Wordsworth (8 page)

A slumber did my spirit seal;

    I had no human fears:

She seemed a thing that could not feel

    The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force;

    She neither hears nor sees;

Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course,

    With rocks, and stones, and trees.

She dwelt among the untrodden ways

    Beside the springs of Dove,

A Maid whom there were none to praise

    And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone

    Half hidden from the eye!

– Fair as a star, when only one

    Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know

    When Lucy ceased to be;

But she is in her grave, and, oh,

    The difference to me!

Strange fits of passion have I known:

And I will dare to tell,

But in the Lover’s ear alone,

What once to me befell.

When she I loved looked every day

Fresh as a rose in June,

I to her cottage bent my way,

Beneath an evening moon.

Upon the moon I fixed my eye,

All over the wide lea;

With quickening pace my horse drew nigh

Those paths so dear to me.

And now we reached the orchard-plot;

And, as we climbed the hill,

The sinking moon to Lucy’s cot

Came near, and nearer still.

In one of those sweet dreams I slept,

Kind Nature’s gentlest boon!

And all the while my eyes I kept

On the descending moon.

My horse moved on; hoof after hoof

He raised, and never stopped:

When down behind the cottage roof,

At once, the bright moon dropped.

What fond and wayward thoughts will slide

Into a Lover’s head!

‘O mercy!’ to myself I cried,

‘If Lucy should be dead!’

Surprised by joy – impatient as the Wind

I turned to share the transport – Oh! with whom

But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,

That spot which no vicissitude can find?

Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind –

But how could I forget thee? Through what power,

Even for the least division of an hour,

Have I been so beguiled as to be blind

To my most grievous loss! – That thought’s return

Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,

Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,

Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more;

That neither present time, nor years unborn

Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.

Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray:

And, when I crossed the wild,

I chanced to see at break of day

The solitary child.

No mate, no comrade Lucy knew;

She dwelt on a wide moor,

– The sweetest thing that ever grew

Beside a human door!

You yet may spy the fawn at play,

The hare upon the green;

But the sweet face of Lucy Gray

Will never more be seen.

‘Tonight will be a stormy night –

You to the town must go;

And take a lantern, Child, to light

Your mother through the snow.’

’That, Father! will I gladly do:

‘Tis scarcely afternoon –

The minster-clock has just struck two,

And yonder is the moon!’

At this the Father raised his hook,

And snapped a faggot-band;

He plied his work; – and Lucy took

The lantern in her hand.

Not blither is the mountain roe:

With many a wanton stroke

Her feet disperse the powdery snow,

That rises up like smoke.

The storm came on before its time:

She wandered up and down;

And many a hill did Lucy climb:

But never reached the town.

The wretched parents all that night

Went shouting far and wide;

But there was neither sound nor sight

To serve them for a guide.

At day-break on a hill they stood

That overlooked the moor;

And thence they saw the bridge of wood,

A furlong from their door.

They wept – and, turning homeward, cried,

‘In heaven we all shall meet;’

– When in the snow the mother spied

The print of Lucy’s feet.

Then downwards from the steep hill’s edge

They tracked the footmarks small;

And through the broken hawthorn hedge,

And by the long stone-wall;

And then an open field they crossed:

The marks were still the same;

They tracked them on, nor ever lost;

And to the bridge they came.

They followed from the snowy bank

Those footmarks, one by one,

Into the middle of the plank;

And further there were none!

– Yet some maintain that to this day

She is a living child;

That you may see sweet Lucy Gray

Upon the lonesome wild.

O’er rough and smooth she trips along,

And never looks behind;

And sings a solitary song

That whistles in the wind.

Three years she grew in sun and shower,

Then Nature said, ’A lovelier flower

On earth was never sown;

This Child I to myself will take;

She shall be mine, and I will make

A Lady of my own.

‘Myself will to my darling be

Both law and impulse: and with me

The Girl, in rock and plain,

In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,

Shall feel an overseeing power

To kindle or restrain.

’She shall be sportive as the fawn

That wild with glee across the lawn

Or up the mountain springs;

And hers shall be the breathing balm,

And hers the silence and the calm

Of mute insensate things.

‘The floating clouds their state shall lend

To her; for her the willow bend;

Nor shall she fail to see

Even in the motions of the Storm

Grace that shall mould the Maiden’s form

By silent sympathy.

’The stars of midnight shall be dear

To her; and she shall lean her ear

In many a secret place

Where rivulets dance their wayward round,

And beauty born of murmuring sound

Shall pass into her face.

‘And vital feelings of delight

Shall rear her form to stately height,

Her virgin bosom swell;

Such thoughts to Lucy I will give

While she and I together live

Here in this happy dell.’

Thus Nature spake – The work was done –

How soon my Lucy’s race was run!

She died, and left to me

This heath, this calm, and quiet scene;

The memory of what has been,

And never more will be.

I travelled among unknown men,

    In lands beyond the sea;

Nor, England! did I know till then

    What love I bore to thee.

’Tis past, that melancholy dream!

    Nor will I quit thy shore

A second time; for still I seem

    To love thee more and more.

Among thy mountains did I feel

    The joy of my desire;

And she I cherished turned her wheel

    Beside an English fire.

Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed,

    The bowers where Lucy played;

And thine too is the last green field

That Lucy’s eyes surveyed.

There was a Boy, ye knew him well, ye Cliffs

And Islands of Winander! many a time,

At evening, when the stars had just begun

To move along the edges of the hills,

Rising or setting, would he stand alone,

Beneath the trees, or by the glimmering lake,

And there, with fingers interwoven, both hands

Pressed closely palm to palm and to his mouth

Uplifted, he, as through an instrument,

Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls

That they might answer him. And they would shout

Across the wat’ry vale and shout again

Responsive to his call, with quivering peals,

And long halloos, and screams, and echoes loud

Redoubled and redoubled, a wild scene

Of mirth and jocund din. And, when it chanced

That pauses of deep silence mocked his skill,

Then, sometimes, in that silence, while he hung

Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise

Has carried far into his heart the voice

Of mountain torrents, or the visible scene

Would enter unawares into his mind

With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,

Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received

Into the bosom of the steady lake.

    Fair are the woods, and beauteous is the spot,

The vale where he was born: the Church-yard hangs

Upon a slope above the village school,

And there along that bank when I have passed

At evening, I believe, that near his grave

A full half-hour together I have stood,

Mute – for he died when he was ten years old.

We walked along, while bright and red

Uprose the morning sun,

And Matthew stopped, he looked, and said,

‘The will of God be done!’

A village Schoolmaster was he,

With hair of glittering grey;

As blithe a man as you could see

On a spring holiday.

And on that morning, through the grass,

And by the steaming rills,

We travelled merrily to pass

A day among the hills.

‘Our work,’ said I, ‘was well begun;

Then, from thy breast what thought,

Beneath so beautiful a sun,

So sad a sigh has brought?’

A second time did Matthew stop,

And fixing still his eye

Upon the eastern mountain-top

To me he made reply.

’Yon cloud with that long purple cleft

Brings fresh into my mind

A day like this which I have left

Full thirty years behind.

’And on that slope of springing corn

The self-same crimson hue

Fell from the sky that April morn,

The same which now I view!

’With rod and line my silent sport

I plied by Derwent’s wave,

And, coming to the church, stopped short

Beside my Daughter’s grave.

’Nine summers had she scarcely seen

The pride of all the vale;

And then she sang! – she would have been

A very nightingale.