That best portion of a good man's life, his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love

Poem

Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey, on revisiting the banks of the Wye during a tour

First printed in

Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems (London: J. & A. Arch, 1798), page 203 — the closing poem of the volume

Composed

13 July 1798, the date carried on the poem’s own heading

Later text

Reprinted in Wordsworth’s collected Poems (1815), vol. 2, with the semicolon after “life” softened to a comma

But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet.
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration:—feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps,
As may have had no trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man’s life;
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime… Lines from page 203

Transcribed from the 1798 first-edition page scan, punctuation and all — including the full stop after “sensations sweet.” In the 1815 collected Poems the semicolon after “life” is a comma, which is why the familiar quotation has one.