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Fountain, The: A Conversation
(William Wordsworth)

We talked with open heart, and tongue
Affectionate and true,
A pair of friends, though I was young,
And Matthew seventy-two.

We lay beneath a spreading oak,
Beside a mossy seat;
And from the turf a fountain broke,
And gurgled at our feet.

"Now, Matthew!" said I, "let us match
This water's pleasant tune
With some old border-song, or catch
That suits a summer's noon;

"Or of the church-clock and the chimes
Sing here beneath the shade,
That half-mad thing of witty rhymes
Which you last April made!"

In silence Matthew lay, and eyed
The spring beneath the tree;
And thus the dear old Man replied,
The grey-haired man of glee:

"No check, no stay, this Streamlet fears;
How merrily it goes!
'Twill murmur on a thousand years,
And flow as now it flows.

"And here, on this delightful day,
I cannot choose but think
How oft, a vigorous man, I lay
Beside this fountain's brink.

"My eyes are dim with childish tears,
My heart is idly stirred,
For the same sound is in my ears
Which in those days I heard.

"Thus fares it still in our decay:
And yet the wiser mind
Mourns less for what age takes away
Than what it leaves behind.

"The blackbird amid leafy trees,
The lark above the hill,
Let loose their carols when they please
Are quiet when they will.

"With Nature never do 'they' wage
A foolish strife; they see
A happy youth, and their old age
Is beautiful and free:

"But we are pressed by heavy laws;
And often, glad no more,
We wear a face of joy, because
We have been glad of yore.

"If there be one who need bemoan
His kindred laid in earth,
The household hearts that were his own;
It is the man of mirth.

"My days, my Friend, are almost gone,
My life has been approved,
And many love me; but by none
Am I enough beloved."

"Now both himself and me he wrongs,
The man who thus complains;
I live and sing my idle songs
Upon these happy plains;

"And, Matthew, for thy children dead
I'll be a son to thee!"
At this he grasped my hand, and said,
"Alas! that cannot be."

We rose up from the fountain-side;
And down the smooth descent
Of the green sheep-track did we glide;
And through the wood we went;

And, ere we came to Leonard's rock,
He sang those witty rhymes
About the crazy old church-clock,
And the bewildered chimes.


Poems/ Poetry / Quotations by William Wordsworth
 A Whirl-blast From Behind The Hill | A Wren's Nest | Andrew Jones | Anecdote For Fathers | Animal Tranquillity And Decay | Brothers, The | Calm Is All Nature As A Resting Wheel. | Complaint Of A Forsaken Indian Woman, The | Danish Boy, The: A Fragment | Elegiac Stanzas | England, 1802 ii | England, 1802 iii | England, 1802 iv | "She Was a Phantom of Delight" | "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" | "Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower," | A Complaint | A Poet's Epitaph | Dion | Foresight | Forsaken, The | Fountain, The: A Conversation | Green Linnet, The | Guilt and Sorrow | Hart-Leap Well | I Travelled Among Unknown Men | Idle Shepherd Boys, The | Inside of King's College Chapel, Cambridge | It Is a Beauteous Evening | It was an April morning: fresh and clear | Last of The Flock, The | Lines Left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree | Lucy ii | Lucy iv | Lucy v | Michael: A Pastoral Poem | Mother's Return, The | November, 1806 | O Nightingale! Thou Surely Art | Old Cumberland Beggar, The | Rainbow, The | Sailor's Mother, The | She Was a Phantom of Delight | Simplon Pass, The | Speak! | Stepping Westward | Longest Day, The | Thorn, The | Three Years She Grew | There was a Boy | World Is Too Much With Us, The | Virgin, The | Trosachs, The | To A Butterfly (first poem) | To A Sexton | To a Skylark | To Joanna | To My Sister | To The Cuckoo | To The Daisy (first poem) | To The Daisy (fourth poem) | To The Same Flower (second poem) | Upon Westminster Bridge | Waterfall and The Eglantine, The | Yarrow Revisited |


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Many great poems where created by English Poets in Cumbrias Lake District Areas and Villages such as Grasmere, Buttermere, Bowness, Kendal, Windermere, Keswick and Coniston.
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