O sweeter than the Marriage-feast,

'Tis sweeter far to me

To walk together to the Kirk
With a goodly company.

To walk together to the Kirk

And all together pray,

While each to his great father bends,

Old men, and babes, and loving friends. And Youths, and Maidens gay.

Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou wedding-guest!

He prayeth well who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small:
For the dear God, who loveth us,

He made and loveth all.

The Mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,
Is gone; and now the wedding-guest
Turn'd from the bridegroom's door.

He went, like one that hath been stunn'd And is of sense forlorn :

A sadder and a wiser man

He rose the morrow morn.

LINES

Written a few miles above TINTERN ABBEY, on revisiting

the banks of the WYE during a Tour.

July 13, 1798.

Five

years have passed; five summers, with the length Of five long winters! and again I hear

These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a sweet inland murmur.*-Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
Which on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose

Here, under this dark sycamore, and view

These plots of cottage ground, these orchard-tufts,

* The river is not affected by the tides a few miles. above Tintern.

Which, at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Among the woods and copses lose themselves,
Nor, with their green and simple hue, disturb
The wild green landscape. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines.
Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms
Green to the very door; and wreathes of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees,
With some uncertain notice, as might seem,
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some hermit's cave, where by his fire
The hermit sits alone.

Though absent long,
These forms of beauty have not been to me,
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,
And passing even into my purer mind,