Poem by William Wordsworth

Wood Street

         The Reverie of Poor Susan

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.

’T is a note of enchantment; what ails her? She sees
A mountain ascending, a vision of trees;
Bright volumes of vapor 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 colors have all passed away from her eyes!

1. The River Eden, Cumberland
2. Hart-Leap Well
3. Hart’s-Horn Tree, near Penrith
4. The Kirk of Ulpha
5. Inside of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge: Continued

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