Strange Fits of Passion
by William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

Strange fits of passion have I known:
    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!
And all the while my eye I kept
   On the descending moon.

My horse moved on; hoof after hoof
   He raised, and never stopped:
When down behind the cottage roof,
   At once, the bright moon dropped.

What fond and wayward thoughts will slide
   Into a Lover’s head!
“O mercy!” to myself I cried,
   “If Lucy should be dead!”

Views: 45