William Wordsworth
Three years she grew in sun and shower;    
Then Nature said, ‘A lovelier flower    
On earth was never sown:    
This child I to myself will take;      
She shall be mine, and I will make    
A lady of my own.    
 
‘Myself will to my darling be    
Both law and impulse: and with me    
The girl, in rock and plain,    
In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,    
Shall feel an overseeing power    
To kindle or restrain.    
 
‘She shall be sportive as the fawn    
That wild with glee across the lawn
Or up the mountain springs;    
And her’s shall be the breathing balm,    
And her’s the silence and the calm    
Of mute insensate things.    
 
‘The floating clouds their state shall lend
To her; for her the willow bend;    
Nor shall she fail to see    
E’en in the motions of the storm    
Grace that shall mould the maiden’s form    
By silent sympathy.
 
‘The stars of midnight shall be dear    
To her; and she shall lean her ear    
In many a secret place    
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,    
And beauty born of murmuring sound      
Shall pass into her face.    
 
‘And vital feelings of delight    
Shall rear her form to stately height,    
Her virgin bosom swell;    
Such thoughts to Lucy I will give
Where she and I together live    
Here in this happy dell.’    
 
Thus Nature spake—The work was done—  
How soon my Lucy’s race was run!    
She died, and left to me
This heath, this calm and quiet scene;    
The memory of what has been,    
And never more will be.
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