Read Aloud the Text Content

This audio was created by Woord's Text to Speech service by content creators from all around the world.

Text Content or SSML code:

LINES 15-22 Once again I see These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms, Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke Sent up, in silence, from among the trees! With some uncertain notice, as might seem Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire The Hermit sits alone. After the repetition of “Once again” at the end of line 14, the speaker further describes the indications of human presence that he can see in the valley below him. The “hedge-rows” that he sees are “hardly hedge-rows,” and instead are simply “little lines / Of sportive green run wild.” This suggests that the hedges people have grown almost merge with the natural, wild landscape, to the point that they don't even really count as human-made hedges! The cutesy, gentle consonance and alliteration of /l/ sounds in "little lines" suggests that they are diminutive and charming. The “pastoral farms,” meanwhile, are “green to the very door,” implying that the farms aren’t dominating the landscape, but living within it. Interestingly, the placement of the farms contrasts with the speaker’s orientation to the scene as a whole. The farms are in the valley, on a horizontal plane, and are part of the landscape. The speaker, on the other hand, looks over this scene from a higher vantage point. The spatial relationship of the speaker to the valley implicitly shapes the poem’s representation of the speaker—and, by extension, the poet. The speaker, the poem suggests, is a kind of privileged observer; he occupies a higher space than the landscape he observes, and he can record it in his poetry. The stanza concludes with further images of human presence within the scene, this time a different kind of human presence than the “pastoral farms.” The speaker notes “wreaths,” or circles, of smoke rising from the forest. Again, this image suggests that the speaker is above the scene and looking down upon it, since he is implicitly over both the forest and the smoke. But for the first time, the speaker here imagines the people who might live “among the trees” and send up the smoke, and wonders if they are “vagrant dwellers” or a “Hermit,” or religious person, living in solitude within a cave. The phrase “vagrant dwellers” and the description that follows of the forest as “houseless,” is the first indication of a less-than positive aspect of the landscape, as people living within a forest would be homeless. Yet the speaker’s description doesn’t suggest that the people he imagines are impoverished and suffering; rather, they are “vagrant” as though by choice, and they are said to be “dwellers in the houseless woods,” as though they are permanent inhabitants of the landscape. Finally, the speaker imagines that the smoke might come, instead, from “some Hermit’s cave, where by his fire / The Hermit sits alone.” The description of the imagined Hermit is notable because it differs from the previous imaginings of people living here as farmers or “vagrant dwellers.” A Hermit lives in solitude by choice, in order to fulfill a life of religious devotion. The speaker’s placement of such a person within the scene deepens the sense, introduced earlier in the stanza, that this landscape lends itself to an inner life that is more “secluded,” “deep,” and “quiet.” Notably, too, the smoke itself is described as "silent," linking even this human presence to the "quiet" of the sky and of the scene as a whole. This sense of connection between the human presence and the landscape is increased by the sibilance of /s/ sounds in "smoke / sent up, in silence," as the smoke, the act of sending it up, and its silent quality, are audibly connected—and connected, retroactively, to the entire "secluded scene." Finally, looking back throughout the entire first stanza, the speaker's intense use of alliteration, assonance, and consonance lends the lines a sense of delicacy and beauty that reflects the serene beauty of the landscape itself. ... Once again I see These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines Of sportive wood runwild: these pastoral farms, Green to the very door; andwreaths of smoke Sent up, in silence, from among the trees! Above, note the many soft /s/, /l/, /w/, /n/, /d/, and /r/ sounds, plus the /eez/ sound that links words like "these," "wreaths," and "trees." The sounds of the lines make the poem itself feel unified and connected, just like the natural world it describes.