Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known

Strange fits of passion have I known:

And I will dare to tell,

But in the lover's ear alone,

What once to me befell.

When she I loved looked every day

Fresh as a rose in June,

I to her cottage bent my way,

Beneath an evening moon.

Upon the moon I fixed my eye,

All over the wide lea;

With quickening pace my horse drew nigh

Those paths so dear to me.

And now we reached the orchard-plot;

And, as we climbed the hill,

The sinking moon to Lucy's cot

Came nearer, and nearer still.

In one of those sweet dreams I slept,

Kind Nature's gentlest boon!

And all the while my eye I kept

On the descending moon.

My horse moved on; hoof on hoof

He raised, and never stopped:

When down behind the cottage roof,

At once the bright moon dropped.

What fond and wayward thoughts will slide

Into a lover's head!

"O mercy!" to myself I cried,
"If Lucy should be dead!"

William Wordsworth

Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known