William Wordsworth.

1770-1850

529    Lucy

(i)

STRANGE fits of passion have I known:
   And I will dare to tell,
But in the lover’s ear alone,
   What once to me befell.

When she I loved look’d every day
   Fresh as a rose in June,
I to her cottage bent my way,
   Beneath an evening moon.

Upon the moon I fix’d my eye,
   All over the wide lea;
With quickening pace my horse drew nigh
   Those paths so dear to me.

And now we reach’d the orchard-plot;
   And, as we climb’d 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 stopp’d:
When down behind the cottage roof,
   At once, the bright moon dropp’d.

What fond and wayward thoughts will slide
   Into a lover’s head!
‘O mercy!’ to myself I cried,
   ‘If Lucy should be dead!’

530   (ii)

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!

531   (iii)

I TRAVELL’D 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 cherish’d turn’d her wheel
   Beside an English fire.

Thy mornings show’d, thy nights conceal’d,
   The bowers where Lucy play’d;
And thine too is the last green field
   That Lucy’s eyes survey’d.

532    (iv)

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.