One moment now may give us more 25
  Than years of toiling reason:  [2]
  Our minds shall drink at every pore
  The spirit of the season.

  Some silent laws our hearts will make, [3]
  Which they shall long obey:  30
  We for the year to come may take
  Our temper from to-day.

  And from the blessed power that rolls
  About, below, above,
  We’ll frame the measure of our souls:  35
  They shall be tuned to love.

  Then come, my Sister! come, I pray,
  With speed put on your woodland dress;
  And bring no book:  for this one day
  We’ll give to idleness. 40

* * * * *

The larch is now gone; but the place where it stood can easily be identified.—­Ed.

* * * * *

VARIANTS ON THE TEXT

[Variant 1: 

1837.

    ... an ... 1798.]

[Variant 2: 

1837.

    Than fifty years of reason; 1798.]

[Variant 3: 

1820.

    ... may. 1798.]

* * * * *

EXPOSTULATION AND REPLY

Composed 1798.—­Published 1798.

  [This poem is a favourite among the Quakers, as I have learned on many
  occasions.  It was composed in front of the house of Alfoxden, in the
  spring of 1798. [A]—­I.F.]

Included among the “Poems of Sentiment and Reflection.”—­Ed.

* * * * *

THE POEM

  “Why, William, on that old grey stone,
  Thus for the length of half a day,
  Why, William, sit you thus alone,
  And dream your time away?

  “Where are your books?—­that light bequeathed 5
  To Beings else forlorn and blind! 
  Up! up! and drink the spirit breathed
  From dead men to their kind.

  “You look round on your Mother Earth,
  As if she for no purpose bore you; 10
  As if you were her first-born birth,
  And none had lived before you!”

  One morning thus, by Esthwaite lake,
  When life was sweet, I knew not why,
  To me my good friend Matthew spake, 15
  And thus I made reply.

  “The eye—­it cannot choose but see;
  We cannot bid the ear be still;
  Our bodies feel, where’er they be,
  Against or with our will. 20

  “Nor less I deem that there are Powers
  Which of themselves our minds impress;
  That we can feed this mind of ours
  In a wise passiveness.