Lines written when I felt like being blabby

Five years have passed and a hundred summers, with the length
Of a hundred long winters! And again I hear
The mutters of classmates whisperings
Over the professor’s helpless murmur—Once again
Do I hold this same collection, with binding stiff,
Which on these wild confused teens does impress
Thoughts of more deep confusion, as they dissect
The form and the meaning of “sublime”
The day is come when I must compose
(As I am nearly too sick of it) a few
Lines to homage him and other stuff
While, for some reason, Wordsworth never knew
The Lyrical Ballads were themselves
To be studied for ev’ry word
With careful attention never escaping Tintern Abbey
Whose every row—more than every row, every line’s
Every subtle word is hiled, which with open arms
Which we are forced to embrace and love and stroke
Once pent up in silence, I now try to make my peace
As some unworthy poetess that has see
Too many vagrant dwellers in too many houseless woods,
Who will rant and rave with raging ire,
And sit and write alone.

Don’t get me wrong,
These forms of beauty have been to me
A necessary escape from mindless rhyme,
But too oft in classrooms, mid the din
Of unscholarly kiddies, I have read this hymn
In hours of weariness, when I’m worn out and beat
And still given my own blood to say my part
And read with a critical mind,
Not just in celebration: - students who
Praise each line and measure miss Wordsworth’s lapse
Of confidence in his confluence
Of the best and worst portions of his life
They see the references to historical fact
Rather than his love and deepest trust
That his sister Dorothy would carry his gift
From this, her prime, and heat the food
To carry her brother through history,
Not knowing his poem would have so much weight
And would make the literary world
Enlighten’d: - oh, but it held the life and food
Within itself that would gently carry it on
And nothing after would carry on the same
He need not even the help of his blood,
When he could no more hear and was laid asleep,
To embody the poem and become her own a living soul:
Though his souls has been made quiet by the power
Of death, we can tell what he was like as a boy
And can appreciate what maturity brings.

If this
Be but a vain belief, well, so? How oft
My frankness has taken shape
And made the light-hearted and fretful stir
However unprofitable this is to the world
I have strung upon my sleeve, my heart,
Not soft, but spirited, not full of glee
O William, why? I know not how you could
Doubt yourself when I so often turn to thee.

But nevermind my undistinguished thoughts,
Let’s mind the recognitions, dim and great
And a few of mild perplexity,
That spoke on his poems back then:
Some made a stand, like Southey, with the sense
Of little pleasure and with teasing thoughts
And comments that were rude
And surely hard to hear. But I dare to hope
Though cringed, no doubt, and maybe somewhat hurt,
He took few pains or ills, but was pleased to know
That Southey represents but one side,
While the other quivers and nightly dreams
To be fed the voice of the common man
Implying something higher bred: the one—
Connecting man to nature to love. For more valid than
Southey’s pleasure in ruining your day
Are Ballad sales that rose very high
-That says all in all. –I cannot paint
What Tintern has become. But looking back,
I can recreate my own passion: not your tall rock,
Nor your mountains, nor your deep and gloomy wood,
But I can recreate what colors and forms were to me
The appetite of my youth, my own grove
That once needed no remoter charm
But with your thought supplied, I’ve gained an interest
Within the mind’s eye that creates a greater past.
The aching joys are no longer sore,
Rather the mind captures all the bliss
Of the sweet inland murmur and lifts
All burden of loss and is now relieved.
As your audience, I have learned
That being mature has a certain power
That thoughtless youth fears oftentimes
With unreasonable vanity.
So forget archaic rating, for in this hour
Your message is renewed, and all have felt
Some present gained, that when a boy
We had not yet bought; but in some time
Through us, your theories interfused
So that we learned how to dwell on the light of setting suns
Even on rainy days and in the foggy air
The blue sky is within the mind of man
-It’s a notion, or so your poem tells
Us thinking things, that infiltrates our thoughts
And makes us good beings. Therefore, it is my will
Not to linger on the coulds and woulds,
But remember all we behold
From this green earth and this gray world,
And to some wanton ear, help recreate
And re-perceive, with their more mature eyes,
Nature, or rather, youth in any sense,
To anchor newer thoughts and nursed
By the guide, the Worthiest of my heart and soul
We pass on the gift of seeing.

Or perchance
I am too thorough with my thoughts and I bore
This spirit to whom I pray
He is with me, here, as I’ve been on his banks
And considered him my dearest friend.
Whether or not his Friend in her voice did catch
The language of his former heart, I read
In my leisure with much delight
His tale of the Wye. Oh! If one reviled
In an old review his ballads once,
If his dear, dear sister did not his prayer take
In the end, the people will not betray
This Nature-lover. ‘Tis not his privilege
But has become his right to feed
With life each boy and from him form
The man that is within him and impress
With his forms of beauty every creed
However taught, of each and ev’ry tongue
With his judgments and smears of pen
And in their proceedings, they will recall,
As they do the course of their early life,
Wordsworth’s words against lust and verve
And instead replace, within the mind grown old,
Memorable blessings, Maybe Dorothy let the moon
Shine on her in her solitary walk
Maybe she let the musty mountain winds be free
To blow against her: but in later years.
Much after her own wild ecstasies had matured
Into a sober pleasure, when my mind
Became a mansion for this poem of blank-verse form
And my memory serves as a dwelling place
For Will’s sweet sounds and harmonies. For then
Tintern Abbey will have become the beef
Served in great proportion—the life and food of which this poet taught
And like a bubbling brook, this poetry
Will commit to memorization! Oh, perchance
If I should be where I no more can hear
Thy verse, someone new will catch, from thy lines, their gleams
Of past existence. Hence, the world will never forget
That, on the banks, one poet’s dream
Came together and for so long
Will be remembered exactly the same
Unchanged from the verse that one day
Wordsworth wrote with the same zeal
Begot from above. This chain will not let
Humanity’s music flee from the ears
Of the present, but also allow the eyes to drift
Back to green pastoral landscapes, which he
Would have found more dear for what from them we will take.

here's the explanation of the purpose of this project, and here's a picture of the hardcopy