Where are your books?—that light bequeathed Up! up! and drink the spirit breathed You look round on your Mother Earth, One morning thus, by Esthwaite lake, "The eye-it cannot choose but see; Nor less I deem that there are Powers Which of themselves our minds impress; That we can feed this mind of ours In a wise passiveness. Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum Then ask not wherefore, here, alone, Conversing as I may, I sit upon this old grey stone, And dream my time away." 1798 LXXIV THE TABLES TURNED: AN EVENING SCENE ON THE SAME SUBJECT AS THE PRECEDING POEM UP! up my Friend, and quit your books; Or surely you'll grow double: Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks; The sun, above the mountain's head, Through all the long green fields has spread, His first sweet evening yellow. Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife: Come, hear the woodland linnet, How sweet his music! on my life, There's more of wisdom in it. And hark! how blithe the throstle sings! He, too, is no mean preacher : Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher. She has a world of ready wealth, Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health, One impulse from a vernal wood Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can. Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; Our meddling intellect Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things: We murder to dissect. Enough of Science and of Art ; Close up those barren leaves; Come forth, and bring with you a heart That watches and receives. LXXV PERSONAL TALK I I AM not One who much or oft delight 1798 And, for my chance-acquaintance, ladies bright, Sons, mothers, maidens withering on the stalk, These all wear out of me, like Forms, with chalk Painted on rich men's floors, for one feast-night. Better than such discourse doth silence long, In the loved presence of my cottage-fire, II "Yet life," you say, "is life; we have seen and see, And with a living pleasure we describe; And fits of sprightly malice do but bribe The languid mind into activity. Sound sense, and love itself, and mirth and glee Our daily world's true Worldlings, rank not me! Children are blest, and powerful; their world lies Whose mind is but the mind of his own eyes, III Wings have we, and as far as we can go, Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know, Are a substantial world, both pure and good : Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, Our pastime and our happiness will grow. There find I personal themes, a plenteous store, To which I listen with a ready ear; Two shall be named, pre-eminently dear,— IV Nor can I not believe but that hereby |