Wordsworth

Written on a Blank Leaf of His Memoirs

DEAR friends, who read the world aright,

And in its common forms discern

A beauty and a harmony

The many never learn!

Kindred in soul of him who found

In simple flower and leaf and stone

The impulse of the sweetest lays

Our Saxon tongue has known,—

Accept this record of a life

As sweet and pure, as calm and good,

As a long day of blandest June

In green field and in wood.

How welcome to our ears, long pained

By strife of sect and party noise,

The brook-like murmur of his song

Of nature’s simple joys!

The violet by its mossy stone,

The primrose by the river’s brim,

And chance-sown daffodil, have found

Immortal life through him.

The sunrise on his breezy lake,

The rosy tints his sunset brought,

World-seen, are gladdening all the vales

And mountain-peaks of thought.

Art builds on sand; the works of pride

And human passion change and fall;

But that which shares the life of God

With Him surviveth all.

1851.