like a stone\n    With lichens it is overgrown.\n\n\nII.\n\n    Like rock or stone, it is o’ergrown\n    With lichens to the very top,\n    And hung with heavy tufts of moss,\n    A melancholy crop:\n    Up from the earth these mosses creep,\n    And this poor thorn they clasp it round\n    So close, you’d say that they were bent\n    With plain and manifest intent,\n    To drag it to the ground;\n    And all had joined in one endeavour\n    To bury this poor thorn for ever.",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Iii.",
    "body": "    High on a mountain’s highest ridge,\n    Where oft the stormy winter gale\n    Cuts like a scythe, while through the clouds\n    It sweeps from vale to vale;\n    Not five yards from the mountain-path,\n    This thorn you on your left espy;\n    And to the left, three yards beyond,\n    You see a little muddy pond\n    Of water, never dry;\n    I’ve measured it from side to side:\n    ’Tis three feet long, and two feet wide.\n\n\nIV.\n\n    And close beside this aged thorn,\n    There is a fresh and lovely sight,\n    A beauteous heap, a hill of moss,\n    Just half a foot in height.\n    All lovely colours there you see,\n    All colours that were ever seen,\n    And mossy network too is there,\n    As if by hand of lady fair\n    The work had woven been,\n    And cups, the darlings of the eye,\n    So deep is their vermilion dye.\n\n\nV.\n\n    Ah me! what lovely tints are there!\n    Of olive-green and scarlet bright,\n    In spikes, in branches, and in stars,\n    Green, red, and pearly white.\n    This heap of earth o’ergrown with moss\n    Which close beside the thorn you see,\n    So fresh in all its beauteous dyes,\n    Is like an infant’s grave in size\n    As like as like can be:\n    But never, never any where,\n    An infant’s grave was half so fair.\n\n\nVI.\n\n    Now would you see this aged thorn,\n    This pond and beauteous hill of moss,\n    You must take care and chuse your time\n    The mountain when to cross.\n    For oft there sits, between the heap\n    That’s like an infant’s grave in size,\n    And that same pond of which I spoke,\n    A woman in a scarlet cloak,\n    And to herself she cries,\n    “Oh misery! oh misery!\n    “Oh woe is me! oh misery!”",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Vii.",
    "body": "    At all times of the day and night\n    This wretched woman thither goes,\n    And she is known to every star,\n    And every wind that blows;\n    And there beside the thorn she sits\n    When the blue day-light’s in the skies,\n    And when the whirlwind’s on the hill,\n    Or frosty air is keen and still,\n    And to herself she cries,\n    “Oh misery! oh misery!\n    “Oh woe is me! oh misery!”",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Viii.",
    "body": "    “Now wherefore thus, by day and night,\n    “In rain, in tempest, and in snow,\n    “Thus to the dreary mountain-top\n    “Does this poor woman go?\n    “And why sits she beside the thorn\n    “When the blue day-light’s in the sky,\n    “Or when the whirlwind’s on the hill,\n    “Or frosty air is keen and still,\n    “And wherefore does she cry?--\n    “Oh wherefore? wherefore? tell me why\n    “Does she repeat that doleful cry?”\n\n\nIX.\n\n    I cannot tell; I wish I could;\n    For the true reason no one knows,\n    But if you’d gladly view the spot,\n    The spot to which she goes;\n    The heap that’s like an infant’s grave,\n    The pond--and thorn, so old and grey,\n    Pass by her door--’tis seldom shut--\n    And if you see her in her hut,\n    Then to the spot away!--\n    I never heard of such as dare\n    Approach the spot when she is there.\n\n\nX.\n\n    “But wherefore to the mountain-top\n    “Can this unhappy woman go,\n    “Whatever star is in the skies,\n    “Whatever wind may blow?”\n    Nay rack your brain--’tis all in vain,\n    I’ll tell you every thing I know;\n    But to the thorn, and to the pond\n    Which is a little step beyond,\n    I wish that you would go:\n    Perhaps when you are at the place\n    You something of her tale may trace.\n\n\nXI.\n\n    I’ll give you the best help I can:\n    Before you up the mountain go,\n    Up to the dreary mountain-top,\n    I’ll tell you all I know.\n    Tis now some two and twenty years,\n    Since she (her name is Martha Ray)\n    Gave with a maiden’s true good will\n    Her company to Stephen Hill;\n    And she was blithe and gay,\n    And she was happy, happy still\n    Whene’er she thought of Stephen Hill.",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xii.",
    "body": "    And they had fix’d the wedding-day,\n    The morning that must wed them both;\n    But Stephen to another maid\n    Had sworn another oath;\n    And with this other maid to church\n    Unthinking Stephen went--\n    Poor Martha! on that woful day\n    A cruel, cruel fire, they say,\n    Into her bones was sent:\n    It dried her body like a cinder,\n    And almost turn’d her brain to tinder.",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xiii.",
    "body": "    They say, full six months after this,\n    While yet the summer-leaves were green,\n    She to the mountain-top would go,\n    And there was often seen.\n    ’Tis said, a child was in her womb,\n    As now to any eye was plain;\n    She was with child, and she was mad,\n    Yet often she was sober sad\n    From her exceeding pain.\n    Oh me! ten thousand times I’d rather\n    That he had died, that cruel father!",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xiv.",
    "body": "    Sad case for such a brain to hold\n    Communion with a stirring child!\n    Sad case, as you may think, for one\n    Who had a brain so wild!\n    Last Christmas when we talked of this,\n    Old Farmer Simpson did maintain,\n    That in her womb the infant wrought\n    About its mother’s heart, and brought\n    Her senses back again:\n    And when at last her time drew near,\n    Her looks were calm, her senses clear.\n\n\nXV.\n\n    No more I know, I wish I did,\n    And I would tell it all to you;\n    For what became of this poor child\n    There’s none that ever knew:\n    And if a child was born or no,\n    There’s no one that could ever tell;\n    And if ’twas born alive or dead,\n    There’s no one knows, as I have said,\n    But some remember well,\n    That Martha Ray about this time\n    Would up the mountain often climb.",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xvi.",
    "body": "    And all that winter, when at night\n    The wind blew from the mountain-peak,\n    ’Twas worth your while, though in the dark,\n    The church-yard path to seek:\n    For many a time and oft were heard\n    Cries coming from the mountain-head,\n    Some plainly living voices were,\n    And others, I’ve heard many swear,\n    Were voices of the dead:\n    I cannot think, whate’er they say,\n    They had to do with Martha Ray.",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xvii.",
    "body": "    But that she goes to this old thorn,\n    The thorn which I’ve described to you,\n    And there sits in a scarlet cloak,\n    I will be sworn is true.\n    For one day with my telescope,\n    To view the ocean wide and bright,\n    When to this country first I came,\n    Ere I had heard of Martha’s name,\n    I climbed the mountain’s height:\n    A storm came on, and I could see\n    No object higher than my knee.",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xviii.",
    "body": "    ’Twas mist and rain, and storm and rain,\n    No screen, no fence could I discover,\n    And then the wind! in faith, it was\n    A wind full ten times over.\n    I looked around, I thought I saw\n    A jutting crag, and oft’ I ran,\n    Head-foremost, through the driving rain,\n    The shelter of the crag to gain,\n    And, as I am a man,\n    Instead of jutting crag, I found\n    A woman seated on the ground.",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xix.",
    "body": "    I did not speak--I saw her face,\n    Her face it was enough for me;\n    I turned about and heard her cry,\n    “O misery! O misery!”\n    And there she sits, until the moon\n    Through half the clear blue sky will go,\n    And when the little breezes make\n    The waters of the pond to shake,\n    As all the country know,\n    She shudders and you hear her cry,\n    “Oh misery! oh misery!\n\n\nXX.\n\n    “But what’s the thorn? and what’s the pond?\n    “And what’s the hill of moss to her?\n    “And what’s the creeping breeze that comes\n    “The little pond to stir?”\n    I cannot tell; but some will say\n    She hanged her baby on the tree,\n    Some say she drowned it in the pond,\n    Which is a little step beyond,\n    But all and each agree,\n    The little babe was buried there,\n    Beneath that hill of moss so fair.",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxi.",
    "body": "    I’ve heard the scarlet moss is red\n    With drops of that poor infant’s blood;\n    But kill a new-born infant thus!\n    I do not think she could.\n    Some say, if to the pond you go,\n    And fix on it a steady view,\n    The shadow of a babe you trace,\n    A baby and a baby’s face,\n    And that it looks at you;\n    Whene’er you look on it, ’tis plain\n    The baby looks at you again.",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxii.",
    "body": "    And some had sworn an oath that she\n    Should be to public justice brought;\n    And for the little infant’s bones\n    With spades they would have sought.\n    But then the beauteous hill of moss\n    Before their eyes began to stir;\n    And for full fifty yards around,\n    The grass it shook upon the ground;\n    But all do still aver\n    The little babe is buried there,\n    Beneath that hill of moss so fair.",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Xxiii.",
    "body": "    I cannot tell how this may be,\n    But plain it is, the thorn is bound\n    With heavy tufts of moss, that strive\n    To drag it to the ground.\n    And this I know, full many a time,\n    When she was on the mountain high,\n    By day, and in the silent night,\n    When all the stars shone clear and bright,\n    That I have heard her cry,\n    “Oh misery! oh misery!\n    “O woe is me! oh misery!”",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Last Of The Flock.",
    "body": "    In distant countries I have been,\n    And yet I have not often seen\n    A healthy man, a man full grown\n    Weep in the public roads alone.\n    But such a one, on English ground,\n    And in the broad high-way, I met;\n    Along the broad high-way he came,\n    His cheeks with tears were wet.\n    Sturdy he seemed, though he was sad;\n    And in his arms a lamb he had.\n\n    He saw me, and he turned aside,\n    As if he wished himself to hide:\n    Then with his coat he made essay\n    To wipe those briny tears away.\n    I follow’d him, and said, “My friend\n    “What ails you? wherefore weep you so?”\n    --“Shame on me, Sir! this lusty lamb,\n    He makes my tears to flow.\n    To-day I fetched him from the rock;\n    He is the last of all my flock.\n\n    When I was young, a single man,\n    And after youthful follies ran,\n    Though little given to care and thought,\n    Yet, so it was, a ewe I bought;\n    And other sheep from her I raised,\n    As healthy sheep as you might see,\n    And then I married, and was rich\n    As I could wish to be;\n    Of sheep I number’d a full score,\n    And every year encreas’d my store.\n\n    Year after year my stock it grew,\n    And from this one, this single ewe,\n    Full fifty comely sheep I raised,\n    As sweet a flock as ever grazed!\n    Upon the mountain did they feed;\n    They throve, and we at home did thrive.\n    --This lusty lamb of all my store\n    Is all that is alive:\n    And now I care not if we die,\n    And perish all of poverty.\n\n    Ten children, Sir! had I to feed,\n    Hard labour in a time of need!\n    My pride was tamed, and in our grief,\n    I of the parish ask’d relief.\n    They said I was a wealthy man;\n    My sheep upon the mountain fed,\n    And it was fit that thence I took\n    Whereof to buy us bread:”\n    “Do this; how can we give to you,”\n    They cried, “what to the poor is due?”\n\n    I sold a sheep as they had said,\n    And bought my little children bread,\n    And they were healthy with their food;\n    For me it never did me good.\n    A woeful time it was for me,\n    To see the end of all my gains,\n    The pretty flock which I had reared\n    With all my care and pains,\n    To see it melt like snow away!\n    For me it was a woeful day.\n\n    Another still! and still another!\n    A little lamb, and then its mother!\n    It was a vein that never stopp’d,\n    Like blood-drops from my heart they dropp’d.\n    Till thirty were not left alive\n    They dwindled, dwindled, one by one,\n    And I may say that many a time\n    I wished they all were gone:\n    They dwindled one by one away;\n    For me it was a woeful day.\n\n    To wicked deeds I was inclined,\n    And wicked fancies cross’d my mind,\n    And every man I chanc’d to see,\n    I thought he knew some ill of me\n    No peace, no comfort could I find,\n    No ease, within doors or without,\n    And crazily, and wearily,\n    I went my work about.\n    Oft-times I thought to run away;\n    For me it was a woeful day.\n\n    Sir! ’twas a precious flock to me,\n    As dear as my own children be;\n    For daily with my growing store\n    I loved my children more and more.\n    Alas! it was an evil time;\n    God cursed me in my sore distress,\n    I prayed, yet every day I thought\n    I loved my children less;\n    And every week, and every day,\n    My flock, it seemed to melt away.\n\n    They dwindled, Sir, sad sight to see!\n    From ten to five, from five to three,\n    A lamb, a weather, and a ewe;\n    And then at last, from three to two;\n    And of my fifty, yesterday\n    I had but only one,\n    And here it lies upon my arm,\n    Alas! and I have none;\n    To-day I fetched it from the rock;\n    It is the last of all my flock.”",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Dungeon.",
    "body": "    And this place our forefathers made for man!\n    This is the process of our love and wisdom,\n    To each poor brother who offends against us--\n    Most innocent, perhaps--and what if guilty?\n    Is this the only cure? Merciful God?\n    Each pore and natural outlet shrivell’d up\n    By ignorance and parching poverty,\n    His energies roll back upon his heart,\n    And stagnate and corrupt; till changed to poison,\n    They break out on him, like a loathsome plague-spot;\n    Then we call in our pamper’d mountebanks--\n    And this is their best cure! uncomforted\n    And friendless solitude, groaning and tears,\n    And savage faces, at the clanking hour,\n    Seen through the steams and vapour of his dungeon,\n    By the lamp’s dismal twilight! So he lies\n    Circled with evil, till his very soul\n    Unmoulds its essence, hopelessly deformed\n    By sights of ever more deformity!\n\n    With other ministrations thou, O nature!\n    Healest thy wandering and distempered child:\n    Thou pourest on him thy soft influences,\n    Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets,\n    Thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters,\n    Till he relent, and can no more endure\n    To be a jarring and a dissonant thing,\n    Amid this general dance and minstrelsy;\n    But, bursting into tears, wins back his way,\n    His angry spirit healed and harmonized\n    By the benignant touch of love and beauty.",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Mad Mother.",
    "body": "    Her eyes are wild, her head is bare,\n    The sun has burnt her coal-black hair,\n    Her eye-brows have a rusty stain,\n    And she came far from over the main.\n    She has a baby on her arm,\n    Or else she were alone;\n    And underneath the hay-stack warm,\n    And on the green-wood stone,\n    She talked and sung the woods among;\n    And it was in the English tongue.\n\n    “Sweet babe! they say that I am mad,\n    But nay, my heart is far too glad;\n    And I am happy when I sing\n    Full many a sad and doleful thing:\n    Then, lovely baby, do not fear!\n    I pray thee have no fear of me,\n    But, safe as in a cradle, here\n    My lovely baby! thou shalt be,\n    To thee I know too much I owe;\n    I cannot work thee any woe.\n\n    A fire was once within my brain;\n    And in my head a dull, dull pain;\n    And fiendish faces one, two, three,\n    Hung at my breasts, and pulled at me.\n    But then there came a sight of joy;\n    It came at once to do me good;\n    I waked, and saw my little boy,\n    My little boy of flesh and blood;\n    Oh joy for me that sight to see!\n    For he was here, and only he.\n\n    Suck, little babe, oh suck again!\n    It cools my blood; it cools my brain;\n    Thy lips I feel them, baby! they\n    Draw from my heart the pain away.\n    Oh! press me with thy little hand;\n    It loosens something at my chest;\n    About that tight and deadly band\n    I feel thy little fingers press’d.\n    The breeze I see is in the tree;\n    It comes to cool my babe and me.\n\n    Oh! love me, love me, little boy!\n    Thou art thy mother’s only joy;\n    And do not dread the waves below,\n    When o’er the sea-rock’s edge we go;\n    The high crag cannot work me harm,\n    Nor leaping torrents when they howl;\n    The babe I carry on my arm,\n    He saves for me my precious soul;\n    Then happy lie, for blest am I;\n    Without me my sweet babe would die.\n\n    Then do not fear, my boy! for thee\n    Bold as a lion I will be;\n    And I will always be thy guide,\n    Through hollow snows and rivers wide.\n    I’ll build an Indian bower; I know\n    The leaves that make the softest bed:\n    And if from me thou wilt not go,\n    But still be true ’till I am dead,\n    My pretty thing! then thou shalt sing,\n    As merry as the birds in spring.\n\n    Thy father cares not for my breast,\n    ’Tis thine, sweet baby, there to rest:\n    ’Tis all thine own! and if its hue\n    Be changed, that was so fair to view,\n    ’Tis fair enough for thee, my dove!\n    My beauty, little child, is flown;\n    But thou wilt live with me in love,\n    And what if my poor cheek be brown?\n    ’Tis well for me; thou canst not see\n    How pale and wan it else would be.\n\n    Dread not their taunts, my little life!\n    I am thy father’s wedded wife;\n    And underneath the spreading tree\n    We two will live in honesty.\n    If his sweet boy he could forsake,\n    With me he never would have stay’d:\n    From him no harm my babe can take,\n    But he, poor man! is wretched made,\n    And every day we two will pray\n    For him that’s gone and far away.\n\n    I’ll teach my boy the sweetest things;\n    I’ll teach him how the owlet sings.\n    My little babe! thy lips are still,\n    And thou hast almost suck’d thy fill.\n    --Where art thou gone my own dear child?\n    What wicked looks are those I see?\n    Alas! alas! that look so wild,\n    It never, never came from me:\n    If thou art mad, my pretty lad,\n    Then I must be for ever sad.\n\n    Oh! smile on me, my little lamb!\n    For I thy own dear mother am.\n    My love for thee has well been tried:\n    I’ve sought thy father far and wide.\n    I know the poisons of the shade,\n    I know the earth-nuts fit for food;\n    Then, pretty dear, be not afraid;\n    We’ll find thy father in the wood.\n    Now laugh and be gay, to the woods away!\n    And there, my babe; we’ll live for aye.",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Idiot Boy.",
    "body": "    Tis eight o’clock,--a clear March night,\n    The moon is up--the sky is blue,\n    The owlet in the moonlight air,\n    He shouts from nobody knows where;\n    He lengthens out his lonely shout,\n    Halloo! halloo! a long halloo!\n\n    --Why bustle thus about your door,\n    What means this bustle, Betty Foy?\n    Why are you in this mighty fret?\n    And why on horseback have you set\n    Him whom you love, your idiot boy?\n\n    Beneath the moon that shines so bright,\n    Till she is tired, let Betty Foy\n    With girt and stirrup fiddle-faddle;\n    But wherefore set upon a saddle\n    Him whom she loves, her idiot boy?\n\n    There’s scarce a soul that’s out of bed;\n    Good Betty! put him down again;\n    His lips with joy they burr at you,\n    But, Betty! what has he to do\n    With stirrup, saddle, or with rein?\n\n    The world will say ’tis very idle,\n    Bethink you of the time of night;\n    There’s not a mother, no not one,\n    But when she hears what you have done,\n    Oh! Betty she’ll be in a fright.\n\n    But Betty’s bent on her intent,\n    For her good neighbour, Susan Gale,\n    Old Susan, she who dwells alone,\n    Is sick, and makes a piteous moan,\n    As if her very life would fail.\n\n    There’s not a house within a mile.\n    No hand to help them in distress:\n    Old Susan lies a bed in pain,\n    And sorely puzzled are the twain,\n    For what she ails they cannot guess.\n\n    And Betty’s husband’s at the wood,\n    Where by the week he doth abide,\n    A woodman in the distant vale;\n    There’s none to help poor Susan Gale,\n    What must be done? what will betide?\n\n    And Betty from the lane has fetched\n    Her pony, that is mild and good,\n    Whether he be in joy or pain,\n    Feeding at will along the lane,\n    Or bringing faggots from the wood.\n\n    And he is all in travelling trim,\n    And by the moonlight, Betty Foy\n    Has up upon the saddle set,\n    The like was never heard of yet,\n    Him whom she loves, her idiot boy.\n\n    And he must post without delay\n    Across the bridge that’s in the dale,\n    And by the church, and o’er the down,\n    To bring a doctor from the town,\n    Or she will die, old Susan Gale.\n\n    There is no need of boot or spur,\n    There is no need of whip or wand,\n    For Johnny has his holly-bough,\n    And with a hurly-burly now\n    He shakes the green bough in his hand.\n\n    And Betty o’er and o’er has told\n    The boy who is her best delight,\n    Both what to follow, what to shun,\n    What do, and what to leave undone,\n    How turn to left, and how to right.\n\n    And Betty’s most especial charge,\n    Was, “Johnny! Johnny! mind that you\n    “Come home again, nor stop at all,\n    “Come home again, whate’er befal,\n    “My Johnny do, I pray you do.”\n\n    To this did Johnny answer make,\n    Both with his head, and with his hand,\n    And proudly shook the bridle too,\n    And then! his words were not a few,\n    Which Betty well could understand.\n\n    And now that Johnny is just going,\n    Though Betty’s in a mighty flurry,\n    She gently pats the pony’s side,\n    On which her idiot boy must ride,\n    And seems no longer in a hurry.\n\n    But when the pony moved his legs,\n    Oh! then for the poor idiot boy!\n    For joy he cannot hold the bridle,\n    For joy his head and heels are idle,\n    He’s idle all for very joy.\n\n    And while the pony moves his legs,\n    In Johnny’s left-hand you may see,\n    The green bough’s motionless and dead;\n    The moon that shines above his head\n    Is not more still and mute than he.\n\n    His heart it was so full of glee,\n    That till full fifty yards were gone,\n    He quite forgot his holly whip,\n    And all his skill in horsemanship,\n    Oh! happy, happy, happy John.\n\n    And Betty’s standing at the door,\n    And Betty’s face with joy o’erflows,\n    Proud of herself, and proud of him,\n    She sees him in his travelling trim;\n    How quietly her Johnny goes.\n\n    The silence
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lines Written Near Richmond, Upon The Thames, At Evening.",
    "body": "    How rich the wave, in front, imprest\n    With evening-twilight’s summer hues,\n    While, facing thus the crimson west,\n    The boat her silent path pursues!\n    And see how dark the backward stream!\n    A little moment past, so smiling!\n    And still, perhaps, with faithless gleam,\n    Some other loiterer beguiling.\n\n    Such views the youthful bard allure,\n    But, heedless of the following gloom,\n    He deems their colours shall endure\n    ’Till peace go with him to the tomb.\n    --And let him nurse his fond deceit,\n    And what if he must die in sorrow!\n    Who would not cherish dreams so sweet,\n    Though grief and pain may come to-morrow?\n\n    Glide gently, thus for ever glide,\n    O Thames! that other bards may see,\n    As lovely visions by thy side\n    As now, fair river! come to me.\n    Oh glide, fair stream! for ever so;\n    Thy quiet soul on all bestowing,\n    ’Till all our minds for ever flow,\n    As thy deep waters now are flowing.\n\n    Vain thought! yet be as now thou art,\n    That in thy waters may be seen\n    The image of a poet’s heart,\n    How bright, how solemn, how serene!\n    Such heart did once the poet bless,\n    Who, pouring here a[3] _later_ ditty,\n    Could find no refuge from distress,\n    But in the milder grief of pity.\n\n    Remembrance! as we glide along,\n    For him suspend the dashing oar,\n    And pray that never child of Song\n    May know his freezing sorrows more.\n    How calm! how still! the only sound,\n    The dripping of the oar suspended!\n    --The evening darkness gathers round\n    By virtue’s holiest powers attended.\n\n\n    [3] Collins’s Ode on the death of Thomson, the last written, I\n    believe, of the poems which were published during his\n    life-time. This Ode is also alluded to in the next stanza.",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Expostulation And Reply.",
    "body": "    “Why William, on that old grey stone,\n    “Thus for the length of half a day,\n    “Why William, sit you thus alone,\n    “And dream your time away?\n\n    “Where are your books? that light bequeath’d\n    “To beings else forlorn and blind!\n    “Up! Up! and drink the spirit breath’d\n    “From dead men to their kind.\n\n    “You look round on your mother earth,\n    “As if she for no purpose bore you;\n    “As if you were her first-born birth,\n    “And none had lived before you!”\n\n    One morning thus, by Esthwaite lake,\n    When life was sweet I knew not why,\n    To me my good friend Matthew spake,\n    And thus I made reply.\n\n    “The eye it cannot chuse but see,\n    “We cannot bid the ear be still;\n    “Our bodies feel, where’er they be,\n    “Against, or with our will.\n\n    “Nor less I deem that there are powers,\n    “Which of themselves our minds impress,\n    “That we can feed this mind of ours,\n    “In a wise passiveness.\n\n    “Think you, mid all this mighty sum\n    “Of things for ever speaking,\n    “That nothing of itself will come,\n    “But we must still be seeking?\n\n    “--Then ask not wherefore, here, alone,\n    “Conversing as I may,\n    “I sit upon this old grey stone,\n    “And dream my time away.”",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Tables Turned; An Evening Scene, On The Same Subject.",
    "body": "    Up! up! my friend, and clear your looks,\n    Why all this toil and trouble?\n    Up! up! my friend, and quit your books,\n    Or surely you’ll grow double.\n\n    The sun above the mountain’s head,\n    A freshening lustre mellow,\n    Through all the long green fields has spread,\n    His first sweet evening yellow.\n\n    Books! ’tis a dull and endless strife,\n    Come, hear the woodland linnet,\n    How sweet his music; on my life\n    There’s more of wisdom in it.\n\n    And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!\n    And he is no mean preacher;\n    Come forth into the light of things,\n    Let Nature be your teacher.\n\n    She has a world of ready wealth,\n    Our minds and hearts to bless--\n    Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,\n    Truth breathed by chearfulness.\n\n    One impulse from a vernal wood\n    May teach you more of man;\n    Of moral evil and of good,\n    Than all the sages can.\n\n    Sweet is the lore which nature brings;\n    Our meddling intellect\n    Misshapes the beauteous forms of things;\n    --We murder to dissect.\n\n    Enough of science and of art;\n    Close up these barren leaves;\n    Come forth, and bring with you a heart\n    That watches and receives.",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Old Man Travelling; Animal Tranquillity And Decay, A Sketch.",
    "body": "                    The little hedge-row birds,\n    That peck along the road, regard him not.\n    He travels on, and in his face, his step,\n    His gait, is one expression; every limb,\n    His look and bending figure, all bespeak\n    A man who does not move with pain, but moves\n    With thought--He is insensibly subdued\n    To settled quiet: he is one by whom\n    All effort seems forgotten, one to whom\n    Long patience has such mild composure given,\n    That patience now doth seem a thing, of which\n    He hath no need. He is by nature led\n    To peace so perfect, that the young behold\n    With envy, what the old man hardly feels.\n    --I asked him whither he was bound, and what\n    The object of his journey; he replied\n    “Sir! I am going many miles to take\n    “A last leave of my son, a mariner,\n    “Who from a sea-fight has been brought to Falmouth,\n    And there is dying in an hospital.”",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Complaint Of A Forsaken Indian Woman",
    "body": "[_When a Northern Indian, from sickness, is unable to continue his\njourney with his companions; he is left behind, covered over with\nDeer-skins, and is supplied with water, food, and fuel if the situation\nof the place will afford it. He is informed of the track which his\ncompanions intend to pursue, and if he is unable to follow, or overtake\nthem, he perishes alone in the Desart; unless he should have the good\nfortune to fall in with some other Tribes of Indians. It is unnecessary\nto add that the females are equally, or still more, exposed to the same\nfate. See that very interesting work, _Hearne’s Journey from Hudson’s\nBay to the Northern Ocean_. When the Northern Lights, as the same writer\ninforms us, vary their position in the air, they make a rustling and a\ncrackling noise. This circumstance is alluded to in the first stanza of\nthe following poem._]\n\n\n    Before I see another day,\n    Oh let my body die away!\n    In sleep I heard the northern gleams;\n    The stars they were among my dreams;\n    In sleep did I behold the skies,\n    I saw the crackling flashes drive;\n    And yet they are upon my eyes,\n    And yet I am alive.\n    Before I see another day,\n    Oh let my body die away!\n\n    My fire is dead: it knew no pain;\n    Yet is it dead, and I remain.\n    All stiff with ice the ashes lie;\n    And they are dead, and I will die.\n    When I was well, I wished to live,\n    For clothes, for warmth, for food, and fire;\n    But they to me no joy can give,\n    No pleasure now, and no desire.\n    Then here contented will I lie;\n    Alone I cannot fear to die.\n\n    Alas! you might have dragged me on\n    Another day, a single one!\n    Too soon despair o’er me prevailed;\n    Too soon my heartless spirit failed;\n    When you were gone my limbs were stronger,\n    And Oh how grievously I rue,\n    That, afterwards, a little longer,\n    My friends, I did not follow you!\n    For strong and without pain I lay,\n    My friends, when you were gone away.\n\n    My child! they gave thee to another,\n    A woman who was not thy mother.\n    When from my arms my babe they took,\n    On me how strangely did he look!\n    Through his whole body something ran,\n    A most strange something did I see;\n    --As if he strove to be a man,\n    That he might pull the sledge for me.\n    And then he stretched his arms, how wild!\n    Oh mercy! like a little child.\n\n    My little joy! my little pride!\n    In two days more I must have died.\n    Then do not weep and grieve for me;\n    I feel I must have died with thee.\n    Oh wind that o’er my head art flying,\n    The way my friends their course did bend,\n    I should not feel the pain of dying,\n    Could I with thee a message send.\n    Too soon, my friends, you went away;\n    For I had many things to say.\n\n    I’ll follow you across the snow,\n    You travel heavily and slow:\n    In spite of all my weary pain,\n    I’ll look upon your tents again.\n    My fire is dead, and snowy white\n    The water which beside it stood;\n    The wolf has come to me to-night,\n    And he has stolen away my food.\n    For ever left alone am I,\n    Then wherefore should I fear to die?\n\n    My journey will be shortly run,\n    I shall not see another sun,\n    I cannot lift my limbs to know\n    If they have any life or no.\n    My poor forsaken child! if I\n    For once could have thee close to me,\n    With happy heart I then would die,\n    And my last thoughts would happy be,\n    I feel my body die away,\n    I shall not see another day.",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Convict.",
    "body": "    The glory of evening was spread through the west;\n      --On the slope of a mountain I stood;\n    While the joy that precedes the calm season of rest\n      Rang loud through the meadow and wood.\n\n    “And must we then part from a dwelling so fair?”\n      In the pain of my spirit I said,\n    And with a deep sadness I turned, to repair\n      To the cell where the convict is laid.\n\n    The thick-ribbed walls that o’ershadow the gate\n      Resound; and the dungeons unfold:\n    I pause; and at length, through the glimmering grate,\n      That outcast of pity behold.\n\n    His black matted head on his shoulder is bent,\n      And deep is the sigh of his breath,\n    And with stedfast dejection his eyes are intent\n      On the fetters that link him to death.\n\n    ’Tis sorrow enough on that visage to gaze.\n      That body dismiss’d from his care;\n    Yet my fancy has pierced to his heart, and pourtrays\n      More terrible images there.\n\n    His bones are consumed, and his life-blood is dried,\n      With wishes the past to undo;\n    And his crime, through the pains that o’erwhelm him, descried,\n      Still blackens and grows on his view.\n\n    When from the dark synod, or blood-reeking field,\n      To his chamber the monarch is led,\n    All soothers of sense their soft virtue shall yield,\n      And quietness pillow his head.\n\n    But if grief, self-consumed, in oblivion would doze,\n      And conscience her tortures appease,\n    ’Mid tumult and uproar this man must repose;\n      In the comfortless vault of disease.\n\n    When his fetters at night have so press’d on his limbs,\n      That the weight can no longer be borne,\n    If, while a half-slumber his memory bedims,\n      The wretch on his pallet should turn,\n\n    While the jail-mastiff howls at the dull clanking chain,\n      From the roots of his hair there shall start\n    A thousand sharp punctures of cold-sweating pain,\n      And terror shall leap at his heart.\n\n    But now he half-raises his deep-sunken eye,\n      And the motion unsettles a tear;\n    The silence of sorrow it seems to supply,\n      And asks of me why I am here.\n\n    “Poor victim! no idle intruder has stood\n      “With o’erweening complacence our state to compare,\n    “But one, whose first wish is the wish to be good,\n      “Is come as a brother thy sorrows to share.\n\n    “At thy name though compassion her nature resign,\n      “Though in virtue’s proud mouth thy report be a stain,\n    “My care, if the arm of the mighty were mine,\n      “Would plant thee where yet thou might’st blossom again.”",
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lines Written A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting The Banks",
    "body": "OF THE WYE DURING A TOUR, July 13, 1798.\n\n\n    Five years have passed; five summers, with the length\n    Of five long winters! and again I hear\n    These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs\n    With a sweet inland murmur.[4]--Once again\n    Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,\n    Which on a wild secluded scene impress\n    Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect\n    The landscape with the quiet of the sky.\n    The day is come when I again repose\n    Here, under this dark sycamore, and view\n    These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,\n    Which, at this season, with their unripe fruits,\n    Among the woods and copses lose themselves,\n    Nor, with their green and simple hue, disturb\n    The wild green landscape. Once again I see\n    These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines\n    Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms\n    Green to the very door; and wreathes of smoke\n    Sent up, in silence, from among the trees,\n    With some uncertain notice, as might seem,\n    Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,\n    Or of some hermit’s cave, where by his fire\n    The hermit sits alone.\n\n                           Though absent long,\n    These forms of beauty have not been to me,\n    As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:\n    But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din\n    Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,\n    In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,\n    Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,\n    And passing even into my purer mind\n    With tranquil restoration:--feelings too\n    Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps,\n    As may have had no trivial influence\n    On that best portion of a good man’s life;\n    His little, nameless, unremembered acts\n    Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,\n    To them I may have owed another gift,\n    Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,\n    In which the burthen of the mystery,\n    In which the heavy and the weary weight\n    Of all this unintelligible world\n    Is lighten’d:--that serene and blessed mood,\n    In which the affections gently lead us on,\n    Until, the breath of this corporeal frame,\n    And even the motion of our human blood\n    Almost suspended, we are laid asleep\n    In body, and become a living soul:\n    While with an eye made quiet by the power\n    Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,\n    We see into the life of things.\n\n                                    If this\n    Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft,\n    In darkness, and amid the many shapes\n    Of joyless day-light; when the fretful stir\n    Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,\n    Have hung upon the beatings of my heart,\n    How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee\n    O sylvan Wye! Thou wanderer through the woods,\n    How often has my spirit turned to thee!\n\n    And now, with gleams of half-extinguish’d thought,\n    With many recognitions dim and faint,\n    And somewhat of a sad perplexity,\n    The picture of the mind revives again:\n    While here I stand, not only with the sense\n    Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts\n    That in this moment there is life and food\n    For future years. And so I dare to hope\n    Though changed, no doubt, from what I was, when first\n    I came among these hills; when like a roe\n    I bounded o’er the mountains, by the sides\n    Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,\n    Wherever nature led; more like a man\n    Flying from something that he dreads, than one\n    Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then\n    (The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,\n    And their glad animal movements all gone by,)\n    To me was all in all.--I cannot paint\n    What then I was. The sounding cataract\n    Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,\n    The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,\n    Their colours and their forms, were then to me\n    An appetite: a feeling and a love,\n    That had no need of a remoter charm,\n    By thought supplied, or any interest\n    Unborrowed from the eye.--Th
    "author": "William Wordsworth",
    "source": "Lyrical Ballads",
    "period": "1798"
  }
]