High over all this England doth she ride; She silvers all the roofs of folded towns, Her brilliance tips the edge of every tide, Her shadows make soft caverns in the downs; Even now, beyond my tree serenely sailing, She clothes far forests with a gauzy veiling, And even as here, where now I stare and dream, Standing my own transfigured banks beside, On many a quiet wandering English stream There lies the unshifting image of her beam. 4 Yes, calm she mounts, and watching her, I know By many a river other eyes than mine Turn up to her; and, as of old, they show Their inward hearts all naked to her shine: Maids, solitaries, sick and happy lovers, To whom her dear returning orb discovers For each the gift he waits for: soft release, The unsealing of imagination's flow, Her own sweet pain, or other pain's surcease, The friendly benediction of her peace. 5 I gaze as they: as kind she is, as fair, As when long since a younger heart drank deep From that sweet solace, while, through summer air, Her lucid fingers hushed the world to sleep. O as I stand this latest moon beholding, Her forms unresting memory is moulding; Beneath my enchanted eyelids there arise Visions again of many moons that were, Fair, fleeting moons gathered from faded skies. Greeted and lost by these corporeal eyes. 6 Unnumbered are those moons of memory Stored in the backward chambers of my brain: The moons that make bright pathways on the sea, The golden harvest moon above the grain; The moon that all a sleeping village blanches, The woodland moon that roves beyond the branches, Filtering through the meshes of the green To breast of bird and mossy trunk of tree; Moons dimly guessed-at through a cloudy screen The bronze diffusion shed by moons unseen; 7 Moons that a thin prismatic halo rings, Looking a hurrying fleecy heaven through; The fairy moons of luminous evenings, Phantoms of palest pink in palest blue; Large orange moons on earth's grey verge suspended, When trees still slumber from the heat that's ended, Erect and heavy, and all waters lie Oily, and there is not a bird that sings. All these I know, I have seen them born and die, And many another moon in many a sky. 8