Iv

My Soul was grateful for delight That wore a threatening brow; A veil is lifted--can she slight The scene that opens now? Though habitation none appear,[CY] The greenness tells, man must be there; The shelter--that the pérspective Is of the clime in which we live; Where Toil pursues his daily round; Where Pity sheds sweet tears--and Love, In woodbine bower or birchen grove, Inflicts his tender wound. --Who comes not hither ne'er shall know How beautiful the world below; Nor can he guess how lightly leaps The brook adown the rocky steeps,[CZ] Farewell, thou desolate Domain! Hope, pointing to the cultured plain, Carols like a shepherd-boy; And who is she?--Can that be Joy![DA] Who, with a sunbeam for her guide, Smoothly skims the meadows wide; While Faith, from yonder opening cloud, To hill and vale proclaims aloud, "Whate'er the weak may dread, the wicked dare, Thy lot, O Man, is good, thy portion fair!"

A copy of this poem, sent in MS. to the Beaumonts at Coleorton, contains the following preface--"Composed chiefly in a walk from the top of Kirkstone to Patterdale, by W. Wordsworth, 1817"; and on the back of this MS. (in which those variations from the earliest published version occur, which are printed as "MS." readings in the previous footnotes, and which ends with stanza iii.), the date is given, "Mr. Wordsworth's verses, June 27, 1817."--ED.

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