67. From ‘Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey’ by William Wordsworth. Nicholson & Lee, eds. 1917. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse

Verse > Anthologies > The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse > 67. From ‘Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey’

Nicholson & Lee, eds. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. 1917.

67. From ‘Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey’

By William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

FOR I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power	5
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,	10
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still	15
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognize	20
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.