Wordsworth, Poems of Quietness

Song for the Spinning Wheel

Swiftly turns the murmuring wheel!

     Night has brought the welcome hour,

When the weary fingers feel

     Help, as if from faery power;

Dewy night o'ershades the ground;

Turn the swift wheel round and round!

Now, beneath the starry sky,

     Couch the widely scattered sheep;—

Ply the pleasant labor, ply!

     For the spindle, while they sleep,

Runs with speed more smooth and fine,

Gathering up a trustier line.

Short-lived likings may be bred

     By a glance from fickle eyes;

But true love is like the thread

     Which the kindly wool supplies,

When the flocks are all at rest

Sleeping on the mountain's breast.

     (1812)

This lawn, a carpet all alive

With shadows flung from leaves—to strive

     In dance, amid a press

Of sunshine, an apt emblem yields

Of Worldlings revelling in the fields

     Of strenuous idleness;

Less quick the stir when tide and breeze

Encounter, and to narrow seas

     Forbid a moment's rest;

The medley less when boreal Lights

Glance to and fro, like aery Sprites

     To feats of arms addrest!

Yet, spite of all this eager strife,

This ceaseless play, the genuine life

     That serves the stedfast hours,

Is in the grass beneath, that grows

Unheeded, and the mute repose

     Of sweetly-breathing flowers.

     (1829)

Calm is the fragrant air, and loth to lose

Day's grateful warmth, tho' moist with falling dews.

Look for the stars, you'll say that there are none;

Look up a second time, and, one by one,

You mark them twinkling out with silvery light,

And wonder how they could elude the sight!

The birds, of late so noisy in their bowers,

Warbled a while with faint and fainter powers,

But now are silent as the dim-seen flowers:

Nor does the village Church-clock's iron tone

The time's and season's influence disown;

Nine beats distinctly to each other bound

In drowsy sequence—how unlike the sound

That, in rough winter, oft inflicts a fear

On fireside listeners, doubting what they hear!

The shepherd, bent on rising with the sun,

Had closed his door before the day was done,

And now with thankful heart to bed doth creep,

And joins his little children in their sleep.

The bat, lured forth where trees the lane o'ershade,

Flits and reflits along the close arcade;

The busy dor-hawk chases the white moth

With burring note, which Industry and Sloth

Might both be pleased with, for it suits them both.

A stream is heard—I see it not, but know

By its soft music whence the waters flow:
Wheels and the tread of hoofs are heard no more;

One boat there was, but it will touch the shore

With the next dipping of its slackened oar;

Faint sound, that, for the gayest of the gay,

Might give to serious thought a moment's sway,

As a last token of man's toilsome day!

     (1832)

(By The Seaside)

The sun is couched, the sea-fowl gone to rest

And the wild storm hath somewhere found a nest;

Air slumbers—wave with wave no longer strives,

Only a heaving of the deep survives,

A tell-tale motion! soon it will be laid,

And by the tide alone the water swayed.

Stealthy withdrawings, interminglings mild

Of light with shade in beauty reconciled—

Such is the prospect far as sight can range,

The soothing recompense, the welcome change.

Where now the ships that drove before the blast,

Threatened by angry breakers as they passed;

And by a train of flying angry clouds bemocked;

Or, in the hollow surge, at anchor rocked

As on a bed of Death? Some lodge in peace,

Saved by His care who bade the tempest cease;

And some, too heedless of past danger, court

Fresh gales to waft them to the far-off port;

But near, or hanging sea and sky between,

Not one of all those winged powers is seen,
Seen in her course, nor 'mid this quiet heard;

Yet oh! How gladly would the air be stirred

By some acknowledgment of thanks and praise,

Soft in its temper as those vesper lays

Sung to the virgin while recordant oars

Urge the slow bark along the Calabrian shores;

A sea-born service through the mountains felt,

Till into one loved vision all things melt:
Or like those hymns that soothe with graver sound

The gulfy coasts of Norway iron-bound;

And, from the wide and open Baltic, rise

With punctual care, Lutherian harmonies.

Hush, not a voice is here! But why repine,

Now when the star of eve comes forth to shine

On British waters with that look benign?
Ye mariners, that plough your onward way,

Or in the haven rest, or sheltering bay,

May silent thanks at least to God be given

With a full heart; “our thoughts are heard in heaven!”

     (1833)

Upon Seeing A Coloured Drawing of the Bird of Paradise in an Album

Who rashly strove thy Image to portray?
Thou buoyant minion of the tropic air;

How could he think of the live creature—gay

With a divinity of colours, drest

In all her brightness, from the dancing crest

Far as the last gleam of the filmy train

Extended and extending to sustain

The motions that it graces—and forbear

To drop his pencil! Flowers of every clime

Depicted on these pages smile at time

And gorgeous insects copied with nice care

Are here, and likenesses of many a shell

Tossed ashore by restless waves,

Or in the diver's grasp fetched up from caves

Where sea-nymphs might be proud to dwell:
But whose rash hand (again I ask) could dare,

'Mid casual tokens and promiscuous shows,

To circumscribe this Shape in fixed repose;

Could imitate for indolent survey,

Perhaps for touch profane,

Plumes that might catch, but cannot keep, a stain;

And, with cloud-streaks lightest and loftiest, share

The sun's first greeting, his last farewell ray!

     (1835-6)

The unremitting voice of nightly streams

That wastes so oft, we think, its tuneful powers,

If neither soothing to the worm that gleams

Through dewy grass, nor small birds hushed in bowers,

Nor unto silent leaves and drowsy flowers,—

That voice of unpretending harmony

(For who what is shall measure by what seems

To be, or not to be,

Or tax high Heaven with prodigality?)
Wants not a healing influence that can creep

Into the human breast, and mix with sleep

To regulate the motion of our dreams

For kindly issues—as through every clime

Was felt near murmuring brooks in earliest time;

As, at this day, the rudest swains who dwell

Where torrents roar, or hear the tinkling knell

Of water-breaks, with grateful heart could tell.

     (1846)

On the Banks of a Rocky Stream

Behold an emblem of our human mind

Crowded with thoughts that need a settled home,

Yet, like to eddying balls of foam

Within this whirlpool, they each other chase

Round and round, and neither find

An outlet nor a resting place!

Stranger, if such disquietude be thine,

Fall on thy knees and sue for help divine.

     (1818)

Switzerland: Unterwalden

Now couch thyself where, heard with fear afar,

Thunders through the echoing pines the headlong Aar;

Or rather stay to taste the mild delights

Of pensive Underwalden's pastoral heights.

Here, where no trace of man the spot profanes,

Naught but the châlets, flat and bare, on high

Suspended mid the quiet of the sky;

Or distant herds that pasturing upward creep,

And, not untended, climb the dangerous steep.

How still! No irreligious sound or sight

Rouses the soul from her severe delight.

An idle voice the sabbath region fills

Of deep that calls to deep across the hills,

And with that voice accords the soothing sound

Of drowsy bells, forever tinkling round;

Faint wail of eagle melting into blue

Beneath the cliffs, and pine-wood's steady sough;

The solitary heifer's deepened low;

Or rumbling, heard remote, of falling snow.

All motions, sounds, and voices, far and nigh,

Blend in a music of tranquillity;

Save when, a stranger seen below, the boy

Shouts from the echoing hills with savage joy.

     (from Descriptive Sketches, 1793)

In those same careless rambles of my youth,

Once coming to a bridge that overlooked

A mountain torrent where it was becalmed

By a flat meadow, at a glance I saw

A twofold image; on the grassy bank

A snow-white ram and in the peaceful flood

Another and the same. Most beautiful

Beneath him was his shadowy counterpart;

Each had his glowing mountains, each his sky,

And each seemed centre of his own fair world.

A stray temptation seized me to dissolve

The vision, but I could not, and the stone

Snatched up for that intent dropped from my hand.

     (draft material for The Prelude, 1804)

The sun was set, or setting, when I left

Our cottage door, and evening soon brought on

A sober hour, not winning or serene,

For cold and raw the air was, and untuned;

But as a face we love is sweetest then

When sorrow damps it, or, whatever look

It chance to wear, is sweetest if the heart

Have fulness in itself, even so with me

It fared that evening. Gently did my soul

Put off her veil, and, self-transmuted, stood

Naked as in the presence of her God.

As on I walked, a comfort seemed to touch

A heart that had not been disconsolate,

Strength came where weakness was not known to be,

At least not felt; and restoration came

Like an intruder knocking at the door

Of unacknowledged weariness.
     (from Summer Vacation, The Prelude, 1805)