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A MAN'S A MAN FOR A' THAT

Is there,s for honest poverty,

That hings his head, an' a' that?
The coward slave, we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that, an' a' that,

Our toils obscure, an' a' that;
The rank is but the guinea's stamp;
The man's the gowd for a' that.

What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hodden-grey,10 an' a 'that;

Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
A man's a man for a' that.

For a' that, an' a' that,

Their tinsel show, an' a' that;

The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor,
Is king o' men for a' that.

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Ye see yon birkie,1 ca'd a lord,

Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that;
Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof2 for a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,

His riband, star, an' a' that,
The man o' independent mind,
He looks and laughs at a' that.

A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an' a' that;
But an honest man's aboon his might,
Guid faith, he mauna fa's that!
For a' that, an' a' that,

Their dignities, an' a' that,
The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth,
Are higher rank than a' that.

Then let us pray that come it may,
As come it will for a' that,
That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth,
May bear the gree, an' a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,

It's coming yet for a' that,
That man to man, the warld o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that.

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Sae black and bare, sae black and bare, The desert were a paradise,

If thou wert there, if thou wert there.

Or were I monarch o' the globe,

Wi' thee to reign, wi' thee to reign, The brightest jewel in my crown

Wad be my queen, wad be my queen.

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THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

(1770-1850)

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She had a rustic, woodland air,
And she was wildly clad:

Her eyes were fair, and very fair;
-Her beauty made me glad.

"Sisters and brothers, little Maid,
How many may you be?''

"How many? Seven in all," she said
And wondering looked at me.

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'And where are they? I pray you tell."
She answered, "Seven are we;
And two of us at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea.

"Two of us in the church-yard lie,
My sister and my brother;
And in the church-yard cottage, I
Dwell near them with my mother."

"You say that two at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea.
Yet ye are seven!-I pray you tell,
Sweet Maid, how this may be."'

Then did the little Maid reply,
"Seven boys and girls are we;
Two of us in the church-yard lie,
Beneath the church-yard tree."

"You run about, my little Maid,
Your limbs they are alive;

If two are in the church-yard laid,
Then ye are only five."

"Their graves are green, they may be seen,"’
The little Maid replied,

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Wordsworth thought it worth while to print
this "extract from the conclusion of a poem"
which was written, at the age of sixteen.
just before he left his school at Hawkshead.
It both reveals his strong local attachment
and anticipates his reliance upon what be-"My stockings there I often knit,
came for him a chief source of poetic in- My kerchief there I hem;
spiration, namely, "emotion recollected
tranquillity."

"Twelve steps or more from my mother's door,
And they are side by side.

in

And there upon the ground I sit,

And sing a song to them.

This, and the two poems that follow it, were
among those contributed by Wordsworth to
the joint volume of Lyrical Ballads which
he and Coleridge published in 1798 (see p. And often after sunset, Sir,
428; also Eng. Lit., pp. 232-235). This poem When it is light and fair,

was written to show "the obscurity and

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perplexity which in childhood attend our I take my little porringer,
notion of death, or rather our utter in-
ability to admit that notion."

And eat my supper there.

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48

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LINES COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE
TINTERN ABBEY, ON REVISITING
THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING
A TOUR. JULY 13, 1798.†

Five years have past; five summers, with the
length

Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-
springs

With a soft inland murmur.‡-Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress

64 Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-
tufts,

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This is one of the earliest and most definite expressions of Wordsworth's faith in the essential oneness of man and nature, and of his sorrow over man's apostasy from that faith.

10

Which at this season, with their unripe fruits, Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves 'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,

Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!
With some uncertain notice, as might seem
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire
The Hermit sits alone.

These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, 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,

20

Note by Wordsworth: "I have not ventured to call this poem an Ode; but it was written with a hope that in the transitions, and the impassioned music of the versification. would be found the principal requisites of that species of composition." Professor Dowden remarks upon the four stages of the poet's growth to be found described in the poem: First. animal enjoyment of nature in boyhood; second, passion for beauty and sublimity; third, perception of nature's tranquillizing and elevating influence on the spirit; and fourth, deep communion with a spiritual presence: stages which he further describes as the periods of the blood, of the senses, of the imagination,

and of the soul.

For the effect of the tides on the Wye nearer its mouth, see Tennyson's In Memoriam, XIX.

With tranquil restoration:-feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,

Is lightened:-that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,—
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.

30 Unborrowed from the eye.-That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,

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If this
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft-
In darkness and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart-
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods,
How often has my spirit turned to thee!
And now, with gleams of half-extinguished
thought,

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Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with 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, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I

still

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56 A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,-both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognize
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
| Of all my moral being.

Nor perchance,

If I were not thus taught, should I the more 60 Suffer my genial spirits to decay:

With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope,
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was
when first

I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led: more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads, than

one

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111

120

For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform1
The mind that is within us, so impress

Who sought the thing he loved. For nature With quietness and beauty, and so feed

then

(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by)
To me was all in all.-I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood.
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, nor any interest

80

With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all 130
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain-winds be free
To blow against thee: and, in after years,
1 give form to, animate

418

When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place

140

For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing
thoughts

Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance—–
If I should be where I no more can hear

Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these
gleams

Of past existence-wilt thou then forget

That on the banks of this delightful stream 150
We stood together; and that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love-oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy
sake!

STRANGE FITS OF PASSION HAVE
I KNOWN*

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

Fresh as a rose in June,

I to her cottage bent my way

Beneath an evening-moon.

Upon the moon I fixed my eye,
All over the wide lea;

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

Came near, and nearer still.

In one of those sweet dreams I slept,

Kind Nature's gentlest boon!

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I TRAVELLED AMONG UNKNOWN MEN
I travelled among unknown men,
In lands beyond the sea;

Nor, England! did I know till then
What love I bore to thee.

'Tis past, that melancholy dream!
Nor will I quit thy shore

A second time; for still I seem
To love thee more and more.

Among thy mountains did I feel

The joy of my desire;

And she I cherished turned her wheel
Beside an English fire.

Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed
The bowers where Lucy played;
And thine too is the last green field
That Lucy's eyes surveyed.

SHOWER

Three years she grew in sun and shower,
Then Nature said, "A lovelier flower

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This little group of five poems upon an unknown THREE YEARS SHE GREW IN SUN AND and perhaps imaginary Lucy were written in Germany in the year 1799. Without titles or notes, or any ornament beyond two or three of the simplest figures, they convey absolutely their contained emotion, illustrating that poetry which, in moments of deepest The feeling, is the natural language of man. fifth poem appears to sum up the preceding four; in its two brief stanzas it presents the two opposing and inscrutable mysteries of life and death, and leaves them to the imagination, without further comment.

On earth was never sown;

This Child I to myself will take;

1 The name of several streams in England; one has been made famous by Izaak Walton, the angler.

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