“The Reverie of Poor Susan” by William Wordsworth

At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears,

Hangs a Thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years:

Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard

In the silence of morning the song of the Bird.

‘Tis a note of enchantment; what ails her? She sees

A mountain ascending, a vision of trees;

Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide,

And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside.

Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale,

Down which she so often has tripped with her pail;

And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove’s,

The one only dwelling on earth that she loves.

She looks, and her heart is in heaven: but they fade,

The mist and the river, the hill and the shade:

The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise,

And the colours have all passed away from her eyes!

William Wordsworth

Lyrical Ballads (1798)

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Rest and Be Thankful

YARROW REVISITED, AND OTHER POEMS
COMPOSED (TWO EXCEPTED) DURING A TOUR IN SCOTLAND AND ON THE ENGLISH BORDER, IN THE AUTUMN OF 1831.
XIII. REST AND BE THANKFUL!”
AT THE HEAD OF GLENCROE

          DOUBLING and doubling with laborious walk,
          Who, that has gained at length the wished-for Height,
          This brief, this simple wayside Call can slight,
          And rests not thankful? Whether cheered by talk
          With some loved friend, or by the unseen hawk
          Whistling to clouds and sky-born streams that shine,
          At the sun's outbreak, as with light divine,
          Ere they descend to nourish root and stalk
          Of valley flowers. Nor, while the limbs repose,
          Will we forget that, as the fowl can keep                   10
          Absolute stillness, poised aloft in air,
          And fishes front, unmoved, the torrent's sweep,--
          So may the Soul, through powers that Faith bestows,
          Win rest, and ease, and peace, with bliss that Angels share.

                                                    ~ William Wordsworth

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