William Wordsworth (1770-1850). 'Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known'. William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. 1909. The Book of Georgian Verse

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Georgian Verse. 1909.

‘Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known’

By William Wordsworth (1770–1850)


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 looked every day	5
Fresh as a rose in June,
I to her cottage bent my way,
Beneath the evening-moon.

Upon the moon I fixed my eye,
All over the wide lea;	10
With quickening pace my horse drew nigh
Those paths so dear to me.

And now we reached the orchard-plot;
And, as we climbed the hill,
The sinking moon to Lucy’s cot	15
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.	20

My horse moved on; hoof after hoof
He raised, and never stopped:
When down behind the cottage roof,
At once, the bright moon dropped.

What fond and wayward thoughts will slide	25
Into a Lover’s head!—
‘O mercy!’ to myself I cried,
‘If Lucy should be dead!’