the reduced lyrical ballads « i love english literature

the reduced lyrical ballads

The bloody sun at noon
Upon a painted Ocean.
skin is white as leprosy
And she is far liker Death than he;
Her flesh makes the still air cold.
Alone, alone, all all alone
Was a flash of golden fire.
no tongue
Their beauty might declare
A noise like of a hidden brook
In the leafy month of June,
And the shadow of the moon.
He prayeth best who loveth best,
All things both great and small:
A sadder and a wiser man
He rose the morrow morn.

this strange man has left me
Troubled with wilder fancies
Till lost in inward vision, with wet eye
She gazes idly
And never learnt a prayer, nor told a bead,
But knew the names of birds, and mocked their notes
And all the autumn ’twas his only play
To get the seeds of wild flowers, and to plant them
So he became a very learned youth
But Oh! poor wretch!–he read, and read, and read,
‘Till his brain turned
They stood together, chained in deep discourse,
The earth heaved under them with such a groan,
That the wall tottered
Who sung a doleful song about green fields,
How sweet it were on lake or wild savannah
To hunt for food, and be a naked man,
And wander up and down at liberty
He lived and died among the savage men

No cloud, no relique of the sunken day
Distinguishes the West, no long thin slip
Of sullen Light, no obscure trembling hues
we shall find
A pleasure in the dimness of the stars
A melancholy Bird? O idle thought!
In nature there is nothing melancholy
But some night-wandering Man, whose heart was pierc’d
With the remembrance of a grievous wrong
poor Wretch! fill’d all things with himself
And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale
Of his own sorrows
many a poet echoes the conceit
had better far have stretch’d his limbs
Beside a brook in mossy forest-dell
lose the deep’ning twilights of the spring
In ball-rooms and hot theatres
we have learnt A different lore
This grove is wild with tangling underwood
the Moon Emerging, hath awaken’d earth and sky
With one sensation
My dear Babe… would …bid us listen!
with the night
He may associate Joy!

With thoughtless joy
in his hearing there my prayers I said
The red-breast known for years, which at my casement peck’d.
Then rose a mansion proud our woods among
his old hereditary nook
‘Mid the green mountains many and many a song
We two had sung, like little birds in May
The empty loom, cold hearth, and silent wheel
an evil time was come
But soon, with proud parade, the noisy drum
Beat round, to sweep the streets of want and pain
the equinoctial deep
Ran mountains-high before the howling blast
Our hopes such harvest of affliction reap
In Want’s most lonely cave till death to pine,
Unseen, unheard, unwatched by any star
a curst existence, with the brood
That lap (their very nourishment!) their brother’s blood.
The mine’s dire earthquake, and the pallid host
Driven by the bomb’s incessant thunder-stroke
To loathsome vaults
the dark streets appeared to heave and gape
From the sweet thoughts of home,
And from all hope I was forever hurled
homeless near a thousand homes I stood,
And near a thousand tables pined, and wanted food.
The rude earth’s tenants, were my first relief:
How kindly did they paint their vagrant ease!
And their long holiday that feared not grief,
For all belonged to all, and each was chief
what afflicts my peace with keenest ruth
Is, that I have my inner self abused
Three years a wanderer
She wept;–because she had no more to say
Of that perpetual weight which on her spirit lay.

GB&HG

What is’t that ails young Harry Gill?
Beneath the sun, beneath the moon,
His teeth they chatter, chatter still
Her evenings then were dull and dead;
Sad case it was, as you may think,
For very cold to go to bed
She left her fire, or left her bed,
To seek the hedge of Harry Gill
This trespass of old Goody Blake,
And fiercely by the arm he took her,
And by the arm he held her fast,
And fiercely by the arm he shook her
Now think, ye farmers all, I pray,
Of Goody Blake and Harry Gill.

AFF

A day it was when I could bear
To think, and think, and think again
And oftentimes I talked to him,
In very idleness
“My little boy, which like you more,”
I said and took him by the arm
“I cannot tell, I do not know.”
“Why this is strange,” said I.
At this, my boy, so fair and slim,
Hung down his head, nor made reply
And five times did I say to him,
Why, Edward, tell me why?”
“At Kilve there was no weather-cock,
“And that’s the reason why.”
Could I but teach the hundredth part
Of what from thee I learn.

A simple child, dear brother Jim,
That lightly draws its breath,
She had a rustic, woodland air,
And she was wildly clad
“Sweet Maid, how this may be?”
“If two are in the church-yard laid,
“Then ye are only five.”
“Their graves are green, they may be seen,”
”Twelve steps or more from my mother’s door,
“And they are side by side.
“Till God released her of her pain,
“And then she went away.
all the summer dry,
“Together round her grave we played,
“My brother John and I
“O master! we are seven.”
‘Twas throwing words away; for still
The little Maid would have her will,
And said, Nay, we are seven!”

It stands erect, and like a stone
With lichens it is overgrown.
High on a mountain’s highest ridge,
Where oft the stormy winter gale
Cuts like a scythe
Of water, never dry;
I’ve measured it from side to side:
‘Tis three feet long, and two feet wide.
Of olive-green and scarlet bright,
In spikes, in branches, and in stars,
Green, red, and pearly white
A woman in a scarlet cloak,
And to herself she cries,
“Oh misery! Oh misery!
“Oh woe is me! oh misery!”
she is known to every star,
And every wind that blows
“And wherefore does she cry?–
“Oh wherefore” wherefore?
I cannot tell; I wish I could;
For the true reason no one knows,
I’ll tell you all I know.
It dried her body like a cinder,
And almost turn’d her brain to tinder
There’s no one knows, as I have said,
But some remember well
Instead of jutting crag, I found
A woman seated on the ground
“Oh misery! oh misery!
“But what’s the thorn? and what’s the pond?
“And what’s the hill of moss to her?
But then the beauteous hill of moss
Before their eyes began to stir;
And for full fifty yards around,
The grass it shook upon the ground
the thorn is bound
With heavy tufts of moss, that strive
To drag it to the ground.

And this place our forefathers made for man!
nature!
Healest thy wandering and distempered child:
Thou pourest on him thy soft influences,
Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets,
Thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters,
His angry spirit healed and harmonized
By the benignant touch of love and beauty.

That outcast of pity behold
His black matted head on his shoulder is bent,
And deep is the sigh of his breath,
Tis sorrow enough on that visage to gaze,
That body dismiss’d from his care;
Yet my fancy has pierced to his heart, and pourtrays
More terrible images there.
When from the dark synod, or blood-reeking field,
To his chamber the monarch is led,
All soothers of sense their soft virtue shall yield,
And quietness pillow his head
“Poor victim! no idle intruder has stood
“With o’erweening complacence our state to compare
come as a brother thy sorrows to share
“Would plant thee where yet thou might’st blossom again.”

He shouts from nobody knows where;
He lengthens out his lonely shout,
For Johnny has his holly-bough
her story…
Of Johnny’s wit and Johnny’s glory
“As sure as there’s a moon in heaven,”
Cries Betty, “he’ll be back again;
In bush and brake, in black and green,
‘Twas Johnny, Johnny, every where.
To hunt the moon that’s in the brook
The town so long, the town so wide,
Is silent as the skies.
“The devil take his wisdom!”
The streams with softest sound are flowing,
The grass you almost hear it growing,
To lay his hands upon a star
Oh gentle muses! Is this kind?
Why will ye thus my suit repel?
Of moon or stars he takes no heed;
Of such we in romances read,
She’s happy here, she’s happy there,
She is uneasy every where:
“And the sun did shine so cold.”

E&R

“Why William, sit you thus alone,
“And dream your time away?
“Where are your books? that light bequeath’d
“To beings else forlorn and blind!
“You look round on your mother earth,
“As if she for no purpose bore you;
we can feed this mind of ours,
“In a wise passiveness.
“But we must still be seeking?
“I sit upon this old grey stone,
“And dream my time away.”

TTT

Up! up! my friend, and quit your books,
Or surely you’ll grow double.
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.
Let Nature be your teacher.
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by chearfulness.
One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man;
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.
Our meddling intellect
Mishapes the beauteous forms of things;
–We murder to dissect.

These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a sweet inland murmur.
Which on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion;
The wild green landscape.
Once little lines
Of sportive wood run wild
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
With tranquil restoration
that serene and blessed mood,
become a living soul
We see into the life of things.
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee
O sylvan Wye!
in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope
The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion
a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, or any interest
Unborrowed from the eye
the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky
Of eye and ear, both what they half-create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognize
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts
neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e’er prevail against us
so long A worshipper of Nature

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