Wordsworth is in top form in this extract from one of his finest poems, composed in 1798.

Lamenting the loss of youthful joy in nature, he muses on the compensations of maturity. There is always a moral dimension to his visionary moments. The fourth line is haunting.

from LINES COMPOSED ABOVE

TINTERN ABBEY

. . . For I have learned

To look on nature, not as in the hour

Of thoughtless youth; but hearing often-times

The still, sad music of humanity,

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

A lover of the meadows and the woods,

And mountains; and of all that we behold

From this green earth. . .