The Prelude or, Growth of a Poet's Mind

William Wordsworth

This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.

http://www.blackmask.com

  • THE PRELUDE
  • BOOK FIRST. INTRODUCTION--CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-TIME
  • BOOK SECOND. SCHOOL-TIME (continued)
  • BOOK THIRD. RESIDENCE AT CAMBRIDGE
  • BOOK FOURTH. SUMMER VACATION
  • BOOK FIFTH. BOOKS
  • BOOK SIXTH. CAMBRIDGE AND THE ALPS
  • BOOK SEVENTH. RESIDENCE IN LONDON
  • BOOK EIGHTH. RETROSPECT--LOVE OF NATURE LEADING TO LOVE OF MAN
  • BOOK NINTH. RESIDENCE IN FRANCE
  • BOOK TENTH. RESIDENCE IN FRANCE (continued)
  • BOOK ELEVENTH. FRANCE (concluded)
  • BOOK TWELFTH. IMAGINATION AND TASTE, HOW IMPAIRED AND RESTORED
  • BOOK THIRTEENTH. IMAGINATION AND TASTE, HOW IMPAIRED AND RESTORED (concluded)
  • BOOK FOURTEENTH. CONCLUSION






    • THE PRELUDE







    William Wordsworth


    OR, GROWTH OF A POET'S MIND;

    AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL POEM

    ADVERTISEMENT

    The following Poem was commenced in the beginning of the year
    99, and completed in the summer of 1805.

    The design and occasion of the work are described by the Author
    in his Preface to the EXCURSION, first published in 1814, where he
    thus speaks:--

    "Several years ago, when the Author retired to his native
    mountains with the hope of being enabled to construct a literary
    work that might live, it was a reasonable thing that he should
    take a review of his own mind, and examine how far Nature and
    Education had qualified him for such an employment.

    "As subsidiary to this preparation, he undertook to record, in
    verse, the origin and progress of his own powers, as far as he was
    acquainted with them.

    "That work, addressed to a dear friend, most distinguished for
    his knowledge and genius, and to whom the Author's intellect is
    deeply indebted, has been long finished; and the result of the
    investigation which gave rise to it, was a determination to
    compose a philosophical Poem, containing views of Man, Nature, and
    Society, and to be entitled the 'Recluse'; as having for its
    principal subject the sensations and opinions of a poet living in
    retirement.

    "The preparatory poem is biographical, and conducts the history
    of the Author's mind to the point when he was emboldened to hope
    that his faculties were sufficiently matured for entering upon the
    arduous labour which he had proposed to himself; and the two works
    have the same kind of relation to each other, if he may so express
    himself, as the Ante-chapel has to the body of a Gothic church.
    Continuing this allusion, he may be permitted to add, that his
    minor pieces, which have been long before the public, when they
    shall be properly arranged, will be found by the attentive reader
    to have such connection with the main work as may give them claim
    to be likened to the little cells, oratories, and sepulchral
    recesses, ordinarily included in those edifices."

    Such was the Author's language in the year 1814.

    It will thence be seen, that the present Poem was intended to be
    introductory to the RECLUSE, and that the RECLUSE, if completed,
    would have consisted of Three Parts. Of these, the Second Part
    alone, viz. the EXCURSION, was finished, and given to the world by
    the Author.

    The First Book of the First Part of the RECLUSE still remains in
    manuscript [now in print]; but the Third Part was only planned.
    The materials of which it would have been formed have, however,
    been incorporated, for the most part, in the Author's other
    Publications, written subsequently to the EXCURSION.

    The Friend, to whom the present Poem is addressed, was the late
    SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, who was resident in Malta, for the
    restoration of his health, when the greater part of it was
    composed.

    Mr. Coleridge read a considerable portion of the Poem while he
    was abroad; and his feelings, on hearing it recited by the Author
    (after his return to his own country), are recorded in his Verses,
    addressed to Mr. Wordsworth, which will be found in the "Sibylline
    Leaves," p. 197, ed. 1817, or "Poetical Works," by S. T.
    Coleridge, vol. i. p. 206.

    RYDAL MOUNT
    July 13th, 1850.

    Wordsworth, William. 1888. Complete Poetical Works. London: Macmillan.















    BOOK FIRST. INTRODUCTION--CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-TIME



    OH there is blessing in this gentle breeze,
    A visitant that while it fans my cheek
    Doth seem half-conscious of the joy it brings
    From the green fields, and from yon azure sky.
    Whate'er its mission, the soft breeze can come
    To none more grateful than to me; escaped
    From the vast city, where I long had pined
    A discontented sojourner: now free,
    Free as a bird to settle where I will.
    What dwelling shall receive me? in what vale
    Shall be my harbour? underneath what grove
    Shall I take up my home? and what clear stream
    Shall with its murmur lull me into rest?
    The earth is all before me. With a heart
    Joyous, nor scared at its own liberty,
    I look about; and should the chosen guide
    Be nothing better than a wandering cloud,
    I cannot miss my way. I breathe again!
    Trances of thought and mountings of the mind
    Come fast upon me: it is shaken off,
    That burthen of my own unnatural self,
    The heavy weight of many a weary day
    Not mine, and such as were not made for me.
    Long months of peace (if such bold word accord
    With any promises of human life),
    Long months of ease and undisturbed delight
    Are mine in prospect; whither shall I turn,
    By road or pathway, or through trackless field,
    Up hill or down, or shall some floating thing
    Upon the river point me out my course?

    Dear Liberty! Yet what would it avail
    But for a gift that consecrates the joy?
    For I, methought, while the sweet breath of heaven
    Was blowing on my body, felt within
    A correspondent breeze, that gently moved
    With quickening virtue, but is now become
    A tempest, a redundant energy,
    Vexing its own creation. Thanks to both,
    And their congenial powers, that, while they join
    In breaking up a long-continued frost,
    Bring with them vernal promises, the hope
    Of active days urged on by flying hours,--
    Days of sweet leisure, taxed with patient thought
    Abstruse, nor wanting punctual service high,
    Matins and vespers of harmonious verse!

    Thus far, O Friend! did I, not used to make
    A present joy the matter of a song,
    Pour forth that day my soul in measured strains
    That would not be forgotten, and are here
    Recorded: to the open fields I told
    A prophecy: poetic numbers came
    Spontaneously to clothe in priestly robe
    A renovated spirit singled out,
    Such hope was mine, for holy services.
    My own voice cheered me, and, far more, the mind's
    Internal echo of the imperfect sound;
    To both I listened, drawing from them both
    A cheerful confidence in things to come.

    Content and not unwilling now to give
    A respite to this passion, I paced on
    With brisk and eager steps; and came, at length,
    To a green shady place, where down I sate
    Beneath a tree, slackening my thoughts by choice
    And settling into gentler happiness.
    'Twas autumn, and a clear and placid day,
    With warmth, as much as needed, from a sun
    Two hours declined towards the west; a day
    With silver clouds, and sunshine on the grass,
    And in the sheltered and the sheltering grove
    A perfect stillness. Many were the thoughts
    Encouraged and dismissed, till choice was made
    Of a known Vale, whither my feet should turn,
    Nor rest till they had reached the very door
    Of the one cottage which methought I saw.
    No picture of mere memory ever looked
    So fair; and while upon the fancied scene
    I gazed with growing love, a higher power
    Than Fancy gave assurance of some work
    Of glory there forthwith to be begun,
    Perhaps too there performed. Thus long I mused,
    Nor e'er lost sight of what I mused upon,
    Save when, amid the stately grove of oaks,
    Now here, now there, an acorn, from its cup
    Dislodged, through sere leaves rustled, or at once
    To the bare earth dropped with a startling sound.
    From that soft couch I rose not, till the sun
    Had almost touched the horizon; casting then
    A backward glance upon the curling cloud
    Of city smoke, by distance ruralised;
    Keen as a Truant or a Fugitive,
    But as a Pilgrim resolute, I took,
    Even with the chance equipment of that hour,
    The road that pointed toward the chosen Vale.
    It was a splendid evening, and my soul
    Once more made trial of her strength, nor lacked
    Aeolian visitations; but the harp
    Was soon defrauded, and the banded host
    Of harmony dispersed in straggling sounds,
    And lastly utter silence! "Be it so;
    Why think of anything but present good?"
    So, like a home-bound labourer, I pursued
    My way beneath the mellowing sun, that shed
    Mild influence; nor left in me one wish
    Again to bend the Sabbath of that time
    To a servile yoke. What need of many words?
    A pleasant loitering journey, through three days
    Continued, brought me to my hermitage.
    I spare to tell of what ensued, the life
    In common things--the endless store of things,
    Rare, or at least so seeming, every day
    Found all about me in one neighbourhood--
    The self-congratulation, and, from morn
    To night, unbroken cheerfulness serene.
    But speedily an earnest longing rose
    To brace myself to some determined aim,
    Reading or thinking; either to lay up
    New stores, or rescue from decay the old
    By timely interference: and therewith
    Came hopes still higher, that with outward life
    I might endue some airy phantasies
    That had been floating loose about for years,
    And to such beings temperately deal forth
    The many feelings that oppressed my heart.
    That hope hath been discouraged; welcome light
    Dawns from the east, but dawns to disappear
    And mock me with a sky that ripens not
    Into a steady morning: if my mind,
    Remembering the bold promise of the past,
    Would gladly grapple with some noble theme,
    Vain is her wish; where'er she turns she finds
    Impediments from day to day renewed.

    And now it would content me to yield up
    Those lofty hopes awhile, for present gifts
    Of humbler industry. But, oh, dear Friend!
    The Poet, gentle creature as he is,
    Hath, like the Lover, his unruly times;
    His fits when he is neither sick nor well,
    Though no distress be near him but his own
    Unmanageable thoughts: his mind, best pleased
    While she as duteous as the mother dove
    Sits brooding, lives not always to that end,
    But like the innocent bird, hath goadings on
    That drive her as in trouble through the groves;
    With me is now such passion, to be blamed
    No otherwise than as it lasts too long.

    When, as becomes a man who would prepare
    For such an arduous work, I through myself
    Make rigorous inquisition, the report
    Is often cheering; for I neither seem
    To lack that first great gift, the vital soul,
    Nor general Truths, which are themselves a sort
    Of Elements and Agents, Under-powers,
    Subordinate helpers of the living mind:
    Nor am I naked of external things,
    Forms, images, nor numerous other aids
    Of less regard, though won perhaps with toil
    And needful to build up a Poet's praise.
    Time, place, and manners do I seek, and these
    Are found in plenteous store, but nowhere such
    As may be singled out with steady choice;
    No little band of yet remembered names
    Whom I, in perfect confidence, might hope
    To summon back from lonesome banishment,
    And make them dwellers in the hearts of men
    Now living, or to live in future years.
    Sometimes the ambitious Power of choice, mistaking
    Proud spring-tide swellings for a regular sea,
    Will settle on some British theme, some old
    Romantic tale by Milton left unsung;
    More often turning to some gentle place
    Within the groves of Chivalry, I pipe
    To shepherd swains, or seated harp in hand,
    Amid reposing knights by a river side
    Or fountain, listen to the grave reports
    Of dire enchantments faced and overcome
    By the strong mind, and tales of warlike feats,
    Where spear encountered spear, and sword with sword
    Fought, as if conscious of the blazonry
    That the shield bore, so glorious was the strife;
    Whence inspiration for a song that winds
    Through ever-changing scenes of votive quest
    Wrongs to redress, harmonious tribute paid
    To patient courage and unblemished truth,
    To firm devotion, zeal unquenchable,
    And Christian meekness hallowing faithful loves.
    Sometimes, more sternly moved, I would relate
    How vanquished Mithridates northward passed,
    And, hidden in the cloud of years, became
    Odin, the Father of a race by whom
    Perished the Roman Empire: how the friends
    And followers of Sertorius, out of Spain
    Flying, found shelter in the Fortunate Isles,
    And left their usages, their arts and laws,
    To disappear by a slow gradual death,
    To dwindle and to perish one by one,
    Starved in those narrow bounds: but not the soul
    Of Liberty, which fifteen hundred years
    Survived, and, when the European came
    With skill and power that might not be withstood,
    Did, like a pestilence, maintain its hold
    And wasted down by glorious death that race
    Of natural heroes: or I would record
    How, in tyrannic times, some high-souled man,
    Unnamed among the chronicles of kings,
    Suffered in silence for Truth's sake: or tell,
    How that one Frenchman, through continued force
    Of meditation on the inhuman deeds
    Of those who conquered first the Indian Isles,
    Went single in his ministry across
    The Ocean; not to comfort the oppressed,
    But, like a thirsty wind, to roam about
    Withering the Oppressor: how Gustavus sought
    Help at his need in Dalecarlia's mines:
    How Wallace fought for Scotland; left the name
    Of Wallace to be found, like a wild flower,
    All over his dear Country; left the deeds
    Of Wallace, like a family of Ghosts,
    To people the steep rocks and river banks,
    Her natural sanctuaries, with a local soul
    Of independence and stern liberty.
    Sometimes it suits me better to invent
    A tale from my own heart, more near akin
    To my own passions and habitual thoughts;
    Some variegated story, in the main
    Lofty, but the unsubstantial structure melts
    Before the very sun that brightens it,
    Mist into air dissolving! Then a wish,
    My last and favourite aspiration, mounts
    With yearning toward some philosophic song
    Of Truth that cherishes our daily life;
    With meditations passionate from deep
    Recesses in man's heart, immortal verse
    Thoughtfully fitted to the Orphean lyre;
    But from this awful burthen I full soon
    Take refuge and beguile myself with trust
    That mellower years will bring a riper mind
    And clearer insight. Thus my days are past
    In contradiction; with no skill to part
    Vague longing, haply bred by want of power,
    From paramount impulse not to be withstood,
    A timorous capacity, from prudence,
    From circumspection, infinite delay.
    Humility and modest awe, themselves
    Betray me, serving often for a cloak
    To a more subtle selfishness; that now
    Locks every function up in blank reserve,
    Now dupes me, trusting to an anxious eye
    That with intrusive restlessness beats off
    Simplicity and self-presented truth.
    Ah! better far than this, to stray about
    Voluptuously through fields and rural walks,
    And ask no record of the hours, resigned
    To vacant musing, unreproved neglect
    Of all things, and deliberate holiday.
    Far better never to have heard the name
    Of zeal and just ambition, than to live
    Baffled and plagued by a mind that every hour
    Turns recreant to her task; takes heart again,
    Then feels immediately some hollow thought
    Hang like an interdict upon her hopes.
    This is my lot; for either still I find
    Some imperfection in the chosen theme,
    Or see of absolute accomplishment
    Much wanting, so much wanting, in myself,
    That I recoil and droop, and seek repose
    In listlessness from vain perplexity,
    Unprofitably travelling toward the grave,
    Like a false steward who hath much received
    And renders nothing back.
    Was it for this
    That one, the fairest of all rivers, loved
    To blend his murmurs with my nurse's song,
    And, from his alder shades and rocky falls,
    And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice
    That flowed along my dreams? For this, didst thou,
    O Derwent! winding among grassy holms
    Where I was looking on, a babe in arms,
    Make ceaseless music that composed my thoughts
    To more than infant softness, giving me
    Amid the fretful dwellings of mankind
    A foretaste, a dim earnest, of the calm
    That Nature breathes among the hills and groves.

    When he had left the mountains and received
    On his smooth breast the shadow of those towers
    That yet survive, a shattered monument
    Of feudal sway, the bright blue river passed
    Along the margin of our terrace walk;
    A tempting playmate whom we dearly loved.
    Oh, many a time have I, a five years' child,
    In a small mill-race severed from his stream,
    Made one long bathing of a summer's day;
    Basked in the sun, and plunged and basked again
    Alternate, all a summer's day, or scoured
    The sandy fields, leaping through flowery groves
    Of yellow ragwort; or, when rock and hill,
    The woods, and distant Skiddaw's lofty height,
    Were bronzed with deepest radiance, stood alone
    Beneath the sky, as if I had been born
    On Indian plains, and from my mother's hut
    Had run abroad in wantonness, to sport
    A naked savage, in the thunder shower.

    Fair seed-time had my soul, and I grew up
    Fostered alike by beauty and by fear:
    Much favoured in my birth-place, and no less
    In that beloved Vale to which erelong
    We were transplanted;--there were we let loose
    For sports of wider range. Ere I had told
    Ten birth-days, when among the mountain slopes
    Frost, and the breath of frosty wind, had snapped
    The last autumnal crocus, 'twas my joy
    With store of springes o'er my shoulder hung
    To range the open heights where woodcocks run
    Along the smooth green turf. Through half the night,
    Scudding away from snare to snare, I plied
    That anxious visitation;--moon and stars
    Were shining o'er my head. I was alone,
    And seemed to be a trouble to the peace
    That dwelt among them. Sometimes it befell
    In these night wanderings, that a strong desire
    O'erpowered my better reason, and the bird
    Which was the captive of another's toil
    Became my prey; and when the deed was done
    I heard among the solitary hills
    Low breathings coming after me, and sounds
    Of undistinguishable motion, steps
    Almost as silent as the turf they trod.

    Nor less, when spring had warmed the cultured Vale,
    Moved we as plunderers where the mother-bird
    Had in high places built her lodge; though mean
    Our object and inglorious, yet the end
    Was not ignoble. Oh! when I have hung
    Above the raven's nest, by knots of grass
    And half-inch fissures in the slippery rock
    But ill sustained, and almost (so it seemed)
    Suspended by the blast that blew amain,
    Shouldering the naked crag, oh, at that time
    While on the perilous ridge I hung alone,
    With what strange utterance did the loud dry wind
    Blow through my ear! the sky seemed not a sky
    Of earth--and with what motion moved the clouds!

    Dust as we are, the immortal spirit grows
    Like harmony in music; there is a dark
    Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles
    Discordant elements, makes them cling together
    In one society. How strange, that all
    The terrors, pains, and early miseries,
    Regrets, vexations, lassitudes interfused
    Within my mind, should e'er have borne a part,
    And that a needful part, in making up
    The calm existence that is mine when I
    Am worthy of myself! Praise to the end!
    Thanks to the means which Nature deigned to employ;
    Whether her fearless visitings, or those
    That came with soft alarm, like hurtless light
    Opening the peaceful clouds; or she would use
    Severer interventions, ministry
    More palpable, as best might suit her aim.

    One summer evening (led by her) I found
    A little boat tied to a willow tree
    Within a rocky cave, its usual home.
    Straight I unloosed her chain, and stepping in
    Pushed from the shore. It was an act of stealth
    And troubled pleasure, nor without the voice
    Of mountain-echoes did my boat move on;
    Leaving behind her still, on either side,
    Small circles glittering idly in the moon,
    Until they melted all into one track
    Of sparkling light. But now, like one who rows,
    Proud of his skill, to reach a chosen point
    With an unswerving line, I fixed my view
    Upon the summit of a craggy ridge,
    The horizon's utmost boundary; far above
    Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky.
    She was an elfin pinnace; lustily
    I dipped my oars into the silent lake,
    And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat
    Went heaving through the water like a swan;
    When, from behind that craggy steep till then
    The horizon's bound, a huge peak, black and huge,
    As if with voluntary power instinct,
    Upreared its head. I struck and struck again,
    And growing still in stature the grim shape
    Towered up between me and the stars, and still,
    For so it seemed, with purpose of its own
    And measured motion like a living thing,
    Strode after me. With trembling oars I turned,
    And through the silent water stole my way
    Back to the covert of the willow tree;
    There in her mooring-place I left my bark,--
    And through the meadows homeward went, in grave
    And serious mood; but after I had seen
    That spectacle, for many days, my brain
    Worked with a dim and undetermined sense
    Of unknown modes of being; o'er my thoughts
    There hung a darkness, call it solitude
    Or blank desertion. No familiar shapes
    Remained, no pleasant images of trees,
    Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields;
    But huge and mighty forms, that do not live
    Like living men, moved slowly through the mind
    By day, and were a trouble to my dreams.

    Wisdom and Spirit of the universe!
    Thou Soul that art the eternity of thought
    That givest to forms and images a breath
    And everlasting motion, not in vain
    By day or star-light thus from my first dawn
    Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me
    The passions that build up our human soul;
    Not with the mean and vulgar works of man,
    But with high objects, with enduring things--
    With life and nature--purifying thus
    The elements of feeling and of thought,
    And sanctifying, by such discipline,
    Both pain and fear, until we recognise
    A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.
    Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me
    With stinted kindness. In November days,
    When vapours rolling down the valley made
    A lonely scene more lonesome, among woods,
    At noon and 'mid the calm of summer nights,
    When, by the margin of the trembling lake,
    Beneath the gloomy hills homeward I went
    In solitude, such intercourse was mine;
    Mine was it in the fields both day and night,
    And by the waters, all the summer long.

    And in the frosty season, when the sun
    Was set, and visible for many a mile
    The cottage windows blazed through twilight gloom,
    I heeded not their summons: happy time
    It was indeed for all of us--for me
    It was a time of rapture! Clear and loud
    The village clock tolled six,--I wheeled about,
    Proud and exulting like an untired horse
    That cares not for his home. All shod with steel,
    We hissed along the polished ice in games
    Confederate, imitative of the chase
    And woodland pleasures,--the resounding horn,
    The pack loud chiming, and the hunted hare.
    So through the darkness and the cold we flew,
    And not a voice was idle; with the din
    Smitten, the precipices rang aloud;
    The leafless trees and every icy crag
    Tinkled like iron; while far distant hills
    Into the tumult sent an alien sound
    Of melancholy not unnoticed, while the stars
    Eastward were sparkling clear, and in the west
    The orange sky of evening died away.
    Not seldom from the uproar I retired
    Into a silent bay, or sportively
    Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng,
    To cut across the reflex of a star
    That fled, and, flying still before me, gleamed
    Upon the glassy plain; and oftentimes,
    When we had given our bodies to the wind,
    And all the shadowy banks on either side
    Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still
    The rapid line of motion, then at once
    Have I, reclining back upon my heels,
    Stopped short; yet still the solitary cliffs
    Wheeled by me--even as if the earth had rolled
    With visible motion her diurnal round!
    Behind me did they stretch in solemn train,
    Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watched
    Till all was tranquil as a dreamless sleep.

    Ye Presences of Nature in the sky
    And on the earth! Ye Visions of the hills!
    And Souls of lonely places! can I think
    A vulgar hope was yours when ye employed
    Such ministry, when ye, through many a year
    Haunting me thus among my boyish sports,
    On caves and trees, upon the woods and hills,
    Impressed, upon all forms, the characters
    Of danger or desire; and thus did make
    The surface of the universal earth,
    With triumph and delight, with hope and fear,
    Work like a sea?
    Not uselessly employed,
    Might I pursue this theme through every change
    Of exercise and play, to which the year
    Did summon us in his delightful round.

    We were a noisy crew; the sun in heaven
    Beheld not vales more beautiful than ours;
    Nor saw a band in happiness and joy
    Richer, or worthier of the ground they trod.
    I could record with no reluctant voice
    The woods of autumn, and their hazel bowers
    With milk-white clusters hung; the rod and line,
    True symbol of hope's foolishness, whose strong
    And unreproved enchantment led us on
    By rocks and pools shut out from every star,
    All the green summer, to forlorn cascades
    Among the windings hid of mountain brooks.
    --Unfading recollections! at this hour
    The heart is almost mine with which I felt,
    From some hill-top on sunny afternoons,
    The paper kite high among fleecy clouds
    Pull at her rein like an impetuous courser;
    Or, from the meadows sent on gusty days,
    Beheld her breast the wind, then suddenly
    Dashed headlong, and rejected by the storm.

    Ye lowly cottages wherein we dwelt,
    A ministration of your own was yours;
    Can I forget you, being as you were
    So beautiful among the pleasant fields
    In which ye stood? or can I here forget
    The plain and seemly countenance with which
    Ye dealt out your plain comforts? Yet had ye
    Delights and exultations of your own.
    Eager and never weary we pursued
    Our home-amusements by the warm peat-fire
    At evening, when with pencil, and smooth slate
    In square divisions parcelled out and all
    With crosses and with cyphers scribbled o'er,
    We schemed and puzzled, head opposed to head
    In strife too humble to be named in verse:
    Or round the naked table, snow-white deal,
    Cherry or maple, sate in close array,
    And to the combat, Loo or Whist, led on
    A thick-ribbed army; not, as in the world,
    Neglected and ungratefully thrown by
    Even for the very service they had wrought,
    But husbanded through many a long campaign.
    Uncouth assemblage was it, where no few
    Had changed their functions: some, plebeian cards
    Which Fate, beyond the promise of their birth,
    Had dignified, and called to represent
    The persons of departed potentates.
    Oh, with what echoes on the board they fell!
    Ironic diamonds,--clubs, hearts, diamonds, spades,
    A congregation piteously akin!
    Cheap matter offered they to boyish wit,
    Those sooty knaves, precipitated down
    With scoffs and taunts, like Vulcan out of heaven: 0
    The paramount ace, a moon in her eclipse,
    Queens gleaming through their splendour's last decay,
    And monarchs surly at the wrongs sustained
    By royal visages. Meanwhile abroad
    Incessant rain was falling, or the frost
    Raged bitterly, with keen and silent tooth;
    And, interrupting oft that eager game,
    From under Esthwaite's splitting fields of ice
    The pent-up air, struggling to free itself,
    Gave out to meadow grounds and hills a loud
    Protracted yelling, like the noise of wolves
    Howling in troops along the Bothnic Main.

    Nor, sedulous as I have been to trace
    How Nature by extrinsic passion first
    Peopled the mind with forms sublime or fair,
    And made me love them, may I here omit
    How other pleasures have been mine, and joys
    Of subtler origin; how I have felt,
    Not seldom even in that tempestuous time,
    Those hallowed and pure motions of the sense
    Which seem, in their simplicity, to own
    An intellectual charm; that calm delight
    Which, if I err not, surely must belong
    To those first-born affinities that fit
    Our new existence to existing things,
    And, in our dawn of being, constitute
    The bond of union between life and joy.

    Yes, I remember when the changeful earth,
    And twice five summers on my mind had stamped
    The faces of the moving year, even then
    I held unconscious intercourse with beauty
    Old as creation, drinking in a pure
    Organic pleasure from the silver wreaths
    Of curling mist, or from the level plain
    Of waters coloured by impending clouds.

    The sands of Westmoreland, the creeks and bays
    Of Cumbria's rocky limits, they can tell
    How, when the Sea threw off his evening shade,
    And to the shepherd's hut on distant hills
    Sent welcome notice of the rising moon,
    How I have stood, to fancies such as these
    A stranger, linking with the spectacle
    No conscious memory of a kindred sight,
    And bringing with me no peculiar sense
    Of quietness or peace; yet have I stood,
    Even while mine eye hath moved o'er many a league
    Of shining water, gathering as it seemed,
    Through every hair-breadth in that field of light,
    New pleasure like a bee among the flowers.

    Thus oft amid those fits of vulgar joy
    Which, through all seasons, on a child's pursuits
    Are prompt attendants, 'mid that giddy bliss
    Which, like a tempest, works along the blood
    And is forgotten; even then I felt
    Gleams like the flashing of a shield;--the earth
    And common face of Nature spake to me
    Rememberable things; sometimes, 'tis true,
    By chance collisions and quaint accidents
    (Like those ill-sorted unions, work supposed
    Of evil-minded fairies), yet not vain
    Nor profitless, if haply they impressed
    Collateral objects and appearances,
    Albeit lifeless then, and doomed to sleep
    Until maturer seasons called them forth
    To impregnate and to elevate the mind.
    --And if the vulgar joy by its own weight
    Wearied itself out of the memory,
    The scenes which were a witness of that joy
    Remained in their substantial lineaments
    Depicted on the brain, and to the eye
    Were visible, a daily sight; and thus
    By the impressive discipline of fear,
    By pleasure and repeated happiness,
    So frequently repeated, and by force
    Of obscure feelings representative
    Of things forgotten, these same scenes so bright,
    So beautiful, so majestic in themselves,
    Though yet the day was distant, did become
    Habitually dear, and all their forms
    And changeful colours by invisible links
    Were fastened to the affections.
    I began
    My story early--not misled, I trust,
    By an infirmity of love for days
    Disowned by memory--ere the breath of spring
    Planting my snowdrops among winter snows:
    Nor will it seem to thee, O Friend! so prompt
    In sympathy, that I have lengthened out
    With fond and feeble tongue a tedious tale.
    Meanwhile, my hope has been, that I might fetch
    Invigorating thoughts from former years;
    Might fix the wavering balance of my mind,
    And haply meet reproaches too, whose power
    May spur me on, in manhood now mature
    To honourable toil. Yet should these hopes
    Prove vain, and thus should neither I be taught
    To understand myself, nor thou to know
    With better knowledge how the heart was framed
    Of him thou lovest; need I dread from thee
    Harsh judgments, if the song be loth to quit
    Those recollected hours that have the charm
    Of visionary things, those lovely forms
    And sweet sensations that throw back our life,
    And almost make remotest infancy
    A visible scene, on which the sun is shining?

    One end at least hath been attained; my mind
    Hath been revived, and if this genial mood
    Desert me not, forthwith shall be brought down
    Through later years the story of my life.
    The road lies plain before me;--'tis a theme
    Single and of determined bounds; and hence
    I choose it rather at this time, than work
    Of ampler or more varied argument,
    Where I might be discomfited and lost:
    And certain hopes are with me, that to thee
    This labour will be welcome, honoured Friend!

    NOTES

    6 Dominique de Gourgues, a French gentleman who went in 1568 to
    Florida to avenge the massacre of the French by the Spaniards
    there.

    1 These lines have been printed before. See "Influence of Natural
    Objects" (1799).

    Wordsworth, William. 1888. Complete Poetical Works. London: Macmillan.






    BOOK SECOND. SCHOOL-TIME (continued)



    THUS far, O Friend! have we, though leaving much
    Unvisited, endeavoured to retrace
    The simple ways in which my childhood walked;
    Those chiefly that first led me to the love
    Of rivers, woods, and fields. The passion yet
    Was in its birth, sustained as might befall
    By nourishment that came unsought; for still
    From week to week, from month to month, we lived
    A round of tumult. Duly were our games
    Prolonged in summer till the daylight failed:
    No chair remained before the doors; the bench
    And threshold steps were empty; fast asleep
    The labourer, and the old man who had sate
    A later lingerer; yet the revelry
    Continued and the loud uproar: at last,
    When all the ground was dark, and twinkling stars
    Edged the black clouds, home and to bed we went,
    Feverish with weary joints and beating minds.
    Ah! is there one who ever has been young,
    Nor needs a warning voice to tame the pride
    Of intellect and virtue's self-esteem?
    One is there, though the wisest and the best
    Of all mankind, who covets not at times
    Union that cannot be;--who would not give
    If so he might, to duty and to truth
    The eagerness of infantine desire?
    A tranquillising spirit presses now
    On my corporeal frame, so wide appears
    The vacancy between me and those days
    Which yet have such self-presence in my mind,
    That, musing on them, often do I seem
    Two consciousnesses, conscious of myself
    And of some other Being. A rude mass
    Of native rock, left midway in the square
    Of our small market village, was the goal
    Or centre of these sports; and when, returned
    After long absence, thither I repaired,
    Gone was the old grey stone, and in its place
    A smart Assembly-room usurped the ground
    That had been ours. There let the fiddle scream,
    And be ye happy! Yet, my Friends! I know
    That more than one of you will think with me
    Of those soft starry nights, and that old Dame
    From whom the stone was named, who there had sate,
    And watched her table with its huckster's wares
    Assiduous, through the length of sixty years.

    We ran a boisterous course; the year span round
    With giddy motion. But the time approached
    That brought with it a regular desire
    For calmer pleasures, when the winning forms
    Of Nature were collaterally attached
    To every scheme of holiday delight
    And every boyish sport, less grateful else
    And languidly pursued.
    When summer came,
    Our pastime was, on bright half-holidays,
    To sweep along the plain of Windermere
    With rival oars; and the selected bourne
    Was now an Island musical with birds
    That sang and ceased not; now a Sister Isle
    Beneath the oaks' umbrageous covert, sown
    With lilies of the valley like a field;
    And now a third small Island, where survived
    In solitude the ruins of a shrine
    Once to Our Lady dedicate, and served
    Daily with chaunted rites. In such a race
    So ended, disappointment could be none,
    Uneasiness, or pain, or jealousy:
    We rested in the shade, all pleased alike,
    Conquered and conqueror. Thus the pride of strength,
    And the vain-glory of superior skill,
    Were tempered; thus was gradually produced
    A quiet independence of the heart;
    And to my Friend who knows me I may add,
    Fearless of blame, that hence for future days
    Ensued a diffidence and modesty,
    And I was taught to feel, perhaps too much,
    The self-sufficing power of Solitude.

    Our daily meals were frugal, Sabine fare!
    More than we wished we knew the blessing then
    Of vigorous hunger--hence corporeal strength
    Unsapped by delicate viands; for, exclude
    A little weekly stipend, and we lived
    Through three divisions of the quartered year
    In penniless poverty. But now to school
    From the half-yearly holidays returned,
    We came with weightier purses, that sufficed
    To furnish treats more costly than the Dame
    Of the old grey stone, from her scant board, supplied.
    Hence rustic dinners on the cool green ground,
    Or in the woods, or by a river side
    Or shady fountains, while among the leaves
    Soft airs were stirring, and the mid-day sun
    Unfelt shone brightly round us in our joy.
    Nor is my aim neglected if I tell
    How sometimes, in the length of those half-years,
    We from our funds drew largely;--proud to curb,
    And eager to spur on, the galloping steed;
    And with the courteous inn-keeper, whose stud
    Supplied our want, we haply might employ
    Sly subterfuge, if the adventure's bound
    Were distant: some famed temple where of yore
    The Druids worshipped, or the antique walls
    Of that large abbey, where within the Vale
    Of Nightshade, to St. Mary's honour built,
    Stands yet a mouldering pile with fractured arch,
    Belfry, and images, and living trees;
    A holy scene!--Along the smooth green turf
    Our horses grazed. To more than inland peace,
    Left by the west wind sweeping overhead
    From a tumultuous ocean, trees and towers
    In that sequestered valley may be seen,
    Both silent and both motionless alike;
    Such the deep shelter that is there, and such
    The safeguard for repose and quietness.

    Our steeds remounted and the summons given,
    With whip and spur we through the chauntry flew
    In uncouth race, and left the cross-legged knight,
    And the stone-abbot, and that single wren
    Which one day sang so sweetly in the nave
    Of the old church, that--though from recent showers 0
    The earth was comfortless, and, touched by faint
    Internal breezes, sobbings of the place
    And respirations, from the roofless walls
    The shuddering ivy dripped large drops--yet still
    So sweetly 'mid the gloom the invisible bird
    Sang to herself, that there I could have made
    My dwelling-place, and lived for ever there
    To hear such music. Through the walls we flew
    And down the valley, and, a circuit made
    In wantonness of heart, through rough and smooth
    We scampered homewards. Oh, ye rocks and streams,
    And that still spirit shed from evening air!
    Even in this joyous time I sometimes felt
    Your presence, when with slackened step we breathed
    Along the sides of the steep hills, or when
    Lighted by gleams of moonlight from the sea
    We beat with thundering hoofs the level sand.

    Midway on long Winander's eastern shore,
    Within the crescent of pleasant bay,
    A tavern stood; no homely-featured house,
    Primeval like its neighbouring cottages,
    But 'twas a splendid place, the door beset
    With chaises, grooms, and liveries, and within
    Decanters, glasses, and the blood-red wine.
    In ancient times, and ere the Hall was built
    On the large island, had this dwelling been
    More worthy of a poet's love, a hut,
    Proud of its own bright fire and sycamore shade.
    But--though the rhymes were gone that once inscribed
    The threshold, and large golden characters,
    Spread o'er the spangled sign-board, had dislodged
    The old Lion and usurped his place, in slight
    And mockery of the rustic painter's hand--
    Yet, to this hour, the spot to me is dear
    With all its foolish pomp. The garden lay
    Upon a slope surmounted by a plain
    Of a small bowling-green; beneath us stood
    A grove, with gleams of water through the trees
    And over the tree-tops; nor did we want
    Refreshment, strawberries and mellow cream.
    There, while through half an afternoon we played
    On the smooth platform, whether skill prevailed
    Or happy blunder triumphed, bursts of glee
    Made all the mountains ring. But, ere night-fall,
    When in our pinnace we returned at leisure
    Over the shadowy lake, and to the beach
    Of some small island steered our course with one,
    The Minstrel of the Troop, and left him there,
    And rowed off gently, while he blew his flute
    Alone upon the rock--oh, then, the calm
    And dead still water lay upon my mind
    Even with a weight of pleasure, and the sky,
    Never before so beautiful, sank down
    Into my heart, and held me like a dream!
    Thus were my sympathies enlarged, and thus
    Daily the common range of visible things
    Grew dear to me: already I began
    To love the sun; a boy I loved the sun,
    Not as I since have loved him, as a pledge
    And surety of our earthly life, a light
    Which we behold and feel we are alive;
    Nor for his bounty to so many worlds--
    But for this cause, that I had seen him lay
    His beauty on the morning hills, had seen
    The western mountain touch his setting orb,
    In many a thoughtless hour, when, from excess
    Of happiness, my blood appeared to flow
    For its own pleasure, and I breathed with joy.
    And, from like feelings, humble though intense,
    To patriotic and domestic love
    Analogous, the moon to me was dear;
    For I could dream away my purposes,
    Standing to gaze upon her while she hung
    Midway between the hills, as if she knew
    No other region, but belonged to thee,
    Yea, appertained by a peculiar right
    To thee and thy grey huts, thou one dear Vale!

    Those incidental charms which first attached
    My heart to rural objects, day by day
    Grew weaker, and I hasten on to tell
    How Nature, intervenient till this time
    And secondary, now at length was sought
    For her own sake. But who shall parcel out
    His intellect by geometric rules,
    Split like a province into round and square?
    Who knows the individual hour in which
    His habits were first sown, even as a seed?
    Who that shall point as with a wand and say
    "This portion of the river of my mind
    Came from yon fountain?" Thou, my Friend! art one
    More deeply read in thy own thoughts; to thee
    Science appears but what in truth she is,
    Not as our glory and our absolute boast,
    But as a succedaneum, and a prop
    To our infirmity. No officious slave
    Art thou of that false secondary power
    By which we multiply distinctions, then
    Deem that our puny boundaries are things
    That we perceive, and not that we have made.
    To thee, unblinded by these formal arts,
    The unity of all hath been revealed,
    And thou wilt doubt, with me less aptly skilled
    Than many are to range the faculties
    In scale and order, class the cabinet
    Of their sensations, and in voluble phrase
    Run through the history and birth of each
    As of a single independent thing.
    Hard task, vain hope, to analyse the mind,
    If each most obvious and particular thought,
    Not in a mystical and idle sense,
    But in the words of Reason deeply weighed,
    Hath no beginning.
    Blest the infant Babe,
    (For with my best conjecture I would trace
    Our Being's earthly progress,) blest the Babe,
    Nursed in his Mother's arms, who sinks to sleep
    Rocked on his Mother's breast; who with his soul
    Drinks in the feelings of his Mother's eye!
    For him, in one dear Presence, there exists
    A virtue which irradiates and exalts
    Objects through widest intercourse of sense.
    No outcast he, bewildered and depressed:
    Along his infant veins are interfused
    The gravitation and the filial bond
    Of nature that connect him with the world.
    Is there a flower, to which he points with hand
    Too weak to gather it, already love
    Drawn from love's purest earthly fount for him
    Hath beautified that flower; already shades
    Of pity cast from inward tenderness
    Do fall around him upon aught that bears
    Unsightly marks of violence or harm.
    Emphatically such a Being lives,
    Frail creature as he is, helpless as frail,
    An inmate of this active universe:
    For, feeling has to him imparted power
    That through the growing faculties of sense
    Doth like an agent of the one great Mind
    Create, creator and receiver both,
    Working but in alliance with the works
    Which it beholds.--Such, verily, is the first
    Poetic spirit of our human life,
    By uniform control of after years,
    In most, abated or suppressed; in some,
    Through every change of growth and of decay,
    Pre-eminent till death.
    From early days,
    Beginning not long after that first time
    In which, a Babe, by intercourse of touch
    I held mute dialogues with my Mother's heart,
    I have endeavoured to display the means
    Whereby this infant sensibility,
    Great birthright of our being, was in me
    Augmented and sustained. Yet is a path
    More difficult before me; and I fear
    That in its broken windings we shall need
    The chamois' sinews, and the eagle's wing:
    For now a trouble came into my mind
    From unknown causes. I was left alone
    Seeking the visible world, nor knowing why.
    The props of my affections were removed,
    And yet the building stood, as if sustained
    By its own spirit! All that I beheld
    Was dear, and hence to finer influxes
    The mind lay open to a more exact
    And close communion. Many are our joys
    In youth, but oh! what happiness to live
    When every hour brings palpable access
    Of knowledge, when all knowledge is delight,
    And sorrow is not there! The seasons came,
    And every season wheresoe'er I moved
    Unfolded transitory qualities,
    Which, but for this most watchful power of love,
    Had been neglected; left a register
    Of permanent relations, else unknown.
    Hence life, and change, and beauty, solitude
    More active ever than "best society"--
    Society made sweet as solitude
    By silent inobtrusive sympathies,
    And gentle agitations of the mind
    From manifold distinctions, difference
    Perceived in things, where, to the unwatchful eye, 0
    No difference is, and hence, from the same source,
    Sublimer joy; for I would walk alone,
    Under the quiet stars, and at that time
    Have felt whate'er there is of power in sound
    To breathe an elevated mood, by form
    Or image unprofaned; and I would stand,
    If the night blackened with a coming storm,
    Beneath some rock, listening to notes that are
    The ghostly language of the ancient earth,
    Or make their dim abode in distant winds.
    Thence did I drink the visionary power;
    And deem not profitless those fleeting moods
    Of shadowy exultation: not for this,
    That they are kindred to our purer mind
    And intellectual life; but that the soul,
    Remembering how she felt, but what she felt
    Remembering not, retains an obscure sense
    Of possible sublimity, whereto
    With growing faculties she doth aspire,
    With faculties still growing, feeling still
    That whatsoever point they gain, they yet
    Have something to pursue.
    And not alone,
    'Mid gloom and tumult, but no less 'mid fair
    And tranquil scenes, that universal power
    And fitness in the latent qualities
    And essences of things, by which the mind
    Is moved with feelings of delight, to me
    Came strengthened with a superadded soul,
    A virtue not its own. My morning walks
    Were early;--oft before the hours of school
    I travelled round our little lake, five miles
    Of pleasant wandering. Happy time! more dear
    For this, that one was by my side, a Friend,
    Then passionately loved; with heart how full
    Would he peruse these lines! For many years
    Have since flowed in between us, and, our minds
    Both silent to each other, at this time
    We live as if those hours had never been.
    Nor seldom did I lift our cottage latch
    Far earlier, ere one smoke-wreath had risen
    From human dwelling, or the vernal thrush
    Was audible; and sate among the woods
    Alone upon some jutting eminence,
    At the first gleam of dawn-light, when the Vale,
    Yet slumbering, lay in utter solitude.
    How shall I seek the origin? where find
    Faith in the marvellous things which then I felt?
    Oft in these moments such a holy calm
    Would overspread my soul, that bodily eyes
    Were utterly forgotten, and what I saw
    Appeared like something in myself, a dream,
    A prospect in the mind.
    'Twere long to tell
    What spring and autumn, what the winter snows,
    And what the summer shade, what day and night,
    Evening and morning, sleep and waking, thought
    From sources inexhaustible, poured forth
    To feed the spirit of religious love
    In which I walked with Nature. But let this
    Be not forgotten, that I still retained
    My first creative sensibility;
    That by the regular action of the world
    My soul was unsubdued. A plastic power
    Abode with me; a forming hand, at times
    Rebellious, acting in a devious mood;
    A local spirit of his own, at war
    With general tendency, but, for the most,
    Subservient strictly to external things
    With which it communed. An auxiliar light
    Came from my mind, which on the setting sun
    Bestowed new splendour; the melodious birds,
    The fluttering breezes, fountains that run on
    Murmuring so sweetly in themselves, obeyed
    A like dominion, and the midnight storm
    Grew darker in the presence of my eye:
    Hence my obeisance, my devotion hence,
    And hence my transport.
    Nor should this, perchance,
    Pass unrecorded, that I still had loved
    The exercise and produce of a toil,
    Than analytic industry to me
    More pleasing, and whose character I deem
    Is more poetic as resembling more
    Creative agency. The song would speak
    Of that interminable building reared
    By observation of affinities
    In objects where no brotherhood exists
    To passive minds. My seventeenth year was come
    And, whether from this habit rooted now
    So deeply in my mind, or from excess
    In the great social principle of life
    Coercing all things into sympathy,
    To unorganic natures were transferred
    My own enjoyments; or the power of truth
    Coming in revelation, did converse
    With things that really are; I, at this time,
    Saw blessings spread around me like a sea.
    Thus while the days flew by, and years passed on,
    From Nature and her overflowing soul,
    I had received so much, that all my thoughts
    Were steeped in feeling; I was only then
    Contented, when with bliss ineffable
    I felt the sentiment of Being spread
    O'er all that moves and all that seemeth still;
    O'er all that, lost beyond the reach of thought
    And human knowledge, to the human eye
    Invisible, yet liveth to the heart;
    O'er all that leaps and runs, and shouts and sings,
    Or beats the gladsome air; o'er all that glides
    Beneath the wave, yea, in the wave itself,
    And mighty depth of waters. Wonder not
    If high the transport, great the joy I felt,
    Communing in this sort through earth and heaven
    With every form of creature, as it looked
    Towards the Uncreated with a countenance
    Of adoration, with an eye of love.
    One song they sang, and it was audible,
    Most audible, then, when the fleshly ear,
    O'ercome by humblest prelude of that strain
    Forgot her functions, and slept undisturbed.

    If this be error, and another faith
    Find easier access to the pious mind,
    Yet were I grossly destitute of all
    Those human sentiments that make this earth
    So dear, if I should fail with grateful voice
    To speak of you, ye mountains, and ye lakes
    And sounding cataracts, ye mists and winds
    That dwell among the hills where I was born.
    If in my youth I have been pure in heart,
    If, mingling with the world, I am content
    With my own modest pleasures, and have lived
    With God and Nature communing, removed
    From little enmities and low desires--
    The gift is yours; if in these times of fear,
    This melancholy waste of hopes o'erthrown,
    If, 'mid indifference and apathy,
    And wicked exultation when good men
    On every side fall off, we know not how,
    To selfishness, disguised in gentle names
    Of peace and quiet and domestic love
    Yet mingled not unwillingly with sneers
    On visionary minds; if, in this time
    Of dereliction and dismay, I yet
    Despair not of our nature, but retain
    A more than Roman confidence, a faith
    That fails not, in all sorrow my support,
    The blessing of my life--the gift is yours,
    Ye winds and sounding cataracts! 'tis yours,
    Ye mountains! thine, O Nature! Thou hast fed
    My lofty speculations; and in thee,
    For this uneasy heart of ours, I find
    A never-failing principle of joy
    And purest passion.
    Thou, my Friend! wert reared
    In the great city, 'mid far other scenes;
    But we, by different roads, at length have gained
    The selfsame bourne. And for this cause to thee
    I speak, unapprehensive of contempt,
    The insinuated scoff of coward tongues,
    And all that silent language which so oft
    In conversation between man and man
    Blots from the human countenance all trace
    Of beauty and of love. For thou hast sought
    The truth in solitude, and, since the days
    That gave thee liberty, full long desired,
    To serve in Nature's temple, thou hast been
    The most assiduous of her ministers;
    In many things my brother, chiefly here
    In this our deep devotion.
    Fare thee well!
    Health and the quiet of a healthful mind
    Attend thee! seeking oft the haunts of men,
    And yet more often living with thyself,
    And for thyself, so haply shall thy days
    Be many, and a blessing to mankind.

    NOTE

    3 The late Rev. John Fleming, of Rayrigg, Windermere.

    Wordsworth, William. 1888. Complete Poetical Works. London: Macmillan.








    BOOK THIRD. RESIDENCE AT CAMBRIDGE



    IT was a dreary morning when the wheels
    Rolled over a wide plain o'erhung with clouds,
    And nothing cheered our way till first we saw
    The long-roofed chapel of King's College lift
    Turrets and pinnacles in answering files,
    Extended high above a dusky grove.

    Advancing, we espied upon the road
    A student clothed in gown and tasselled cap,
    Striding along as if o'ertasked by Time,
    Or covetous of exercise and air;
    He passed--nor was I master of my eyes
    Till he was left an arrow's flight behind.
    As near and nearer to the spot we drew,
    It seemed to suck us in with an eddy's force.
    Onward we drove beneath the Castle; caught,
    While crossing Magdalene Bridge, a glimpse of Cam;
    And at the "Hoop" alighted, famous Inn.

    My spirit was up, my thoughts were full of hope;
    Some friends I had, acquaintances who there
    Seemed friends, poor simple schoolboys, now hung round
    With honour and importance: in a world
    Of welcome faces up and down I roved;
    Questions, directions, warnings and advice,
    Flowed in upon me, from all sides; fresh day
    Of pride and pleasure! to myself I seemed
    A man of business and expense, and went
    From shop to shop about my own affairs,
    To Tutor or to Tailor, as befell,
    From street to street with loose and careless mind.

    I was the Dreamer, they the Dream; I roamed
    Delighted through the motley spectacle;
    Gowns grave, or gaudy, doctors, students, streets,
    Courts, cloisters, flocks of churches, gateways, towers:
    Migration strange for a stripling of the hills,
    A northern villager.
    As if the change
    Had waited on some Fairy's wand, at once
    Behold me rich in monies, and attired
    In splendid garb, with hose of silk, and hair
    Powdered like rimy trees, when frost is keen.
    My lordly dressing-gown, I pass it by,
    With other signs of manhood that supplied
    The lack of beard.--The weeks went roundly on,
    With invitations, suppers, wine and fruit,
    Smooth housekeeping within, and all without
    Liberal, and suiting gentleman's array.

    The Evangelist St. John my patron was:
    Three Gothic courts are his, and in the first
    Was my abiding-place, a nook obscure;
    Right underneath, the College kitchens made
    A humming sound, less tuneable than bees,
    But hardly less industrious; with shrill notes
    Of sharp command and scolding intermixed.
    Near me hung Trinity's loquacious clock,
    Who never let the quarters, night or day,
    Slip by him unproclaimed, and told the hours
    Twice over with a male and female voice.
    Her pealing organ was my neighbour too;
    And from my pillow, looking forth by light
    Of moon or favouring stars, I could behold
    The antechapel where the statue stood
    Of Newton with his prism and silent face,
    The marble index of a mind for ever
    Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.

    Of College labours, of the Lecturer's room
    All studded round, as thick as chairs could stand,
    With loyal students, faithful to their books,
    Half-and-half idlers, hardy recusants,
    And honest dunces--of important days,
    Examinations, when the man was weighed
    As in a balance! of excessive hopes,
    Tremblings withal and commendable fears,
    Small jealousies, and triumphs good or bad--
    Let others that know more speak as they know.
    Such glory was but little sought by me,
    And little won. Yet from the first crude days
    Of settling time in this untried abode,
    I was disturbed at times by prudent thoughts,
    Wishing to hope without a hope, some fears
    About my future worldly maintenance,
    And, more than all, a strangeness in the mind,
    A feeling that I was not for that hour,
    Nor for that place. But wherefore be cast down?
    For (not to speak of Reason and her pure
    Reflective acts to fix the moral law
    Deep in the conscience, nor of Christian Hope,
    Bowing her head before her sister Faith
    As one far mightier), hither I had come,
    Bear witness Truth, endowed with holy powers
    And faculties, whether to work or feel.
    Oft when the dazzling show no longer new
    Had ceased to dazzle, ofttimes did I quit
    My comrades, leave the crowd, buildings and groves,
    And as I paced alone the level fields
    Far from those lovely sights and sounds sublime
    With which I had been conversant, the mind
    Drooped not; but there into herself returning,
    With prompt rebound seemed fresh as heretofore.
    At least I more distinctly recognised
    Her native instincts: let me dare to speak
    A higher language, say that now I felt
    What independent solaces were mine,
    To mitigate the injurious sway of place
    Or circumstance, how far soever changed
    In youth, or 'to' be changed in after years.
    As if awakened, summoned, roused, constrained,
    I looked for universal things; perused
    The common countenance of earth and sky:
    Earth, nowhere unembellished by some trace
    Of that first Paradise whence man was driven;
    And sky, whose beauty and bounty are expressed
    By the proud name she bears--the name of Heaven.
    I called on both to teach me what they might;
    Or, turning the mind in upon herself,
    Pored, watched, expected, listened, spread my thoughts
    And spread them with a wider creeping; felt
    Incumbencies more awful, visitings
    Of the Upholder of the tranquil soul,
    That tolerates the indignities of Time,
    And, from the centre of Eternity
    All finite motions overruling, lives
    In glory immutable. But peace! enough
    Here to record that I was mounting now
    To such community with highest truth--
    A track pursuing, not untrod before,
    From strict analogies by thought supplied
    Or consciousnesses not to be subdued.
    To every natural form, rock, fruits, or flower,
    Even the loose stones that cover the highway,
    I gave a moral life: I saw them feel,
    Or linked them to some feeling: the great mass
    Lay bedded in a quickening soul, and all
    That I beheld respired with inward meaning.
    Add that whate'er of Terror or of Love
    Or Beauty, Nature's daily face put on
    From transitory passion, unto this
    I was as sensitive as waters are
    To the sky's influence in a kindred mood
    Of passion; was obedient as a lute
    That waits upon the touches of the wind.
    Unknown, unthought of, yet I was most rich--
    I had a world about me--'twas my own;
    I made it, for it only lived to me,
    And to the God who sees into the heart.
    Such sympathies, though rarely, were betrayed
    By outward gestures and by visible looks:
    Some called it madness--so indeed it was,
    If child-like fruitfulness in passing joy,
    If steady moods of thoughtfulness matured
    To inspiration, sort with such a name;
    If prophecy be madness; if things viewed
    By poets in old time, and higher up
    By the first men, earth's first inhabitants,
    May in these tutored days no more be seen
    With undisordered sight. But leaving this,
    It was no madness, for the bodily eye
    Amid my strongest workings evermore
    Was searching out the lines of difference
    As they lie hid in all external forms,
    Near or remote, minute or vast; an eye
    Which, from a tree, a stone, a withered leaf,
    To the broad ocean and the azure heavens
    Spangled with kindred multitudes of stars,
    Could find no surface where its power might sleep;
    Which spake perpetual logic to my soul,
    And by an unrelenting agency
    Did bind my feelings even as in a chain.

    And here, O Friend! have I retraced my life
    Up to an eminence, and told a tale
    Of matters which not falsely may be called
    The glory of my youth. Of genius, power,
    Creation and divinity itself
    I have been speaking, for my theme has been
    What passed within me. Not of outward things
    Done visibly for other minds, words, signs,
    Symbols or actions, but of my own heart
    Have I been speaking, and my youthful mind.
    O Heavens! how awful is the might of souls,
    And what they do within themselves while yet
    The yoke of earth is new to them, the world
    Nothing but a wild field where they were sown.
    This is, in truth, heroic argument,
    This genuine prowess, which I wished to touch
    With hand however weak, but in the main
    It lies far hidden from the reach of words.
    Points have we all of us within our souls
    Where all stand single; this I feel, and make
    Breathings for incommunicable powers;
    But is not each a memory to himself,
    And, therefore, now that we must quit this theme,
    I am not heartless, for there's not a man
    That lives who hath not known his god-like hours,
    And feels not what an empire we inherit
    As natural beings in the strength of Nature.

    No more: for now into a populous plain
    We must descend. A Traveller I am,
    Whose tale is only of himself; even so,
    So be it, if the pure of heart be prompt
    To follow, and if thou, my honoured Friend!
    Who in these thoughts art ever at my side,
    Support, as heretofore, my fainting steps.

    It hath been told, that when the first delight
    That flashed upon me from this novel show
    Had failed, the mind returned into herself;
    Yet true it is, that I had made a change
    In climate, and my nature's outward coat
    Changed also slowly and insensibly.
    Full oft the quiet and exalted thoughts
    Of loneliness gave way to empty noise
    And superficial pastimes; now and then
    Forced labour, and more frequently forced hopes;
    And, worst of all, a treasonable growth
    Of indecisive judgments, that impaired
    And shook the mind's simplicity.--And yet
    This was a gladsome time. Could I behold--
    Who, less insensible than sodden clay
    In a sea-river's bed at ebb of tide,
    Could have beheld,--with undelighted heart,
    So many happy youths, so wide and fair
    A congregation in its budding-time
    Of health, and hope, and beauty, all at once
    So many divers samples from the growth
    Of life's sweet season--could have seen unmoved
    That miscellaneous garland of wild flowers
    Decking the matron temples of a place
    So famous through the world? To me, at least,
    It was a goodly prospect: for, in sooth,
    Though I had learnt betimes to stand unpropped,
    And independent musings pleased me so
    That spells seemed on me when I was alone,
    Yet could I only cleave to solitude
    In lonely places; if a throng was near
    That way I leaned by nature; for my heart
    Was social, and loved idleness and joy.

    Not seeking those who might participate
    My deeper pleasures (nay, I had not once,
    Though not unused to mutter lonesome songs,
    Even with myself divided such delight,
    Or looked that way for aught that might be clothed
    In human language), easily I passed
    From the remembrances of better things,
    And slipped into the ordinary works
    Of careless youth, unburthened, unalarmed.
    'Caverns' there were within my mind which sun
    Could never penetrate, yet did there not
    Want store of leafy 'arbours' where the light
    Might enter in at will. Companionships,
    Friendships, acquaintances, were welcome all.
    We sauntered, played, or rioted; we talked
    Unprofitable talk at morning hours;
    Drifted about along the streets and walks,
    Read lazily in trivial books, went forth
    To gallop through the country in blind zeal
    Of senseless horsemanship, or on the breast
    Of Cam sailed boisterously, and let the stars
    Come forth, perhaps without one quiet thought.

    Such was the tenor of the second act
    In this new life. Imagination slept,
    And yet not utterly. I could not print
    Ground where the grass had yielded to the steps
    Of generations of illustrious men,
    Unmoved. I could not always lightly pass
    Through the same gateways, sleep where they had slept,
    Wake where they waked, range that inclosure old,
    That garden of great intellects, undisturbed.
    Place also by the side of this dark sense
    Of noble feeling, that those spiritual men,
    Even the great Newton's own ethereal self,
    Seemed humbled in these precincts thence to be
    The more endeared. Their several memories here
    (Even like their persons in their portraits clothed 0
    With the accustomed garb of daily life)
    Put on a lowly and a touching grace
    Of more distinct humanity, that left
    All genuine admiration unimpaired.

    Beside the pleasant Mill of Trompington
    I laughed with Chaucer in the hawthorn shade;
    Heard him, while birds were warbling, tell his tales
    Of amorous passion. And that gentle Bard,
    Chosen by the Muses for their Page of State--
    Sweet Spenser, moving through his clouded heaven
    With the moon's beauty and the moon's soft pace,
    I called him Brother, Englishman, and Friend!
    Yea, our blind Poet, who in his later day,
    Stood almost single; uttering odious truth--
    Darkness before, and danger's voice behind,
    Soul awful--if the earth has ever lodged
    An awful soul--I seemed to see him here
    Familiarly, and in his scholar's dress
    Bounding before me, yet a stripling youth--
    A boy, no better, with his rosy cheeks
    Angelical, keen eye, courageous look,
    And conscious step of purity and pride.
    Among the band of my compeers was one
    Whom chance had stationed in the very room
    Honoured by Milton's name. O temperate Bard!
    Be it confest that, for the first time, seated
    Within thy innocent lodge and oratory,
    One of a festive circle, I poured out
    Libations, to thy memory drank, till pride
    And gratitude grew dizzy in a brain
    Never excited by the fumes of wine
    Before that hour, or since. Then, forth I ran
    From the assembly; through a length of streets,
    Ran, ostrich-like, to reach our chapel door
    In not a desperate or opprobrious time,
    Albeit long after the importunate bell
    Had stopped, with wearisome Cassandra voice
    No longer haunting the dark winter night.
    Call back, O Friend! a moment to thy mind,
    The place itself and fashion of the rites.
    With careless ostentation shouldering up
    My surplice, through the inferior throng I clove
    Of the plain Burghers, who in audience stood
    On the last skirts of their permitted ground,
    Under the pealing organ. Empty thoughts!
    I am ashamed of them: and that great Bard,
    And thou, O Friend! who in thy ample mind
    Hast placed me high above my best deserts,
    Ye will forgive the weakness of that hour,
    In some of its unworthy vanities,
    Brother to many more.
    In this mixed sort
    The months passed on, remissly, not given up
    To wilful alienation from the right,
    Or walks of open scandal, but in vague
    And loose indifference, easy likings, aims
    Of a low pitch--duty and zeal dismissed,
    Yet Nature, or a happy course of things
    Not doing in their stead the needful work.
    The memory languidly revolved, the heart
    Reposed in noontide rest, the inner pulse
    Of contemplation almost failed to beat.
    Such life might not inaptly be compared
    To a floating island, an amphibious spot
    Unsound, of spongy texture, yet withal
    Not wanting a fair face of water weeds
    And pleasant flowers. The thirst of living praise,
    Fit reverence for the glorious Dead, the sight
    Of those long vistas, sacred catacombs,
    Where mighty 'minds' lie visibly entombed,
    Have often stirred the heart of youth, and bred
    A fervent love of rigorous discipline.--
    Alas! such high emotion touched not me.
    Look was there none within these walls to shame
    My easy spirits, and discountenance
    Their light composure, far less to instil
    A calm resolve of mind, firmly addressed
    To puissant efforts. Nor was this the blame
    Of others but my own; I should, in truth,
    As far as doth concern my single self,
    Misdeem most widely, lodging it elsewhere:
    For I, bred up, 'mid Nature's luxuries,
    Was a spoiled child, and, rumbling like the wind,
    As I had done in daily intercourse
    With those crystalline rivers, solemn heights,
    And mountains, ranging like a fowl of the air,
    I was ill-tutored for captivity;
    To quit my pleasure, and, from month to month,
    Take up a station calmly on the perch
    Of sedentary peace. Those lovely forms
    Had also left less space within my mind,
    Which, wrought upon instinctively, had found
    A freshness in those objects of her love,
    A winning power, beyond all other power.
    Not that I slighted books,--that were to lack
    All sense,--but other passions in me ruled,
    Passions more fervent, making me less prompt
    To in-door study than was wise or well,
    Or suited to those years. Yet I, though used
    In magisterial liberty to rove,
    Culling such flowers of learning as might tempt
    A random choice, could shadow forth a place
    (If now I yield not to a flattering dream)
    Whose studious aspect should have bent me down
    To instantaneous service; should at once
    Have made me pay to science and to arts
    And written lore, acknowledged my liege lord,
    A homage frankly offered up, like that
    Which I had paid to Nature. Toil and pains
    In this recess, by thoughtful Fancy built,
    Should spread from heart to heart; and stately groves, 0
    Majestic edifices, should not want
    A corresponding dignity within.
    The congregating temper that pervades
    Our unripe years, not wasted, should be taught
    To minister to works of high attempt--
    Works which the enthusiast would perform with love.
    Youth should be awed, religiously possessed
    With a conviction of the power that waits
    On knowledge, when sincerely sought and prized
    For its own sake, on glory and on praise
    If but by labour won, and fit to endure
    The passing day; should learn to put aside
    Her trappings here, should strip them off abashed
    Before antiquity and stedfast truth
    And strong book-mindedness; and over all
    A healthy sound simplicity should reign,
    A seemly plainness, name it what you will,
    Republican or pious.
    If these thoughts
    Are a gratuitous emblazonry
    That mocks the recreant age 'we' live in, then
    Be Folly and False-seeming free to affect
    Whatever formal gait of discipline
    Shall raise them highest in their own esteem--
    Let them parade among the Schools at will,
    But spare the House of God. Was ever known
    The witless shepherd who persists to drive
    A flock that thirsts not to a pool disliked?
    A weight must surely hang on days begun
    And ended with such mockery. Be wise,
    Ye Presidents and Deans, and, till the spirit
    Of ancient times revive, and youth be trained
    At home in pious service, to your bells
    Give seasonable rest, for 'tis a sound
    Hollow as ever vexed the tranquil air;
    And your officious doings bring disgrace
    On the plain steeples of our English Church,
    Whose worship, 'mid remotest village trees,
    Suffers for this. Even Science, too, at hand
    In daily sight of this irreverence,
    Is smitten thence with an unnatural taint,
    Loses her just authority, falls beneath
    Collateral suspicion, else unknown.
    This truth escaped me not, and I confess,
    That having 'mid my native hills given loose
    To a schoolboy's vision, I had raised a pile
    Upon the basis of the coming time,
    That fell in ruins round me. Oh, what joy
    To see a sanctuary for our country's youth
    Informed with such a spirit as might be
    Its own protection; a primeval grove,
    Where, though the shades with cheerfulness were filled,
    Nor indigent of songs warbled from crowds
    In under-coverts, yet the countenance
    Of the whole place should bear a stamp of awe;
    A habitation sober and demure
    For ruminating creatures; a domain
    For quiet things to wander in; a haunt
    In which the heron should delight to feed
    By the shy rivers, and the pelican
    Upon the cypress spire in lonely thought
    Might sit and sun himself.--Alas! Alas!
    In vain for such solemnity I looked;
    Mine eyes were crossed by butterflies, ears vexed
    By chattering popinjays; the inner heart
    Seemed trivial, and the impresses without
    Of a too gaudy region.
    Different sight
    Those venerable Doctors saw of old,
    When all who dwelt within these famous walls
    Led in abstemiousness a studious life;
    When, in forlorn and naked chambers cooped
    And crowded, o'er the ponderous books they hung
    Like caterpillars eating out their way
    In silence, or with keen devouring noise
    Not to be tracked or fathered. Princes then
    At matins froze, and couched at curfew-time,
    Trained up through piety and zeal to prize
    Spare diet, patient labour, and plain weeds.
    O seat of Arts! renowned throughout the world!
    Far different service in those homely days
    The Muses' modest nurslings underwent
    From their first childhood: in that glorious time
    When Learning, like a stranger come from far,
    Sounding through Christian lands her trumpet, roused
    Peasant and king; when boys and youths, the growth
    Of ragged villages and crazy huts,
    Forsook their homes, and, errant in the quest
    Of Patron, famous school or friendly nook,
    Where, pensioned, they in shelter might sit down,
    From town to town and through wide scattered realms
    Journeyed with ponderous folios in their hands;
    And often, starting from some covert place,
    Saluted the chance comer on the road,
    Crying, "An obolus, a penny give
    To a poor scholar!"--when illustrious men,
    Lovers of truth, by penury constrained,
    Bucer, Erasmus, or Melancthon, read
    Before the doors or windows of their cells
    By moonshine through mere lack of taper light.

    But peace to vain regrets! We see but darkly
    Even when we look behind us, and best things
    Are not so pure by nature that they needs
    Must keep to all, as fondly all believe,
    Their highest promise. If the mariner,
    When at reluctant distance he hath passed
    Some tempting island, could but know the ills
    That must have fallen upon him had he brought
    His bark to land upon the wished-for shore,
    Good cause would oft be his to thank the surf
    Whose white belt scared him thence, or wind that blew
    Inexorably adverse: for myself
    I grieve not; happy is the gowned youth,
    Who only misses what I missed, who falls
    No lower than I fell.
    I did not love,
    Judging not ill perhaps, the timid course
    Of our scholastic studies; could have wished
    To see the river flow with ampler range
    And freer pace; but more, far more, I grieved
    To see displayed among an eager few,
    Who in the field of contest persevered,
    Passions unworthy of youth's generous heart
    And mounting spirit, pitiably repaid,
    When so disturbed, whatever palms are won.
    From these I turned to travel with the shoal
    Of more unthinking natures, easy minds
    And pillowy; yet not wanting love that makes
    The day pass lightly on, when foresight sleeps,
    And wisdom and the pledges interchanged
    With our own inner being are forgot.

    Yet was this deep vacation not given up
    To utter waste. Hitherto I had stood
    In my own mind remote from social life,
    (At least from what we commonly so name,)
    Like a lone shepherd on a promontory
    Who lacking occupation looks far forth
    Into the boundless sea, and rather makes
    Than finds what he beholds. And sure it is,
    That this first transit from the smooth delights
    And wild outlandish walks of simple youth
    To something that resembles an approach
    Towards human business, to a privileged world
    Within a world, a midway residence
    With all its intervenient imagery,
    Did better suit my visionary mind,
    Far better, than to have been bolted forth,
    Thrust out abruptly into Fortune's way
    Among the conflicts of substantial life;
    By a more just gradation did lead on
    To higher things; more naturally matured,
    For permanent possession, better fruits,
    Whether of truth or virtue, to ensue.
    In serious mood, but oftener, I confess,
    With playful zest of fancy, did we note
    (How could we less?) the manners and the ways
    Of those who lived distinguished by the badge
    Of good or ill report; or those with whom
    By frame of Academic discipline
    We were perforce connected, men whose sway
    And known authority of office served
    To set our minds on edge, and did no more.
    Nor wanted we rich pastime of this kind,
    Found everywhere, but chiefly in the ring
    Of the grave Elders, men unscoured, grotesque
    In character, tricked out like aged trees
    Which through the lapse of their infirmity
    Give ready place to any random seed
    That chooses to be reared upon their trunks.

    Here on my view, confronting vividly
    Those shepherd swains whom I had lately left
    Appeared a different aspect of old age;
    How different! yet both distinctly marked,
    Objects embossed to catch the general eye,
    Or portraitures for special use designed,
    As some might seem, so aptly do they serve
    To illustrate Nature's book of rudiments--
    That book upheld as with maternal care
    When she would enter on her tender scheme
    Of teaching comprehension with delight,
    And mingling playful with pathetic thoughts.

    The surfaces of artificial life
    And manners finely wrought, the delicate race
    Of colours, lurking, gleaming up and down
    Through that state arras woven with silk and gold;
    This wily interchange of snaky hues,
    Willingly or unwillingly revealed,
    I neither knew nor cared for; and as such
    Were wanting here, I took what might be found
    Of less elaborate fabric. At this day
    I smile, in many a mountain solitude
    Conjuring up scenes as obsolete in freaks
    Of character, in points of wit as broad,
    As aught by wooden images performed
    For entertainment of the gaping crowd
    At wake or fair. And oftentimes do flit
    Remembrances before me of old men--
    Old humourists, who have been long in their graves,
    And having almost in my mind put off
    Their human names, have into phantoms passed
    Of texture midway between life and books.

    I play the loiterer: 'tis enough to note
    That here in dwarf proportions were expressed
    The limbs of the great world; its eager strifes
    Collaterally pourtrayed, as in mock fight,
    A tournament of blows, some hardly dealt
    Though short of mortal combat; and whate'er
    Might in this pageant be supposed to hit
    An artless rustic's notice, this way less,
    More that way, was not wasted upon me--
    And yet the spectacle may well demand
    A more substantial name, no mimic show,
    Itself a living part of a live whole,
    A creek in the vast sea; for, all degrees
    And shapes of spurious fame and short-lived praise
    Here sate in state, and fed with daily alms
    Retainers won away from solid good;
    And here was Labour, his own bond-slave; Hope,
    That never set the pains against the prize;
    Idleness halting with his weary clog,
    And poor misguided Shame, and witless Fear,
    And simple Pleasure foraging for Death;
    Honour misplaced, and Dignity astray;
    Feuds, factions, flatteries, enmity, and guile,
    Murmuring submission, and bald government,
    (The idol weak as the idolater),
    And Decency and Custom starving Truth,
    And blind Authority beating with his staff
    The child that might have led him; Emptiness
    Followed as of good omen, and meek Worth
    Left to herself unheard of and unknown.

    Of these and other kindred notices
    I cannot say what portion is in truth
    The naked recollection of that time,
    And what may rather have been called to life
    By after-meditation. But delight
    That, in an easy temper lulled asleep,
    Is still with Innocence its own reward,
    This was not wanting. Carelessly I roamed
    As through a wide museum from whose stores
    A casual rarity is singled out
    And has its brief perusal, then gives way
    To others, all supplanted in their turn;
    Till 'mid this crowded neighbourhood of things
    That are by nature most unneighbourly,
    The head turns round and cannot right itself;
    And though an aching and a barren sense
    Of gay confusion still be uppermost,
    With few wise longings and but little love,
    Yet to the memory something cleaves at last,
    Whence profit may be drawn in times to come.

    Thus in submissive idleness, my Friend!
    The labouring time of autumn, winter, spring,
    Eight months! rolled pleasingly away; the ninth
    Came and returned me to my native hills.

    Wordsworth, William. 1888. Complete Poetical Works. London: Macmillan.







    BOOK FOURTH. SUMMER VACATION



    BRIGHT was the summer's noon when quickening steps
    Followed each other till a dreary moor
    Was crossed, a bare ridge clomb, upon whose top
    Standing alone, as from a rampart's edge,
    I overlooked the bed of Windermere,
    Like a vast river, stretching in the sun.
    With exultation, at my feet I saw
    Lake, islands, promontories, gleaming bays,
    A universe of Nature's fairest forms
    Proudly revealed with instantaneous burst,
    Magnificent, and beautiful, and gay.
    I bounded down the hill shouting amain
    For the old Ferryman; to the shout the rocks
    Replied, and when the Charon of the flood
    Had staid his oars, and touched the jutting pier,
    I did not step into the well-known boat
    Without a cordial greeting. Thence with speed
    Up the familiar hill I took my way
    Towards that sweet Valley where I had been reared;
    'Twas but a short hour's walk, ere veering round
    I saw the snow-white church upon her hill
    Sit like a throned Lady, sending out
    A gracious look all over her domain.
    Yon azure smoke betrays the lurking town;
    With eager footsteps I advance and reach
    The cottage threshold where my journey closed.
    Glad welcome had I, with some tears, perhaps,
    From my old Dame, so kind and motherly,
    While she perused me with a parent's pride.
    The thoughts of gratitude shall fall like dew
    Upon thy grave, good creature! While my heart
    Can beat never will I forget thy name.
    Heaven's blessing be upon thee where thou liest
    After thy innocent and busy stir
    In narrow cares, thy little daily growth
    Of calm enjoyments, after eighty years,
    And more than eighty, of untroubled life;
    Childless, yet by the strangers to thy blood
    Honoured with little less than filial love.
    What joy was mine to see thee once again,
    Thee and thy dwelling, and a crowd of things
    About its narrow precincts all beloved,
    And many of them seeming yet my own!
    Why should I speak of what a thousand hearts
    Have felt, and every man alive can guess?
    The rooms, the court, the garden were not left
    Long unsaluted, nor the sunny seat
    Round the stone table under the dark pine,
    Friendly to studious or to festive hours;
    Nor that unruly child of mountain birth,
    The famous brook, who, soon as he was boxed
    Within our garden, found himself at once,
    As if by trick insidious and unkind,
    Stripped of his voice and left to dimple down
    (Without an effort and without a will)
    A channel paved by man's officious care.
    I looked at him and smiled, and smiled again,
    And in the press of twenty thousand thoughts,
    "Ha," quoth I, "pretty prisoner, are you there!"
    Well might sarcastic Fancy then have whispered,
    "An emblem here behold of thy own life;
    In its late course of even days with all
    Their smooth enthralment;" but the heart was full,
    Too full for that reproach. My aged Dame
    Walked proudly at my side: she guided me;
    I willing, nay--nay, wishing to be led.
    --The face of every neighbour whom I met
    Was like a volume to me; some were hailed
    Upon the road, some busy at their work,
    Unceremonious greetings interchanged
    With half the length of a long field between.
    Among my schoolfellows I scattered round
    Like recognitions, but with some constraint
    Attended, doubtless, with a little pride,
    But with more shame, for my habiliments,
    The transformation wrought by gay attire.
    Not less delighted did I take my place
    At our domestic table: and, dear Friend!
    In this endeavour simply to relate
    A Poet's history, may I leave untold
    The thankfulness with which I laid me down
    In my accustomed bed, more welcome now
    Perhaps than if it had been more desired
    Or been more often thought of with regret;
    That lowly bed whence I had heard the wind
    Roar, and the rain beat hard; where I so oft
    Had lain awake on summer nights to watch
    The moon in splendour couched among the leaves
    Of a tall ash, that near our cottage stood;
    Had watched her with fixed eyes while to and fro
    In the dark summit of the waving tree
    She rocked with every impulse of the breeze.

    Among the favourites whom it pleased me well
    To see again, was one by ancient right
    Our inmate, a rough terrier of the hills;
    By birth and call of nature pre-ordained
    To hunt the badger and unearth the fox
    Among the impervious crags, but having been
    From youth our own adopted, he had passed
    Into a gentler service. And when first
    The boyish spirit flagged, and day by day
    Along my veins I kindled with the stir,
    The fermentation, and the vernal heat
    Of poesy, affecting private shades
    Like a sick Lover, then this dog was used
    To watch me, an attendant and a friend,
    Obsequious to my steps early and late,
    Though often of such dilatory walk
    Tired, and uneasy at the halts I made.
    A hundred times when, roving high and low,
    I have been harassed with the toil of verse,
    Much pains and little progress, and at once
    Some lovely Image in the song rose up
    Full-formed, like Venus rising from the sea;
    Then have I darted forwards to let loose
    My hand upon his back with stormy joy,
    Caressing him again and yet again.
    And when at evening on the public way
    I sauntered, like a river murmuring
    And talking to itself when all things else
    Are still, the creature trotted on before;
    Such was his custom; but whene'er he met
    A passenger approaching, he would turn
    To give me timely notice, and straightway,
    Grateful for that admonishment, I hushed
    My voice, composed my gait, and, with the air
    And mien of one whose thoughts are free, advanced
    To give and take a greeting that might save
    My name from piteous rumours, such as wait
    On men suspected to be crazed in brain.

    Those walks well worthy to be prized and loved--
    Regretted!--that word, too, was on my tongue,
    But they were richly laden with all good,
    And cannot be remembered but with thanks
    And gratitude, and perfect joy of heart--
    Those walks in all their freshness now came back
    Like a returning Spring. When first I made
    Once more the circuit of our little lake,
    If ever happiness hath lodged with man,
    That day consummate happiness was mine,
    Wide-spreading, steady, calm, contemplative.
    The sun was set, or setting, when I left
    Our cottage door, and evening soon brought on
    A sober hour, not winning or serene,
    For cold and raw the air was, and untuned:
    But as a face we love is sweetest then
    When sorrow damps it, or, whatever look
    It chance to wear, is sweetest if the heart
    Have fulness in herself; even so with me
    It fared that evening. Gently did my soul
    Put off her veil, and, self-transmuted, stood
    Naked, as in the presence of her God.
    While on I walked, a comfort seemed to touch
    A heart that had not been disconsolate:
    Strength came where weakness was not known to be,
    At least not felt; and restoration came
    Like an intruder knocking at the door
    Of unacknowledged weariness. I took
    The balance, and with firm hand weighed myself.
    --Of that external scene which round me lay,
    Little, in this abstraction, did I see;
    Remembered less; but I had inward hopes
    And swellings of the spirit, was rapt and soothed,
    Conversed with promises, had glimmering views
    How life pervades the undecaying mind;
    How the immortal soul with God-like power
    Informs, creates, and thaws the deepest sleep
    That time can lay upon her; how on earth,
    Man, if he do but live within the light
    Of high endeavours, daily spreads abroad
    His being armed with strength that cannot fail.
    Nor was there want of milder thoughts, of love,
    Of innocence, and holiday repose;
    And more than pastoral quiet, 'mid the stir
    Of boldest projects, and a peaceful end
    At last, or glorious, by endurance won.
    Thus musing, in a wood I sate me down
    Alone, continuing there to muse: the slopes
    And heights meanwhile were slowly overspread
    With darkness, and before a rippling breeze
    The long lake lengthened out its hoary line,
    And in the sheltered coppice where I sate,
    Around me from among the hazel leaves,
    Now here, now there, moved by the straggling wind,
    Came ever and anon a breath-like sound,
    Quick as the pantings of the faithful dog,
    The off and on companion of my walk;
    And such, at times, believing them to be,
    I turned my head to look if he were there;
    Then into solemn thought I passed once more.

    A freshness also found I at this time
    In human Life, the daily life of those
    Whose occupations really I loved;
    The peaceful scene oft filled me with surprise
    Changed like a garden in the heat of spring
    After an eight-days' absence. For (to omit
    The things which were the same and yet appeared
    Far otherwise) amid this rural solitude,
    A narrow Vale where each was known to all,
    'Twas not indifferent to a youthful mind
    To mark some sheltering bower or sunny nook
    Where an old man had used to sit alone,
    Now vacant; pale-faced babes whom I had left
    In arms, now rosy prattlers at the feet
    Of a pleased grandame tottering up and down;
    And growing girls whose beauty, filched away
    With all its pleasant promises, was gone
    To deck some slighted playmate's homely cheek.

    Yes, I had something of a subtler sense,
    And often looking round was moved to smiles
    Such as a delicate work of humour breeds;
    I read, without design, the opinions, thoughts,
    Of those plain-living people now observed
    With clearer knowledge; with another eye
    I saw the quiet woodman in the woods,
    The shepherd roam the hills. With new delight,
    This chiefly, did I note my grey-haired Dame;
    Saw her go forth to church or other work
    Of state equipped in monumental trim;
    Short velvet cloak, (her bonnet of the like),
    A mantle such as Spanish Cavaliers
    Wore in old times. Her smooth domestic life,
    Affectionate without disquietude,
    Her talk, her business, pleased me; and no less
    Her clear though shallow stream of piety
    That ran on Sabbath days a fresher course;
    With thoughts unfelt till now I saw her read
    Her Bible on hot Sunday afternoons,
    And loved the book, when she had dropped asleep
    And made of it a pillow for her head.

    Nor less do I remember to have felt,
    Distinctly manifested at this time,
    A human-heartedness about my love
    For objects hitherto the absolute wealth
    Of my own private being and no more;
    Which I had loved, even as a blessed spirit
    Or Angel, if he were to dwell on earth,
    Might love in individual happiness.
    But now there opened on me other thoughts
    Of change, congratulation or regret,
    A pensive feeling! It spread far and wide;
    The trees, the mountains shared it, and the brooks,
    The stars of Heaven, now seen in their old haunts--
    White Sirius glittering o'er the southern crags,
    Orion with his belt, and those fair Seven,
    Acquaintances of every little child,
    And Jupiter, my own beloved star!
    Whatever shadings of mortality,
    Whatever imports from the world of death
    Had come among these objects heretofore,
    Were, in the main, of mood less tender: strong,
    Deep, gloomy were they, and severe; the scatterings
    Of awe or tremulous dread, that had given way
    In later youth to yearnings of a love
    Enthusiastic, to delight and hope.

    As one who hangs down-bending from the side
    Of a slow-moving boat, upon the breast
    Of a still water, solacing himself
    With such discoveries as his eye can make
    Beneath him in the bottom of the deep,
    Sees many beauteous sights--weeds, fishes, flowers,
    Grots, pebbles, roots of trees, and fancies more,
    Yet often is perplexed, and cannot part
    The shadow from the substance, rocks and sky,
    Mountains and clouds, reflected in the depth
    Of the clear flood, from things which there abide
    In their true dwelling; now is crossed by gleam
    Of his own image, by a sunbeam now,
    And wavering motions sent he knows not whence,
    Impediments that make his task more sweet;
    Such pleasant office have we long pursued
    Incumbent o'er the surface of past time
    With like success, nor often have appeared
    Shapes fairer or less doubtfully discerned
    Than these to which the Tale, indulgent Friend!
    Would now direct thy notice. Yet in spite
    Of pleasure won, and knowledge not withheld,
    There was an inner falling off--I loved,
    Loved deeply all that had been loved before,
    More deeply even than ever: but a swarm
    Of heady schemes jostling each other, gawds
    And feast and dance, and public revelry,
    And sports and games (too grateful in themselves,
    Yet in themselves less grateful, I believe,
    Than as they were a badge glossy and fresh
    Of manliness and freedom) all conspired
    To lure my mind from firm habitual quest
    Of feeding pleasures, to depress the zeal
    And damp those yearnings which had once been mine--
    A wild, unworldly-minded youth, given up
    To his own eager thoughts. It would demand
    Some skill, and longer time than may be spared
    To paint these vanities, and how they wrought
    In haunts where they, till now, had been unknown.
    It seemed the very garments that I wore
    Preyed on my strength, and stopped the quiet stream
    Of self-forgetfulness.
    Yes, that heartless chase
    Of trivial pleasures was a poor exchange
    For books and nature at that early age.
    'Tis true, some casual knowledge might be gained
    Of character or life; but at that time,
    Of manners put to school I took small note,
    And all my deeper passions lay elsewhere.
    Far better had it been to exalt the mind
    By solitary study, to uphold
    Intense desire through meditative peace;
    And yet, for chastisement of these regrets,
    The memory of one particular hour
    Doth here rise up against me. 'Mid a throng
    Of maids and youths, old men, and matrons staid,
    A medley of all tempers, I had passed
    The night in dancing, gaiety, and mirth,
    With din of instruments and shuffling feet,
    And glancing forms, and tapers glittering,
    And unaimed prattle flying up and down;
    Spirits upon the stretch, and here and there
    Slight shocks of young love-liking interspersed,
    Whose transient pleasure mounted to the head,
    And tingled through the veins. Ere we retired,
    The cock had crowed, and now the eastern sky
    Was kindling, not unseen, from humble copse
    And open field, through which the pathway wound,
    And homeward led my steps. Magnificent
    The morning rose, in memorable pomp,
    Glorious as e'er I had beheld--in front,
    The sea lay laughing at a distance; near,
    The solid mountains shone, bright as the clouds,
    Grain-tinctured, drenched in empyrean light;
    And in the meadows and the lower grounds
    Was all the sweetness of a common dawn--
    Dews, vapours, and the melody of birds,
    And labourers going forth to till the fields.
    Ah! need I say, dear Friend! that to the brim
    My heart was full; I made no vows, but vows
    Were then made for me; bond unknown to me
    Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly,
    A dedicated Spirit. On I walked
    In thankful blessedness, which yet survives.

    Strange rendezvous! My mind was at that time
    A parti-coloured show of grave and gay,
    Solid and light, short-sighted and profound;
    Of inconsiderate habits and sedate,
    Consorting in one mansion unreproved.
    The worth I knew of powers that I possessed,
    Though slighted and too oft misused. Besides,
    That summer, swarming as it did with thoughts
    Transient and idle, lacked not intervals
    When Folly from the frown of fleeting Time
    Shrunk, and the mind experienced in herself
    Conformity as just as that of old
    To the end and written spirit of God's works,
    Whether held forth in Nature or in Man,
    Through pregnant vision, separate or conjoined.

    When from our better selves we have too long
    Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,
    Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,
    How gracious, how benign, is Solitude;
    How potent a mere image of her sway;
    Most potent when impressed upon the mind
    With an appropriate human centre--hermit,
    Deep in the bosom of the wilderness;
    Votary (in vast cathedral, where no foot
    Is treading, where no other face is seen)
    Kneeling at prayers; or watchman on the top
    Of lighthouse, beaten by Atlantic waves;
    Or as the soul of that great Power is met
    Sometimes embodied on a public road,
    When, for the night deserted, it assumes
    A character of quiet more profound
    Than pathless wastes.
    Once, when those summer months 0
    Were flown, and autumn brought its annual show
    Of oars with oars contending, sails with sails,
    Upon Winander's spacious breast, it chanced
    That--after I had left a flower-decked room
    (Whose in-door pastime, lighted up, survived
    To a late hour), and spirits overwrought
    Were making night do penance for a day
    Spent in a round of strenuous idleness--
    My homeward course led up a long ascent,
    Where the road's watery surface, to the top
    Of that sharp rising, glittered to the moon
    And bore the semblance of another stream
    Stealing with silent lapse to join the brook
    That murmured in the vale. All else was still;
    No living thing appeared in earth or air,
    And, save the flowing water's peaceful voice,
    Sound there was none--but, lo! an uncouth shape,
    Shown by a sudden turning of the road,
    So near that, slipping back into the shade
    Of a thick hawthorn, I could mark him well,
    Myself unseen. He was of stature tall,
    A span above man's common measure, tall,
    Stiff, lank, and upright; a more meagre man
    Was never seen before by night or day.
    Long were his arms, pallid his hands; his mouth
    Looked ghastly in the moonlight: from behind,
    A mile-stone propped him; I could also ken
    That he was clothed in military garb,
    Though faded, yet entire. Companionless,
    No dog attending, by no staff sustained,
    He stood, and in his very dress appeared
    A desolation, a simplicity,
    To which the trappings of a gaudy world
    Make a strange back-ground. From his lips, ere long,
    Issued low muttered sounds, as if of pain
    Or some uneasy thought; yet still his form
    Kept the same awful steadiness--at his feet
    His shadow lay, and moved not. From self-blame
    Not wholly free, I watched him thus; at length
    Subduing my heart's specious cowardice,
    I left the shady nook where I had stood
    And hailed him. Slowly from his resting-place
    He rose, and with a lean and wasted arm
    In measured gesture lifted to his head
    Returned my salutation; then resumed
    His station as before; and when I asked
    His history, the veteran, in reply,
    Was neither slow nor eager; but, unmoved,
    And with a quiet uncomplaining voice,
    A stately air of mild indifference,
    He told in few plain words a soldier's tale--
    That in the Tropic Islands he had served,
    Whence he had landed scarcely three weeks past;
    That on his landing he had been dismissed,
    And now was travelling towards his native home.
    This heard, I said, in pity, "Come with me."
    He stooped, and straightway from the ground took up
    An oaken staff by me yet unobserved--
    A staff which must have dropped from his slack hand
    And lay till now neglected in the grass.
    Though weak his step and cautious, he appeared
    To travel without pain, and I beheld,
    With an astonishment but ill suppressed,
    His ghostly figure moving at my side;
    Nor could I, while we journeyed thus, forbear
    To turn from present hardships to the past,
    And speak of war, battle, and pestilence,
    Sprinkling this talk with questions, better spared,
    On what he might himself have seen or felt.
    He all the while was in demeanour calm,
    Concise in answer; solemn and sublime
    He might have seemed, but that in all he said
    There was a strange half-absence, as of one
    Knowing too well the importance of his theme,
    But feeling it no longer. Our discourse
    Soon ended, and together on we passed
    In silence through a wood gloomy and still.
    Up-turning, then, along an open field,
    We reached a cottage. At the door I knocked,
    And earnestly to charitable care
    Commended him as a poor friendless man,
    Belated and by sickness overcome.
    Assured that now the traveller would repose
    In comfort, I entreated that henceforth
    He would not linger in the public ways,
    But ask for timely furtherance and help
    Such as his state required. At this reproof,
    With the same ghastly mildness in his look,
    He said, "My trust is in the God of Heaven,
    And in the eye of him who passes me!"

    The cottage door was speedily unbarred,
    And now the soldier touched his hat once more
    With his lean hand, and in a faltering voice,
    Whose tone bespake reviving interests
    Till then unfelt, he thanked me; I returned
    The farewell blessing of the patient man,
    And so we parted. Back I cast a look,
    And lingered near the door a little space,
    Then sought with quiet heart my distant home.

    NOTES

    Hawkshead.

    Wordsworth, William. 1888. Complete Poetical Works. London: Macmillan.





    BOOK FIFTH. BOOKS



    WHEN Contemplation, like the night-calm felt
    Through earth and sky, spreads widely, and sends deep
    Into the soul its tranquillising power,
    Even then I sometimes grieve for thee, O Man,
    Earth's paramount Creature! not so much for woes
    That thou endurest; heavy though that weight be,
    Cloud-like it mounts, or touched with light divine
    Doth melt away; but for those palms achieved
    Through length of time, by patient exercise
    Of study and hard thought; there, there, it is
    That sadness finds its fuel. Hitherto,
    In progress through this Verse, my mind hath looked
    Upon the speaking face of earth and heaven
    As her prime teacher, intercourse with man
    Established by the sovereign Intellect,
    Who through that bodily image hath diffused,
    As might appear to the eye of fleeting time,
    A deathless spirit. Thou also, man! hast wrought,
    For commerce of thy nature with herself,
    Things that aspire to unconquerable life;
    And yet we feel--we cannot choose but feel--
    That they must perish. Tremblings of the heart
    It gives, to think that our immortal being
    No more shall need such garments; and yet man,
    As long as he shall be the child of earth,
    Might almost "weep to have" what he may lose,
    Nor be himself extinguished, but survive,
    Abject, depressed, forlorn, disconsolate.
    A thought is with me sometimes, and I say,--
    Should the whole frame of earth by inward throes
    Be wrenched, or fire come down from far to scorch
    Her pleasant habitations, and dry up
    Old Ocean, in his bed left singed and bare,
    Yet would the living Presence still subsist
    Victorious, and composure would ensue,
    And kindlings like the morning--presage sure
    Of day returning and of life revived.
    But all the meditations of mankind,
    Yea, all the adamantine holds of truth
    By reason built, or passion, which itself
    Is highest reason in a soul sublime;
    The consecrated works of Bard and Sage,
    Sensuous or intellectual, wrought by men,
    Twin labourers and heirs of the same hopes;
    Where would they be? Oh! why hath not the Mind
    Some element to stamp her image on
    In nature somewhat nearer to her own?
    Why, gifted with such powers to send abroad
    Her spirit, must it lodge in shrines so frail?

    One day, when from my lips a like complaint
    Had fallen in presence of a studious friend,
    He with a smile made answer, that in truth
    'Twas going far to seek disquietude;
    But on the front of his reproof confessed
    That he himself had oftentimes given way
    To kindred hauntings. Whereupon I told,
    That once in the stillness of a summer's noon,
    While I was seated in a rocky cave
    By the sea-side, perusing, so it chanced,
    The famous history of the errant knight
    Recorded by Cervantes, these same thoughts
    Beset me, and to height unusual rose,
    While listlessly I sate, and, having closed
    The book, had turned my eyes toward the wide sea.
    On poetry and geometric truth,
    And their high privilege of lasting life,
    From all internal injury exempt,
    I mused; upon these chiefly: and at length,
    My senses yielding to the sultry air,
    Sleep seized me, and I passed into a dream.
    I saw before me stretched a boundless plain
    Of sandy wilderness, all black and void,
    And as I looked around, distress and fear
    Came creeping over me, when at my side,
    Close at my side, an uncouth shape appeared
    Upon a dromedary, mounted high.
    He seemed an Arab of the Bedouin tribes:
    A lance he bore, and underneath one arm
    A stone, and in the opposite hand a shell
    Of a surpassing brightness. At the sight
    Much I rejoiced, not doubting but a guide
    Was present, one who with unerring skill
    Would through the desert lead me; and while yet
    I looked and looked, self-questioned what this freight
    Which the new-comer carried through the waste
    Could mean, the Arab told me that the stone
    (To give it in the language of the dream)
    Was "Euclid's Elements," and "This," said he,
    "Is something of more worth;" and at the word
    Stretched forth the shell, so beautiful in shape,
    In colour so resplendent, with command
    That I should hold it to my ear. I did so,
    And heard that instant in an unknown tongue,
    Which yet I understood, articulate sounds,
    A loud prophetic blast of harmony;
    An Ode, in passion uttered, which foretold
    Destruction to the children of the earth
    By deluge, now at hand. No sooner ceased
    The song, than the Arab with calm look declared
    That all would come to pass of which the voice
    Had given forewarning, and that he himself
    Was going then to bury those two books:
    The one that held acquaintance with the stars,
    And wedded soul to soul in purest bond
    Of reason, undisturbed by space or time;
    The other that was a god, yea many gods,
    Had voices more than all the winds, with power
    To exhilarate the spirit, and to soothe,
    Through every clime, the heart of human kind.
    While this was uttering, strange as it may seem,
    I wondered not, although I plainly saw
    The one to be a stone, the other a shell;
    Nor doubted once but that they both were books,
    Having a perfect faith in all that passed.
    Far stronger, now, grew the desire I felt
    To cleave unto this man; but when I prayed
    To share his enterprise, he hurried on
    Reckless of me: I followed, not unseen,
    For oftentimes he cast a backward look,
    Grasping his twofold treasure.--Lance in rest,
    He rode, I keeping pace with him; and now
    He, to my fancy, had become the knight
    Whose tale Cervantes tells; yet not the knight,
    But was an Arab of the desert too;
    Of these was neither, and was both at once.
    His countenance, meanwhile, grew more disturbed;
    And, looking backwards when he looked, mine eyes
    Saw, over half the wilderness diffused,
    A bed of glittering light: I asked the cause:
    "It is," said he, "the waters of the deep
    Gathering upon us;" quickening then the pace
    Of the unwieldy creature he bestrode,
    He left me: I called after him aloud;
    He heeded not; but, with his twofold charge
    Still in his grasp, before me, full in view,
    Went hurrying o'er the illimitable waste,
    With the fleet waters of a drowning world
    In chase of him; whereat I waked in terror,
    And saw the sea before me, and the book,
    In which I had been reading, at my side.

    Full often, taking from the world of sleep
    This Arab phantom, which I thus beheld,
    This semi-Quixote, I to him have given
    A substance, fancied him a living man,
    A gentle dweller in the desert, crazed
    By love and feeling, and internal thought
    Protracted among endless solitudes;
    Have shaped him wandering upon this quest!
    Nor have I pitied him; but rather felt
    Reverence was due to a being thus employed;
    And thought that, in the blind and awful lair
    Of such a madness, reason did lie couched.
    Enow there are on earth to take in charge
    Their wives, their children, and their virgin loves,
    Or whatsoever else the heart holds dear;
    Enow to stir for these; yea, will I say,
    Contemplating in soberness the approach
    Of an event so dire, by signs in earth
    Or heaven made manifest, that I could share
    That maniac's fond anxiety, and go
    Upon like errand. Oftentimes at least
    Me hath such strong entrancement overcome,
    When I have held a volume in my hand,
    Poor earthly casket of immortal verse,
    Shakespeare, or Milton, labourers divine!

    Great and benign, indeed, must be the power
    Of living nature, which could thus so long
    Detain me from the best of other guides
    And dearest helpers, left unthanked, unpraised,
    Even in the time of lisping infancy;
    And later down, in prattling childhood even,
    While I was travelling back among those days,
    How could I ever play an ingrate's part?
    Once more should I have made those bowers resound,
    By intermingling strains of thankfulness
    With their own thoughtless melodies; at least
    It might have well beseemed me to repeat
    Some simply fashioned tale, to tell again,
    In slender accents of sweet verse, some tale
    That did bewitch me then, and soothes me now.
    O Friend! O Poet! brother of my soul,
    Think not that I could pass along untouched
    By these remembrances. Yet wherefore speak?
    Why call upon a few weak words to say
    What is already written in the hearts
    Of all that breathe?--what in the path of all
    Drops daily from the tongue of every child,
    Wherever man is found? The trickling tear
    Upon the cheek of listening Infancy
    Proclaims it, and the insuperable look
    That drinks as if it never could be full.

    That portion of my story I shall leave
    There registered: whatever else of power
    Or pleasure sown, or fostered thus, may be
    Peculiar to myself, let that remain
    Where still it works, though hidden from all search
    Among the depths of time. Yet is it just
    That here, in memory of all books which lay
    Their sure foundations in the heart of man,
    Whether by native prose, or numerous verse,
    That in the name of all inspired souls--
    From Homer the great Thunderer, from the voice
    That roars along the bed of Jewish song,
    And that more varied and elaborate,
    Those trumpet-tones of harmony that shake
    Our shores in England,--from those loftiest notes
    Down to the low and wren-like warblings, made
    For cottagers and spinners at the wheel,
    And sun-burnt travellers resting their tired limbs,
    Stretched under wayside hedge-rows, ballad tunes,
    Food for the hungry ears of little ones,
    And of old men who have survived their joys--
    'Tis just that in behalf of these, the works,
    And of the men that framed them, whether known
    Or sleeping nameless in their scattered graves,
    That I should here assert their rights, attest
    Their honours, and should, once for all, pronounce
    Their benediction; speak of them as Powers
    For ever to be hallowed; only less,
    For what we are and what we may become,
    Than Nature's self, which is the breath of God,
    Or His pure Word by miracle revealed.

    Rarely and with reluctance would I stoop
    To transitory themes; yet I rejoice,
    And, by these thoughts admonished, will pour out
    Thanks with uplifted heart, that I was reared
    Safe from an evil which these days have laid
    Upon the children of the land, a pest
    That might have dried me up, body and soul.
    This verse is dedicate to Nature's self,
    And things that teach as Nature teaches: then,
    Oh! where had been the Man, the Poet where,
    Where had we been, we two, beloved Friend!
    If in the season of unperilous choice,
    In lieu of wandering, as we did, through vales
    Rich with indigenous produce, open ground
    Of Fancy, happy pastures ranged at will,
    We had been followed, hourly watched, and noosed,
    Each in his several melancholy walk
    Stringed like a poor man's heifer at its feed,
    Led through the lanes in forlorn servitude;
    Or rather like a stalled ox debarred
    From touch of growing grass, that may not taste
    A flower till it have yielded up its sweets
    A prelibation to the mower's scythe.

    Behold the parent hen amid her brood,
    Though fledged and feathered, and well pleased to part
    And straggle from her presence, still a brood,
    And she herself from the maternal bond
    Still undischarged; yet doth she little more
    Than move with them in tenderness and love,
    A centre to the circle which they make;
    And now and then, alike from need of theirs
    And call of her own natural appetites,
    She scratches, ransacks up the earth for food,
    Which they partake at pleasure. Early died
    My honoured Mother, she who was the heart
    And hinge of all our learnings and our loves:
    She left us destitute, and, as we might,
    Trooping together. Little suits it me
    To break upon the sabbath of her rest
    With any thought that looks at others' blame;
    Nor would I praise her but in perfect love.
    Hence am I checked: but let me boldly say,
    In gratitude, and for the sake of truth,
    Unheard by her, that she, not falsely taught,
    Fetching her goodness rather from times past,
    Than shaping novelties for times to come,
    Had no presumption, no such jealousy,
    Nor did by habit of her thoughts mistrust
    Our nature, but had virtual faith that He
    Who fills the mother's breast with innocent milk,
    Doth also for our nobler part provide,
    Under His great correction and control,
    As innocent instincts, and as innocent food;
    Or draws, for minds that are left free to trust
    In the simplicities of opening life,
    Sweet honey out of spurned or dreaded weeds.
    This was her creed, and therefore she was pure
    From anxious fear of error or mishap,
    And evil, overweeningly so called;
    Was not puffed up by false unnatural hopes,
    Nor selfish with unnecessary cares,
    Nor with impatience from the season asked
    More than its timely produce; rather loved
    The hours for what they are, than from regard
    Glanced on their promises in restless pride.
    Such was she--not from faculties more strong
    Than others have, but from the times, perhaps,
    And spot in which she lived, and through a grace
    Of modest meekness, simple-mindedness,
    A heart that found benignity and hope,
    Being itself benign.
    My drift I fear
    Is scarcely obvious; but, that common sense
    May try this modern system by its fruits,
    Leave let me take to place before her sight
    A specimen pourtrayed with faithful hand.
    Full early trained to worship seemliness,
    This model of a child is never known
    To mix in quarrels; that were far beneath
    Its dignity; with gifts he bubbles o'er
    As generous as a fountain; selfishness
    May not come near him, nor the little throng
    Of flitting pleasures tempt him from his path;
    The wandering beggars propagate his name,
    Dumb creatures find him tender as a nun,
    And natural or supernatural fear,
    Unless it leap upon him in a dream,
    Touches him not. To enhance the wonder, see
    How arch his notices, how nice his sense
    Of the ridiculous; not blind is he
    To the broad follies of the licensed world,
    Yet innocent himself withal, though shrewd,
    And can read lectures upon innocence;
    A miracle of scientific lore,
    Ships he can guide across the pathless sea,
    And tell you all their cunning; he can read
    The inside of the earth, and spell the stars;
    He knows the policies of foreign lands;
    Can string you names of districts, cities, towns,
    The whole world over, tight as beads of dew
    Upon a gossamer thread; he sifts, he weighs;
    All things are put to question; he must live
    Knowing that he grows wiser every day
    Or else not live at all, and seeing too
    Each little drop of wisdom as it falls
    Into the dimpling cistern of his heart:
    For this unnatural growth the trainer blame,
    Pity the tree.--Poor human vanity,
    Wert thou extinguished, little would be left
    Which he could truly love; but how escape?
    For, ever as a thought of purer birth
    Rises to lead him toward a better clime,
    Some intermeddler still is on the watch
    To drive him back, and pound him, like a stray,
    Within the pinfold of his own conceit.
    Meanwhile old grandame earth is grieved to find
    The playthings, which her love designed for him,
    Unthought of: in their woodland beds the flowers
    Weep, and the river sides are all forlorn.
    Oh! give us once again the wishing-cap
    Of Fortunatus, and the invisible coat
    Of Jack the Giant-killer, Robin Hood,
    And Sabra in the forest with St. George!
    The child, whose love is here, at least, doth reap
    One precious gain, that he forgets himself.

    These mighty workmen of our later age,
    Who, with a broad highway, have overbridged
    The froward chaos of futurity,
    Tamed to their bidding; they who have the skill
    To manage books, and things, and make them act
    On infant minds as surely as the sun
    Deals with a flower; the keepers of our time,
    The guides and wardens of our faculties,
    Sages who in their prescience would control
    All accidents, and to the very road
    Which they have fashioned would confine us down,
    Like engines; when will their presumption learn,
    That in the unreasoning progress of the world
    A wiser spirit is at work for us,
    A better eye than theirs, most prodigal
    Of blessings, and most studious of our good,
    Even in what seem our most unfruitful hours?

    There was a Boy: ye knew him well, ye cliffs
    And islands of Winander!--many a time
    At evening, when the earliest stars began
    To move along the edges of the hills,
    Rising or setting, would he stand alone
    Beneath the trees or by the glimmering lake,

    And there, with fingers interwoven, both hands
    Pressed closely palm to palm, and to his mouth
    Uplifted, he, as through an instrument,
    Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls,
    That they might answer him; and they would shout
    Across the watery vale, and shout again,
    Responsive to his call, with quivering peals,
    And long halloos and screams, and echoes loud,
    Redoubled and redoubled, concourse wild
    Of jocund din; and, when a lengthened pause
    Of silence came and baffled his best skill,
    Then sometimes, in that silence while he hung
    Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise
    Has carried far into his heart the voice
    Of mountain torrents; or the visible scene
    Would enter unawares into his mind,
    With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,
    Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received
    Into the bosom of the steady lake.

    This Boy was taken from his mates, and died
    In childhood, ere he was full twelve years old.
    Fair is the spot, most beautiful the vale
    Where he was born; the grassy churchyard hangs
    Upon a slope above the village school,
    And through that churchyard when my way has led
    On summer evenings, I believe that there
    A long half hour together I have stood
    Mute, looking at the grave in which he lies!
    Even now appears before the mind's clear eye
    That self-same village church; I see her sit
    (The throned Lady whom erewhile we hailed)
    On her green hill, forgetful of this Boy
    Who slumbers at her feet,--forgetful, too,
    Of all her silent neighbourhood of graves,
    And listening only to the gladsome sounds
    That, from the rural school ascending, play
    Beneath her and about her. May she long
    Behold a race of young ones like to those
    With whom I herded!--(easily, indeed,
    We might have fed upon a fatter soil
    Of arts and letters--but be that forgiven)--
    A race of real children; not too wise,
    Too learned, or too good; but wanton, fresh,
    And bandied up and down by love and hate;
    Not unresentful where self-justified;
    Fierce, moody, patient, venturous, modest, shy;
    Mad at their sports like withered leaves in winds;
    Though doing wrong and suffering, and full oft
    Bending beneath our life's mysterious weight
    Of pain, and doubt, and fear, yet yielding not
    In happiness to the happiest upon earth.
    Simplicity in habit, truth in speech,
    Be these the daily strengtheners of their minds;
    May books and Nature be their early joy!
    And knowledge, rightly honoured with that name--
    Knowledge not purchased by the loss of power!

    Well do I call to mind the very week
    When I was first intrusted to the care
    Of that sweet Valley; when its paths, its shores,
    And brooks were like a dream of novelty
    To my half-infant thoughts; that very week,
    While I was roving up and down alone,
    Seeking I knew not what, I chanced to cross
    One of those open fields, which, shaped like ears,
    Make green peninsulas on Esthwaite's Lake:
    Twilight was coming on, yet through the gloom
    Appeared distinctly on the opposite shore
    A heap of garments, as if left by one
    Who might have there been bathing. Long I watched,
    But no one owned them; meanwhile the calm lake
    Grew dark with all the shadows on its breast,
    And, now and then, a fish up-leaping snapped
    The breathless stillness. The succeeding day,
    Those unclaimed garments telling a plain tale
    Drew to the spot an anxious crowd; some looked
    In passive expectation from the shore,
    While from a boat others hung o'er the deep,
    Sounding with grappling irons and long poles.
    At last, the dead man, 'mid that beauteous scene
    Of trees and hills and water, bolt upright
    Rose, with his ghastly face, a spectre shape
    Of terror; yet no soul-debasing fear,
    Young as I was, a child not nine years old,
    Possessed me, for my inner eye had seen
    Such sights before, among the shining streams
    Of faery land, the forest of romance.
    Their spirit hallowed the sad spectacle
    With decoration of ideal grace;
    A dignity, a smoothness, like the works
    Of Grecian art, and purest poesy.

    A precious treasure had I long possessed,
    A little yellow, canvas-covered book,
    A slender abstract of the Arabian tales;
    And, from companions in a new abode,
    When first I learnt, that this dear prize of mine
    Was but a block hewn from a mighty quarry--
    That there were four large volumes, laden all
    With kindred matter, 'twas to me, in truth,
    A promise scarcely earthly. Instantly,
    With one not richer than myself, I made
    A covenant that each should lay aside
    The moneys he possessed, and hoard up more,
    Till our joint savings had amassed enough
    To make this book our own. Through several months,
    In spite of all temptation, we preserved
    Religiously that vow; but firmness failed,
    Nor were we ever masters of our wish.

    And when thereafter to my father's house
    The holidays returned me, there to find
    That golden store of books which I had left,
    What joy was mine! How often in the course
    Of those glad respites, though a soft west wind
    Ruffled the waters to the angler's wish,
    For a whole day together, have I lain
    Down by thy side, O Derwent! murmuring stream,
    On the hot stones, and in the glaring sun,
    And there have read, devouring as I read,
    Defrauding the day's glory, desperate!
    Till with a sudden bound of smart reproach,
    Such as an idler deals with in his shame,
    I to the sport betook myself again.

    A gracious spirit o'er this earth presides,
    And o'er the heart of man; invisibly
    It comes, to works of unreproved delight,
    And tendency benign, directing those
    Who care not, know not, think not, what they do.
    The tales that charm away the wakeful night
    In Araby, romances; legends penned
    For solace by dim light of monkish lamps;
    Fictions, for ladies of their love, devised
    By youthful squires; adventures endless, spun
    By the dismantled warrior in old age,
    Out of the bowels of those very schemes
    In which his youth did first extravagate;
    These spread like day, and something in the shape
    Of these will live till man shall be no more.
    Dumb yearnings, hidden appetites, are ours,
    And 'they must' have their food. Our childhood sits,
    Our simple childhood, sits upon a throne
    That hath more power than all the elements.
    I guess not what this tells of Being past,
    Nor what it augurs of the life to come;
    But so it is; and, in that dubious hour--
    That twilight--when we first begin to see
    This dawning earth, to recognise, expect,
    And, in the long probation that ensues,
    The time of trial, ere we learn to live
    In reconcilement with our stinted powers;
    To endure this state of meagre vassalage,
    Unwilling to forego, confess, submit,
    Uneasy and unsettled, yoke-fellows
    To custom, mettlesome, and not yet tamed
    And humbled down--oh! then we feel, we feel,
    We know where we have friends. Ye dreamers, then,
    Forgers of daring tales! we bless you then,
    Impostors, drivellers, dotards, as the ape
    Philosophy will call you: 'then' we feel
    With what, and how great might ye are in league,
    Who make our wish, our power, our thought a deed,
    An empire, a possession,--ye whom time
    And seasons serve; all Faculties to whom
    Earth crouches, the elements are potter's clay,
    Space like a heaven filled up with northern lights,
    Here, nowhere, there, and everywhere at once.

    Relinquishing this lofty eminence
    For ground, though humbler, not the less a tract
    Of the same isthmus, which our spirits cross
    In progress from their native continent
    To earth and human life, the Song might dwell
    On that delightful time of growing youth,
    When craving for the marvellous gives way
    To strengthening love for things that we have seen;
    When sober truth and steady sympathies,
    Offered to notice by less daring pens,
    Take firmer hold of us, and words themselves
    Move us with conscious pleasure.
    I am sad
    At thought of rapture now for ever flown;
    Almost to tears I sometimes could be sad
    To think of, to read over, many a page,
    Poems withal of name, which at that time
    Did never fail to entrance me, and are now
    Dead in my eyes, dead as a theatre
    Fresh emptied of spectators. Twice five years
    Or less I might have seen, when first my mind
    With conscious pleasure opened to the charm
    Of words in tuneful order, found them sweet
    For their own 'sakes', a passion, and a power;
    And phrases pleased me chosen for delight,
    For pomp, or love. Oft, in the public roads
    Yet unfrequented, while the morning light
    Was yellowing the hill tops, I went abroad
    With a dear friend, and for the better part
    Of two delightful hours we strolled along
    By the still borders of the misty lake,
    Repeating favourite verses with one voice,
    Or conning more, as happy as the birds
    That round us chaunted. Well might we be glad,
    Lifted above the ground by airy fancies,
    More bright than madness or the dreams of wine;
    And, though full oft the objects of our love
    Were false, and in their splendour overwrought,
    Yet was there surely then no vulgar power
    Working within us,--nothing less, in truth,
    Than that most noble attribute of man,
    Though yet untutored and inordinate,
    That wish for something loftier, more adorned,
    Than is the common aspect, daily garb,
    Of human life. What wonder, then, if sounds
    Of exultation echoed through the groves!
    For, images, and sentiments, and words,
    And everything encountered or pursued
    In that delicious world of poesy,
    Kept holiday, a never-ending show,
    With music, incense, festival, and flowers!

    Here must we pause: this only let me add,
    From heart-experience, and in humblest sense
    Of modesty, that he, who in his youth
    A daily wanderer among woods and fields
    With living Nature hath been intimate,
    Not only in that raw unpractised time
    Is stirred to ecstasy, as others are,
    By glittering verse; but further, doth receive,
    In measure only dealt out to himself,
    Knowledge and increase of enduring joy
    From the great Nature that exists in works
    Of mighty Poets. Visionary power
    Attends the motions of the viewless winds,
    Embodied in the mystery of words:
    There, darkness makes abode, and all the host
    Of shadowy things work endless changes,--there,
    As in a mansion like their proper home,
    Even forms and substances are circumfused
    By that transparent veil with light divine,
    And, through the turnings intricate of verse,
    Present themselves as objects recognised,
    In flashes, and with glory not their own.

    NOTES

    4 See "There Was a Boy" (1799).

    Wordsworth, William. 1888. Complete Poetical Works. London: Macmillan.







    BOOK SIXTH. CAMBRIDGE AND THE ALPS



    THE leaves were fading when to Esthwaite's banks
    And the simplicities of cottage life
    I bade farewell; and, one among the youth
    Who, summoned by that season, reunite
    As scattered birds troop to the fowler's lure,
    Went back to Granta's cloisters, not so prompt
    Or eager, though as gay and undepressed
    In mind, as when I thence had taken flight
    A few short months before. I turned my face
    Without repining from the coves and heights
    Clothed in the sunshine of the withering fern;
    Quitted, not loth, the mild magnificence
    Of calmer lakes and louder streams; and you,
    Frank-hearted maids of rocky Cumberland,
    You and your not unwelcome days of mirth,
    Relinquished, and your nights of revelry,
    And in my own unlovely cell sate down
    In lightsome mood--such privilege has youth
    That cannot take long leave of pleasant thoughts.

    The bonds of indolent society
    Relaxing in their hold, henceforth I lived
    More to myself. Two winters may be passed
    Without a separate notice: many books
    Were skimmed, devoured, or studiously perused,
    But with no settled plan. I was detached
    Internally from academic cares;
    Yet independent study seemed a course
    Of hardy disobedience toward friends
    And kindred, proud rebellion and unkind.
    This spurious virtue, rather let it bear
    A name it now deserves, this cowardice,
    Gave treacherous sanction to that over-love
    Of freedom which encouraged me to turn
    From regulations even of my own
    As from restraints and bonds. Yet who can tell--
    Who knows what thus may have been gained, both then
    And at a later season, or preserved;
    What love of nature, what original strength
    Of contemplation, what intuitive truths
    The deepest and the best, what keen research,
    Unbiassed, unbewildered, and unawed?

    The Poet's soul was with me at that time;
    Sweet meditations, the still overflow
    Of present happiness, while future years
    Lacked not anticipations, tender dreams,
    No few of which have since been realised;
    And some remain, hopes for my future life.
    Four years and thirty, told this very week,
    Have I been now a sojourner on earth,
    By sorrow not unsmitten; yet for me
    Life's morning radiance hath not left the hills,
    Her dew is on the flowers. Those were the days
    Which also first emboldened me to trust
    With firmness, hitherto but slightly touched
    By such a daring thought, that I might leave
    Some monument behind me which pure hearts
    Should reverence. The instinctive humbleness,
    Maintained even by the very name and thought
    Of printed books and authorship, began
    To melt away; and further, the dread awe
    Of mighty names was softened down and seemed
    Approachable, admitting fellowship
    Of modest sympathy. Such aspect now,
    Though not familiarly, my mind put on,
    Content to observe, to achieve, and to enjoy.

    All winter long, whenever free to choose,
    Did I by night frequent the College grove
    And tributary walks; the last, and oft
    The only one, who had been lingering there
    Through hours of silence, till the porter's bell,
    A punctual follower on the stroke of nine,
    Rang with its blunt unceremonious voice;
    Inexorable summons! Lofty elms,
    Inviting shades of opportune recess,
    Bestowed composure on a neighbourhood
    Unpeaceful in itself. A single tree
    With sinuous trunk, boughs exquisitely wreathed,
    Grew there; an ash which Winter for himself
    Decked out with pride, and with outlandish grace:
    Up from the ground, and almost to the top,
    The trunk and every master branch were green
    With clustering ivy, and the lightsome twigs
    And outer spray profusely tipped with seeds
    That hung in yellow tassels, while the air
    Stirred them, not voiceless. Often have I stood
    Foot-bound uplooking at this lovely tree
    Beneath a frosty moon. The hemisphere
    Of magic fiction, verse of mine perchance
    May never tread; but scarcely Spenser's self
    Could have more tranquil visions in his youth,
    Or could more bright appearances create
    Of human forms with superhuman powers,
    Than I beheld, loitering on calm clear nights
    Alone, beneath this fairy work of earth.

    On the vague reading of a truant youth
    'Twere idle to descant. My inner judgment
    Not seldom differed from my taste in books,
    As if it appertained to another mind,
    And yet the books which then I valued most
    Are dearest to me 'now'; for, having scanned,
    Not heedlessly, the laws, and watched the forms
    Of Nature, in that knowledge I possessed
    A standard, often usefully applied,
    Even when unconsciously, to things removed
    From a familiar sympathy.--In fine,
    I was a better judge of thoughts than words,
    Misled in estimating words, not only
    By common inexperience of youth,
    But by the trade in classic niceties,
    The dangerous craft, of culling term and phrase
    From languages that want the living voice
    To carry meaning to the natural heart;
    To tell us what is passion, what is truth,
    What reason, what simplicity and sense.

    Yet may we not entirely overlook
    The pleasure gathered from the rudiments
    Of geometric science. Though advanced
    In these enquiries, with regret I speak,
    No farther than the threshold, there I found
    Both elevation and composed delight:
    With Indian awe and wonder, ignorance pleased
    With its own struggles, did I meditate
    On the relation those abstractions bear
    To Nature's laws, and by what process led,
    Those immaterial agents bowed their heads
    Duly to serve the mind of earth-born man;
    From star to star, from kindred sphere to sphere,
    From system on to system without end.

    More frequently from the same source I drew
    A pleasure quiet and profound, a sense
    Of permanent and universal sway,
    And paramount belief; there, recognised
    A type, for finite natures, of the one
    Supreme Existence, the surpassing life
    Which--to the boundaries of space and time,
    Of melancholy space and doleful time,
    Superior and incapable of change,
    Nor touched by welterings of passion--is,
    And hath the name of, God. Transcendent peace
    And silence did await upon these thoughts
    That were a frequent comfort to my youth.

    'Tis told by one whom stormy waters threw,
    With fellow-sufferers by the shipwreck spared,
    Upon a desert coast, that having brought
    To land a single volume, saved by chance,
    A treatise of Geometry, he wont,
    Although of food and clothing destitute,
    And beyond common wretchedness depressed,
    To part from company and take this book
    (Then first a self-taught pupil in its truths)
    To spots remote, and draw his diagrams
    With a long staff upon the sand, and thus
    Did oft beguile his sorrow, and almost
    Forget his feeling: so (if like effect
    From the same cause produced, 'mid outward things
    So different, may rightly be compared),
    So was it then with me, and so will be
    With Poets ever. Mighty is the charm
    Of those abstractions to a mind beset
    With images and haunted by herself,
    And specially delightful unto me
    Was that clear synthesis built up aloft
    So gracefully; even then when it appeared
    Not more than a mere plaything, or a toy
    To sense embodied: not the thing it is
    In verity, an independent world,
    Created out of pure intelligence.

    Such dispositions then were mine unearned
    By aught, I fear, of genuine desert--
    Mine, through heaven's grace and inborn aptitudes. 0
    And not to leave the story of that time
    Imperfect, with these habits must be joined,
    Moods melancholy, fits of spleen, that loved
    A pensive sky, sad days, and piping winds,
    The twilight more than dawn, autumn than spring;
    A treasured and luxurious gloom of choice
    And inclination mainly, and the mere
    Redundancy of youth's contentedness.
    --To time thus spent, add multitudes of hours
    Pilfered away, by what the Bard who sang
    Of the Enchanter Indolence hath called
    "Good-natured lounging," and behold a map
    Of my collegiate life--far less intense
    Than duty called for, or, without regard
    To duty, 'might' have sprung up of itself
    By change of accidents, or even, to speak
    Without unkindness, in another place.
    Yet why take refuge in that plea?--the fault,
    This I repeat, was mine; mine be the blame.

    In summer, making quest for works of art,
    Or scenes renowned for beauty, I explored
    That streamlet whose blue current works its way
    Between romantic Dovedale's spiry rocks;
    Pried into Yorkshire dales, or hidden tracts
    Of my own native region, and was blest
    Between these sundry wanderings with a joy
    Above all joys, that seemed another morn
    Risen on mid noon; blest with the presence, Friend
    Of that sole Sister, her who hath been long
    Dear to thee also, thy true friend and mine,
    Now, after separation desolate,
    Restored to me--such absence that she seemed
    A gift then first bestowed. The varied banks
    Of Emont, hitherto unnamed in song,
    And that monastic castle, 'mid tall trees,
    Low standing by the margin of the stream,
    A mansion visited (as fame reports)
    By Sidney, where, in sight of our Helvellyn,
    Or stormy Cross-fell, snatches he might pen
    Of his Arcadia, by fraternal love
    Inspired;--that river and those mouldering towers
    Have seen us side by side, when, having clomb
    The darksome windings of a broken stair,
    And crept along a ridge of fractured wall,
    Not without trembling, we in safety looked
    Forth, through some Gothic window's open space,
    And gathered with one mind a rich reward
    From the far-stretching landscape, by the light
    Of morning beautified, or purple eve;
    Or, not less pleased, lay on some turret's head,
    Catching from tufts of grass and hare-bell flowers
    Their faintest whisper to the passing breeze,
    Given out while mid-day heat oppressed the plains.

    Another maid there was, who also shed
    A gladness o'er that season, then to me,
    By her exulting outside look of youth
    And placid under-countenance, first endeared;
    That other spirit, Coleridge! who is now
    So near to us, that meek confiding heart,
    So reverenced by us both. O'er paths and fields
    In all that neighbourhood, through narrow lanes
    Of eglantine, and through the shady woods,
    And o'er the Border Beacon, and the waste
    Of naked pools, and common crags that lay
    Exposed on the bare fell, were scattered love,
    The spirit of pleasure, and youth's golden gleam.
    O Friend! we had not seen thee at that time,
    And yet a power is on me, and a strong
    Confusion, and I seem to plant thee there.
    Far art thou wandered now in search of health
    And milder breezes,--melancholy lot!
    But thou art with us, with us in the past,
    The present, with us in the times to come.
    There is no grief, no sorrow, no despair,
    No languor, no dejection, no dismay,
    No absence scarcely can there be, for those
    Who love as we do. Speed thee well! divide
    With us thy pleasure; thy returning strength,
    Receive it daily as a joy of ours;
    Share with us thy fresh spirits, whether gift
    Of gales Etesian or of tender thoughts.

    I, too, have been a wanderer; but, alas!
    How different the fate of different men.
    Though mutually unknown, yea nursed and reared
    As if in several elements, we were framed
    To bend at last to the same discipline,
    Predestined, if two beings ever were,
    To seek the same delights, and have one health,
    One happiness. Throughout this narrative,
    Else sooner ended, I have borne in mind
    For whom it registers the birth, and marks the growth,
    Of gentleness, simplicity, and truth,
    And joyous loves, that hallow innocent days
    Of peace and self-command. Of rivers, fields,
    And groves I speak to thee, my Friend! to thee,
    Who, yet a liveried schoolboy, in the depths
    Of the huge city, on the leaded roof
    Of that wide edifice, thy school and home,
    Wert used to lie and gaze upon the clouds
    Moving in heaven; or, of that pleasure tired,
    To shut thine eyes, and by internal light
    See trees, and meadows, and thy native stream,
    Far distant, thus beheld from year to year
    Of a long exile. Nor could I forget,
    In this late portion of my argument,
    That scarcely, as my term of pupilage
    Ceased, had I left those academic bowers
    When thou wert thither guided. From the heart
    Of London, and from cloisters there, thou camest.
    And didst sit down in temperance and peace,
    A rigorous student. What a stormy course
    Then followed. Oh! it is a pang that calls
    For utterance, to think what easy change
    Of circumstances might to thee have spared
    A world of pain, ripened a thousand hopes,
    For ever withered. Through this retrospect
    Of my collegiate life I still have had
    Thy after-sojourn in the self-same place
    Present before my eyes, have played with times
    And accidents as children do with cards,
    Or as a man, who, when his house is built,
    A frame locked up in wood and stone, doth still,
    As impotent fancy prompts, by his fireside,
    Rebuild it to his liking. I have thought
    Of thee, thy learning, gorgeous eloquence,
    And all the strength and plumage of thy youth,
    Thy subtle speculations, toils abstruse
    Among the schoolmen, and Platonic forms
    Of wild ideal pageantry, shaped out
    From things well-matched or ill, and words for things, 0
    The self-created sustenance of a mind
    Debarred from Nature's living images,
    Compelled to be a life unto herself,
    And unrelentingly possessed by thirst
    Of greatness, love, and beauty. Not alone,
    Ah! surely not in singleness of heart
    Should I have seen the light of evening fade
    From smooth Cam's silent waters: had we met,
    Even at that early time, needs must I trust
    In the belief, that my maturer age,
    My calmer habits, and more steady voice,
    Would with an influence benign have soothed,
    Or chased away, the airy wretchedness
    That battened on thy youth. But thou hast trod
    A march of glory, which doth put to shame
    These vain regrets; health suffers in thee, else
    Such grief for thee would be the weakest thought
    That ever harboured in the breast of man.

    A passing word erewhile did lightly touch
    On wanderings of my own, that now embraced
    With livelier hope a region wider far.

    When the third summer freed us from restraint,
    A youthful friend, he too a mountaineer,
    Not slow to share my wishes, took his staff,
    And sallying forth, we journeyed side by side,
    Bound to the distant Alps. A hardy slight,
    Did this unprecedented course imply,
    Of college studies and their set rewards;
    Nor had, in truth, the scheme been formed by me
    Without uneasy forethought of the pain,
    The censures, and ill-omening, of those
    To whom my worldly interests were dear.
    But Nature then was sovereign in my mind,
    And mighty forms, seizing a youthful fancy,
    Had given a charter to irregular hopes.
    In any age of uneventful calm
    Among the nations, surely would my heart
    Have been possessed by similar desire;
    But Europe at that time was thrilled with joy,
    France standing on the top of golden hours,
    And human nature seeming born again.

    Lightly equipped, and but a few brief looks
    Cast on the white cliffs of our native shore
    From the receding vessel's deck, we chanced
    To land at Calais on the very eve
    Of that great federal day; and there we saw,
    In a mean city, and among a few,
    How bright a face is worn when joy of one
    Is joy for tens of millions. Southward thence
    We held our way, direct through hamlets, towns,
    Gaudy with reliques of that festival,
    Flowers left to wither on triumphal arcs,
    And window-garlands. On the public roads,
    And, once, three days successively, through paths
    By which our toilsome journey was abridged,
    Among sequestered villages we walked
    And found benevolence and blessedness
    Spread like a fragrance everywhere, when spring
    Hath left no corner of the land untouched;
    Where elms for many and many a league in files
    With their thin umbrage, on the stately roads
    Of that great kingdom, rustled o'er our heads,
    For ever near us as we paced along:
    How sweet at such a time, with such delight
    On every side, in prime of youthful strength,
    To feed a Poet's tender melancholy
    And fond conceit of sadness, with the sound
    Of undulations varying as might please
    The wind that swayed them; once, and more than once,
    Unhoused beneath the evening star we saw
    Dances of liberty, and, in late hours
    Of darkness, dances in the open air
    Deftly prolonged, though grey-haired lookers on
    Might waste their breath in chiding.
    Under hills--
    The vine-clad hills and slopes of Burgundy,
    Upon the bosom of the gentle Saone
    We glided forward with the flowing stream.
    Swift Rhone! thou wert the 'wings' on which we cut
    A winding passage with majestic ease
    Between thy lofty rocks. Enchanting show
    Those woods and farms and orchards did present,
    And single cottages and lurking towns,
    Reach after reach, succession without end
    Of deep and stately vales! A lonely pair
    Of strangers, till day closed, we sailed along
    Clustered together with a merry crowd
    Of those emancipated, a blithe host
    Of travellers, chiefly delegates, returning
    From the great spousals newly solemnised
    At their chief city, in the sight of Heaven.
    Like bees they swarmed, gaudy and gay as bees;
    Some vapoured in the unruliness of joy,
    And with their swords flourished as if to fight
    The saucy air. In this proud company
    We landed--took with them our evening meal,
    Guests welcome almost as the angels were
    To Abraham of old. The supper done,
    With flowing cups elate and happy thoughts
    We rose at signal given, and formed a ring
    And, hand in hand, danced round and round the board; 0
    All hearts were open, every tongue was loud
    With amity and glee; we bore a name
    Honoured in France, the name of Englishmen,
    And hospitably did they give us hail,
    As their forerunners in a glorious course;
    And round and round the board we danced again.
    With these blithe friends our voyage we renewed
    At early dawn. The monastery bells
    Made a sweet jingling in our youthful ears;
    The rapid river flowing without noise,
    And each uprising or receding spire
    Spake with a sense of peace, at intervals
    Touching the heart amid the boisterous crew
    By whom we were encompassed. Taking leave
    Of this glad throng, foot-travellers side by side,
    Measuring our steps in quiet, we pursued
    Our journey, and ere twice the sun had set
    Beheld the Convent of Chartreuse, and there
    Rested within an awful 'solitude':
    Yes, for even then no other than a place
    Of soul-affecting 'solitude' appeared
    That far-famed region, though our eyes had seen,
    As toward the sacred mansion we advanced,
    Arms flashing, and a military glare
    Of riotous men commissioned to expel
    The blameless inmates, and belike subvert
    That frame of social being, which so long
    Had bodied forth the ghostliness of things
    In silence visible and perpetual calm.
    --"Stay, stay your sacrilegious hands!"--The voice 0
    Was Nature's, uttered from her Alpine throne;
    I heard it then and seem to hear it now--
    "Your impious work forbear, perish what may,
    Let this one temple last, be this one spot
    Of earth devoted to eternity!"
    She ceased to speak, but while St. Bruno's pines
    Waved their dark tops, not silent as they waved,
    And while below, along their several beds,
    Murmured the sister streams of Life and Death,
    Thus by conflicting passions pressed, my heart
    Responded; "Honour to the patriot's zeal!
    Glory and hope to new-born Liberty!
    Hail to the mighty projects of the time!
    Discerning sword that Justice wields, do thou
    Go forth and prosper; and, ye purging fires,
    Up to the loftiest towers of Pride ascend,
    Fanned by the breath of angry Providence.
    But oh! if Past and Future be the wings
    On whose support harmoniously conjoined
    Moves the great spirit of human knowledge, spare
    These courts of mystery, where a step advanced
    Between the portals of the shadowy rocks
    Leaves far behind life's treacherous vanities,
    For penitential tears and trembling hopes
    Exchanged--to equalise in God's pure sight
    Monarch and peasant: be the house redeemed
    With its unworldly votaries, for the sake
    Of conquest over sense, hourly achieved
    Through faith and meditative reason, resting
    Upon the word of heaven-imparted truth,
    Calmly triumphant; and for humbler claim
    Of that imaginative impulse sent
    From these majestic floods, yon shining cliffs,
    The untransmuted shapes of many worlds,
    Cerulean ether's pure inhabitants,
    These forests unapproachable by death,
    That shall endure as long as man endures,
    To think, to hope, to worship, and to feel,
    To struggle, to be lost within himself
    In trepidation, from the blank abyss
    To look with bodily eyes, and be consoled."
    Not seldom since that moment have I wished
    That thou, O Friend! the trouble or the calm
    Hadst shared, when, from profane regards apart,
    In sympathetic reverence we trod
    The floors of those dim cloisters, till that hour,
    From their foundation, strangers to the presence
    Of unrestricted and unthinking man.
    Abroad, how cheeringly the sunshine lay
    Upon the open lawns! Vallombre's groves
    Entering, we fed the soul with darkness; thence
    Issued, and with uplifted eyes beheld,
    In different quarters of the bending sky,
    The cross of Jesus stand erect, as if
    Hands of angelic powers had fixed it there,
    Memorial reverenced by a thousand storms;
    Yet then, from the undiscriminating sweep
    And rage of one State-whirlwind, insecure.

    'Tis not my present purpose to retrace
    That variegated journey step by step.
    A march it was of military speed,
    And Earth did change her images and forms
    Before us, fast as clouds are changed in heaven.
    Day after day, up early and down late,
    From hill to vale we dropped, from vale to hill
    Mounted--from province on to province swept,
    Keen hunters in a chase of fourteen weeks,
    Eager as birds of prey, or as a ship
    Upon the stretch, when winds are blowing fair:
    Sweet coverts did we cross of pastoral life,
    Enticing valleys, greeted them and left
    Too soon, while yet the very flash and gleam
    Of salutation were not passed away.
    Oh! sorrow for the youth who could have seen,
    Unchastened, unsubdued, unawed, unraised
    To patriarchal dignity of mind,
    And pure simplicity of wish and will,
    Those sanctified abodes of peaceful man,
    Pleased (though to hardship born, and compassed round
    With danger, varying as the seasons change),
    Pleased with his daily task, or, if not pleased,
    Contented, from the moment that the dawn
    (Ah! surely not without attendant gleams
    Of soul-illumination) calls him forth
    To industry, by glistenings flung on rocks,
    Whose evening shadows lead him to repose.

    Well might a stranger look with bounding heart
    Down on a green recess, the first I saw
    Of those deep haunts, an aboriginal vale,
    Quiet and lorded over and possessed
    By naked huts, wood-built, and sown like tents
    Or Indian cabins over the fresh lawns
    And by the river side.
    That very day,
    From a bare ridge we also first beheld
    Unveiled the summit of Mont Blanc, and grieved
    To have a soulless image on the eye
    That had usurped upon a living thought
    That never more could be. The wondrous Vale
    Of Chamouny stretched far below, and soon
    With its dumb cataracts and streams of ice,
    A motionless array of mighty waves,
    Five rivers broad and vast, made rich amends,
    And reconciled us to realities;
    There small birds warble from the leafy trees,
    The eagle soars high in the element,
    There doth the reaper bind the yellow sheaf,
    The maiden spread the haycock in the sun,
    While Winter like a well-tamed lion walks,
    Descending from the mountain to make sport
    Among the cottages by beds of flowers.

    Whate'er in this wide circuit we beheld,
    Or heard, was fitted to our unripe state
    Of intellect and heart. With such a book
    Before our eyes, we could not choose but read
    Lessons of genuine brotherhood, the plain
    And universal reason of mankind,
    The truths of young and old. Nor, side by side
    Pacing, two social pilgrims, or alone
    Each with his humour, could we fail to abound
    In dreams and fictions, pensively composed:
    Dejection taken up for pleasure's sake,
    And gilded sympathies, the willow wreath,
    And sober posies of funereal flowers,
    Gathered among those solitudes sublime
    From formal gardens of the lady Sorrow,
    Did sweeten many a meditative hour.

    Yet still in me with those soft luxuries
    Mixed something of stern mood, an underthirst
    Of vigour seldom utterly allayed:
    And from that source how different a sadness
    Would issue, let one incident make known.
    When from the Vallais we had turned, and clomb
    Along the Simplon's steep and rugged road,
    Following a band of muleteers, we reached
    A halting-place, where all together took
    Their noon-tide meal. Hastily rose our guide,
    Leaving us at the board; awhile we lingered,
    Then paced the beaten downward way that led
    Right to a rough stream's edge, and there broke off;
    The only track now visible was one
    That from the torrent's further brink held forth
    Conspicuous invitation to ascend
    A lofty mountain. After brief delay
    Crossing the unbridged stream, that road we took,
    And clomb with eagerness, till anxious fears
    Intruded, for we failed to overtake
    Our comrades gone before. By fortunate chance,
    While every moment added doubt to doubt,
    A peasant met us, from whose mouth we learned
    That to the spot which had perplexed us first
    We must descend, and there should find the road,
    Which in the stony channel of the stream
    Lay a few steps, and then along its banks;
    And, that our future course, all plain to sight,
    Was downwards, with the current of that stream.
    Loth to believe what we so grieved to hear,
    For still we had hopes that pointed to the clouds,
    We questioned him again, and yet again;
    But every word that from the peasant's lips
    Came in reply, translated by our feelings,
    Ended in this,--'that we had crossed the Alps'.

    Imagination--here the Power so called
    Through sad incompetence of human speech,
    That awful Power rose from the mind's abyss
    Like an unfathered vapour that enwraps,
    At once, some lonely traveller. I was lost;
    Halted without an effort to break through;
    But to my conscious soul I now can say--
    "I recognise thy glory:" in such strength
    Of usurpation, when the light of sense
    Goes out, but with a flash that has revealed
    The invisible world, doth greatness make abode,
    There harbours; whether we be young or old,
    Our destiny, our being's heart and home,
    Is with infinitude, and only there;
    With hope it is, hope that can never die,
    Effort, and expectation, and desire,
    And something evermore about to be.
    Under such banners militant, the soul
    Seeks for no trophies, struggles for no spoils
    That may attest her prowess, blest in thoughts
    That are their own perfection and reward,
    Strong in herself and in beatitude
    That hides her, like the mighty flood of Nile
    Poured from his fount of Abyssinian clouds
    To fertilise the whole Egyptian plain.

    The melancholy slackening that ensued
    Upon those tidings by the peasant given
    Was soon dislodged. Downwards we hurried fast,
    And, with the half-shaped road which we had missed, 0
    Entered a narrow chasm. The brook and road
    Were fellow-travellers in this gloomy strait,
    And with them did we journey several hours
    At a slow pace. The immeasurable height
    Of woods decaying, never to be decayed,
    The stationary blasts of waterfalls,
    And in the narrow rent at every turn
    Winds thwarting winds, bewildered and forlorn,
    The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky,
    The rocks that muttered close upon our ears,
    Black drizzling crags that spake by the way-side
    As if a voice were in them, the sick sight
    And giddy prospect of the raving stream,
    The unfettered clouds and region of the Heavens,
    Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light--
    Were all like workings of one mind, the features
    Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree;
    Characters of the great Apocalypse,
    The types and symbols of Eternity,
    Of first, and last, and midst, and without end.

    That night our lodging was a house that stood
    Alone within the valley, at a point
    Where, tumbling from aloft, a torrent swelled
    The rapid stream whose margin we had trod;
    A dreary mansion, large beyond all need,
    With high and spacious rooms, deafened and stunned
    By noise of waters, making innocent sleep
    Lie melancholy among weary bones.

    Uprisen betimes, our journey we renewed,
    Led by the stream, ere noon-day magnified
    Into a lordly river, broad and deep,
    Dimpling along in silent majesty,
    With mountains for its neighbours, and in view
    Of distant mountains and their snowy tops,
    And thus proceeding to Locarno's Lake,
    Fit resting-place for such a visitant.
    Locarno! spreading out in width like Heaven,
    How dost thou cleave to the poetic heart,
    Bask in the sunshine of the memory;
    And Como! thou, a treasure whom the earth
    Keeps to herself, confined as in a depth
    Of Abyssinian privacy. I spake
    Of thee, thy chestnut woods, and garden plots
    Of Indian corn tended by dark-eyed maids;
    Thy lofty steeps, and pathways roofed with vines,
    Winding from house to house, from town to town,
    Sole link that binds them to each other; walks,
    League after league, and cloistral avenues,
    Where silence dwells if music be not there:
    While yet a youth undisciplined in verse,
    Through fond ambition of that hour I strove
    To chant your praise; nor can approach you now
    Ungreeted by a more melodious Song,
    Where tones of Nature smoothed by learned Art
    May flow in lasting current. Like a breeze
    Or sunbeam over your domain I passed
    In motion without pause; but ye have left
    Your beauty with me, a serene accord
    Of forms and colours, passive, yet endowed
    In their submissiveness with power as sweet
    And gracious, almost, might I dare to say,
    As virtue is, or goodness; sweet as love,
    Or the remembrance of a generous deed,
    Or mildest visitations of pure thought,
    When God, the giver of all joy, is thanked
    Religiously, in silent blessedness;
    Sweet as this last herself, for such it is.

    With those delightful pathways we advanced,
    For two days' space, in presence of the Lake,
    That, stretching far among the Alps, assumed
    A character more stern. The second night,
    From sleep awakened, and misled by sound
    Of the church clock telling the hours with strokes
    Whose import then we had not learned, we rose
    By moonlight, doubting not that day was nigh,
    And that meanwhile, by no uncertain path,
    Along the winding margin of the lake,
    Led, as before, we should behold the scene
    Hushed in profound repose. We left the town
    Of Gravedona with this hope; but soon
    Were lost, bewildered among woods immense,
    And on a rock sate down, to wait for day.
    An open place it was, and overlooked,
    From high, the sullen water far beneath,
    On which a dull red image of the moon
    Lay bedded, changing oftentimes its form
    Like an uneasy snake. From hour to hour
    We sate and sate, wondering, as if the night
    Had been ensnared by witchcraft. On the rock
    At last we stretched our weary limbs for sleep,
    But 'could not' sleep, tormented by the stings
    Of insects, which, with noise like that of noon,
    Filled all the woods: the cry of unknown birds;
    The mountains more by blackness visible
    And their own size, than any outward light;
    The breathless wilderness of clouds; the clock
    That told, with unintelligible voice,
    The widely parted hours; the noise of streams,
    And sometimes rustling motions nigh at hand,
    That did not leave us free from personal fear;
    And, lastly, the withdrawing moon, that set
    Before us, while she still was high in heaven;--
    These were our food; and such a summer's night
    Followed that pair of golden days that shed
    On Como's Lake, and all that round it lay,
    Their fairest, softest, happiest influence.

    But here I must break off, and bid farewell
    To days, each offering some new sight, or fraught
    With some untried adventure, in a course
    Prolonged till sprinklings of autumnal snow
    Checked our unwearied steps. Let this alone
    Be mentioned as a parting word, that not
    In hollow exultation, dealing out
    Hyperboles of praise comparative,
    Not rich one moment to be poor for ever;
    Not prostrate, overborne, as if the mind
    Herself were nothing, a mere pensioner
    On outward forms--did we in presence stand
    Of that magnificent region. On the front
    Of this whole Song is written that my heart
    Must, in such Temple, needs have offered up
    A different worship. Finally, whate'er
    I saw, or heard, or felt, was but a stream
    That flowed into a kindred stream; a gale,
    Confederate with the current of the soul,
    To speed my voyage; every sound or sight,
    In its degree of power, administered
    To grandeur or to tenderness,--to the one
    Directly, but to tender thoughts by means
    Less often instantaneous in effect;
    Led me to these by paths that, in the main,
    Were more circuitous, but not less sure
    Duly to reach the point marked out by Heaven.

    Oh, most beloved Friend! a glorious time,
    A happy time that was; triumphant looks
    Were then the common language of all eyes;
    As if awaked from sleep, the Nations hailed
    Their great expectancy: the fife of war
    Was then a spirit-stirring sound indeed,
    A blackbird's whistle in a budding grove.
    We left the Swiss exulting in the fate
    Of their near neighbours; and, when shortening fast
    Our pilgrimage, nor distant far from home,
    We crossed the Brabant armies on the fret
    For battle in the cause of Liberty.
    A stripling, scarcely of the household then
    Of social life, I looked upon these things
    As from a distance; heard, and saw, and felt,
    Was touched, but with no intimate concern;
    I seemed to move along them, as a bird
    Moves through the air, or as a fish pursues
    Its sport, or feeds in its proper element;
    I wanted not that joy, I did not need
    Such help; the ever-living universe,
    Turn where I might, was opening out its glories,
    And the independent spirit of pure youth
    Called forth, at every season, new delights,
    Spread round my steps like sunshine o'er green fields.

    NOTES

    1 See "The Simplon Pass" (1799).

    Wordsworth, William. 1888. Complete Poetical Works. London: Macmillan.









    BOOK SEVENTH. RESIDENCE IN LONDON



    SIX changeful years have vanished since I first
    Poured out (saluted by that quickening breeze
    Which met me issuing from the City's walls)
    A glad preamble to this Verse: I sang
    Aloud, with fervour irresistible
    Of short-lived transport, like a torrent bursting,
    From a black thunder-cloud, down Scafell's side
    To rush and disappear. But soon broke forth
    (So willed the Muse) a less impetuous stream,
    That flowed awhile with unabating strength,
    Then stopped for years; not audible again
    Before last primrose-time. Beloved Friend!
    The assurance which then cheered some heavy thoughts
    On thy departure to a foreign land
    Has failed; too slowly moves the promised work.
    Through the whole summer have I been at rest,
    Partly from voluntary holiday,
    And part through outward hindrance. But I heard,
    After the hour of sunset yester-even,
    Sitting within doors between light and dark,
    A choir of redbreasts gathered somewhere near
    My threshold,--minstrels from the distant woods
    Sent in on Winter's service, to announce,
    With preparation artful and benign,
    That the rough lord had left the surly North
    On his accustomed journey. The delight,
    Due to this timely notice, unawares
    Smote me, and, listening, I in whispers said,
    "Ye heartsome Choristers, ye and I will be
    Associates, and, unscared by blustering winds,
    Will chant together." Thereafter, as the shades
    Of twilight deepened, going forth, I spied
    A glow-worm underneath a dusky plume
    Or canopy of yet unwithered fern,
    Clear-shining, like a hermit's taper seen
    Through a thick forest. Silence touched me here
    No less than sound had done before; the child
    Of Summer, lingering, shining, by herself,
    The voiceless worm on the unfrequented hills,
    Seemed sent on the same errand with the choir
    Of Winter that had warbled at my door,
    And the whole year breathed tenderness and love.

    The last night's genial feeling overflowed
    Upon this morning, and my favourite grove,
    Tossing in sunshine its dark boughs aloft,
    As if to make the strong wind visible,
    Wakes in me agitations like its own,
    A spirit friendly to the Poet's task,
    Which we will now resume with lively hope,
    Nor checked by aught of tamer argument
    That lies before us, needful to be told.

    Returned from that excursion, soon I bade
    Farewell for ever to the sheltered seats
    Of gowned students, quitted hall and bower,
    And every comfort of that privileged ground,
    Well pleased to pitch a vagrant tent among
    The unfenced regions of society.

    Yet, undetermined to what course of life
    I should adhere, and seeming to possess
    A little space of intermediate time
    At full command, to London first I turned,
    In no disturbance of excessive hope,
    By personal ambition unenslaved,
    Frugal as there was need, and, though self-willed,
    From dangerous passions free. Three years had flown
    Since I had felt in heart and soul the shock
    Of the huge town's first presence, and had paced
    Her endless streets, a transient visitant:
    Now, fixed amid that concourse of mankind
    Where Pleasure whirls about incessantly,
    And life and labour seem but one, I filled
    An idler's place; an idler well content
    To have a house (what matter for a home?)
    That owned him; living cheerfully abroad
    With unchecked fancy ever on the stir,
    And all my young affections out of doors.

    There was a time when whatsoe'er is feigned
    Of airy palaces, and gardens built
    By Genii of romance; or hath in grave
    Authentic history been set forth of Rome,
    Alcairo, Babylon, or Persepolis;
    Or given upon report by pilgrim friars,
    Of golden cities ten months' journey deep
    Among Tartarian wilds--fell short, far short,
    Of what my fond simplicity believed
    And thought of London--held me by a chain
    Less strong of wonder and obscure delight.
    Whether the bolt of childhood's Fancy shot
    For me beyond its ordinary mark,
    'Twere vain to ask; but in our flock of boys
    Was One, a cripple from his birth, whom chance
    Summoned from school to London; fortunate
    And envied traveller! When the Boy returned,
    After short absence, curiously I scanned
    His mien and person, nor was free, in sooth,
    From disappointment, not to find some change
    In look and air, from that new region brought,
    As if from Fairy-land. Much I questioned him;
    And every word he uttered, on my ears
    Fell flatter than a caged parrot's note,
    That answers unexpectedly awry,
    And mocks the prompter's listening. Marvellous things
    Had vanity (quick Spirit that appears
    Almost as deeply seated and as strong
    In a Child's heart as fear itself) conceived
    For my enjoyment. Would that I could now
    Recall what then I pictured to myself,
    Of mitred Prelates, Lords in ermine clad,
    The King, and the King's Palace, and, not last,
    Nor least, Heaven bless him! the renowned Lord Mayor. 0
    Dreams not unlike to those which once begat
    A change of purpose in young Whittington,
    When he, a friendless and a drooping boy,
    Sate on a stone, and heard the bells speak out
    Articulate music. Above all, one thought
    Baffled my understanding: how men lived
    Even next-door neighbours, as we say, yet still
    Strangers, not knowing each the other's name.

    Oh, wondrous power of words, by simple faith
    Licensed to take the meaning that we love!
    Vauxhall and Ranelagh! I then had heard
    Of your green groves, and wilderness of lamps
    Dimming the stars, and fireworks magical,
    And gorgeous ladies, under splendid domes,
    Floating in dance, or warbling high in air
    The songs of spirits! Nor had Fancy fed
    With less delight upon that other class
    Of marvels, broad-day wonders permanent:
    The River proudly bridged; the dizzy top
    And Whispering Gallery of St. Paul's; the tombs
    Of Westminster; the Giants of Guildhall;
    Bedlam, and those carved maniacs at the gates,
    Perpetually recumbent; Statues--man,
    And the horse under him--in gilded pomp
    Adorning flowery gardens, 'mid vast squares;
    The Monument, and that Chamber of the Tower
    Where England's sovereigns sit in long array,
    Their steeds bestriding,--every mimic shape
    Cased in the gleaming mail the monarch wore,
    Whether for gorgeous tournament addressed,
    Or life or death upon the battle-field.
    Those bold imaginations in due time
    Had vanished, leaving others in their stead:
    And now I looked upon the living scene;
    Familiarly perused it; oftentimes,
    In spite of strongest disappointment, pleased
    Through courteous self-submission, as a tax
    Paid to the object by prescriptive right.

    Rise up, thou monstrous ant-hill on the plain
    Of a too busy world! Before me flow,
    Thou endless stream of men and moving things!
    Thy every-day appearance, as it strikes--
    With wonder heightened, or sublimed by awe--
    On strangers, of all ages; the quick dance
    Of colours, lights, and forms; the deafening din;
    The comers and the goers face to face,
    Face after face; the string of dazzling wares,
    Shop after shop, with symbols, blazoned names,
    And all the tradesman's honours overhead:
    Here, fronts of houses, like a title-page,
    With letters huge inscribed from top to toe,
    Stationed above the door, like guardian saints;
    There, allegoric shapes, female or male,
    Or physiognomies of real men,
    Land-warriors, kings, or admirals of the sea,
    Boyle, Shakspeare, Newton, or the attractive head
    Of some quack-doctor, famous in his day.

    Meanwhile the roar continues, till at length,
    Escaped as from an enemy, we turn
    Abruptly into some sequestered nook,
    Still as a sheltered place when winds blow loud!
    At leisure, thence, through tracts of thin resort,
    And sights and sounds that come at intervals,
    We take our way. A raree-show is here,
    With children gathered round; another street
    Presents a company of dancing dogs,
    Or dromedary, with an antic pair
    Of monkeys on his back; a minstrel band
    Of Savoyards; or, single and alone,
    An English ballad-singer. Private courts,
    Gloomy as coffins, and unsightly lanes
    Thrilled by some female vendor's scream, belike
    The very shrillest of all London cries,
    May then entangle our impatient steps;
    Conducted through those labyrinths, unawares,
    To privileged regions and inviolate,
    Where from their airy lodges studious lawyers
    Look out on waters, walks, and gardens green.

    Thence back into the throng, until we reach,
    Following the tide that slackens by degrees,
    Some half-frequented scene, where wider streets
    Bring straggling breezes of suburban air.
    Here files of ballads dangle from dead walls;
    Advertisements, of giant-size, from high
    Press forward, in all colours, on the sight;
    These, bold in conscious merit, lower down;
    'That', fronted with a most imposing word,
    Is, peradventure, one in masquerade.
    As on the broadening causeway we advance,
    Behold, turned upwards, a face hard and strong
    In lineaments, and red with over-toil.
    'Tis one encountered here and everywhere;
    A travelling cripple, by the trunk cut short,
    And stumping on his arms. In sailor's garb
    Another lies at length, beside a range
    Of well-formed characters, with chalk inscribed
    Upon the smooth flint stones: the Nurse is here,
    The Bachelor, that loves to sun himself,
    The military Idler, and the Dame,
    That field-ward takes her walk with decent steps.

    Now homeward through the thickening hubbub, where
    See, among less distinguishable shapes,
    The begging scavenger, with hat in hand;
    The Italian, as he thrids his way with care,
    Steadying, far-seen, a frame of images
    Upon his head; with basket at his breast
    The Jew; the stately and slow-moving Turk,
    With freight of slippers piled beneath his arm!

    Enough;--the mighty concourse I surveyed
    With no unthinking mind, well pleased to note
    Among the crowd all specimens of man,
    Through all the colours which the sun bestows,
    And every character of form and face:
    The Swede, the Russian; from the genial south,
    The Frenchman and the Spaniard; from remote
    America, the Hunter-Indian; Moors,
    Malays, Lascars, the Tartar, the Chinese,
    And Negro Ladies in white muslin gowns.

    At leisure, then, I viewed, from day to day,
    The spectacles within doors,--birds and beasts
    Of every nature, and strange plants convened
    From every clime; and, next, those sights that ape
    The absolute presence of reality,
    Expressing, as in mirror, sea and land,
    And what earth is, and what she has to show.
    I do not here allude to subtlest craft,
    By means refined attaining purest ends,
    But imitations, fondly made in plain
    Confession of man's weakness and his loves.
    Whether the Painter, whose ambitious skill
    Submits to nothing less than taking in
    A whole horizon's circuit, do with power,
    Like that of angels or commissioned spirits,
    Fix us upon some lofty pinnacle,
    Or in a ship on waters, with a world
    Of life, and life-like mockery beneath,
    Above, behind, far stretching and before;
    Or more mechanic artist represent
    By scale exact, in model, wood or clay,
    From blended colours also borrowing help,
    Some miniature of famous spots or things,--
    St. Peter's Church; or, more aspiring aim,
    In microscopic vision, Rome herself;
    Or, haply, some choice rural haunt,--the Falls
    Of Tivoli; and, high upon that steep,
    The Sibyl's mouldering Temple! every tree,
    Villa, or cottage, lurking among rocks
    Throughout the landscape; tuft, stone scratch minute--
    All that the traveller sees when he is there.

    Add to these exhibitions, mute and still,
    Others of wider scope, where living men,
    Music, and shifting pantomimic scenes,
    Diversified the allurement. Need I fear
    To mention by its name, as in degree,
    Lowest of these and humblest in attempt,
    Yet richly graced with honours of her own,
    Half-rural Sadler's Wells? Though at that time
    Intolerant, as is the way of youth
    Unless itself be pleased, here more than once
    Taking my seat, I saw (nor blush to add,
    With ample recompense) giants and dwarfs,
    Clowns, conjurors, posture-masters, harlequins,
    Amid the uproar of the rabblement,
    Perform their feats. Nor was it mean delight
    To watch crude Nature work in untaught minds;
    To note the laws and progress of belief;
    Though obstinate on this way, yet on that
    How willingly we travel, and how far!
    To have, for instance, brought upon the scene
    The champion, Jack the Giant-killer: Lo!
    He dons his coat of darkness; on the stage
    Walks, and achieves his wonders, from the eye
    Of living Mortal covert, "as the moon
    Hid in her vacant interlunar cave."
    Delusion bold! and how can it be wrought?
    The garb he wears is black as death, the word
    "Invisible" flames forth upon his chest.

    Here, too, were "forms and pressures of the time,"
    Rough, bold, as Grecian comedy displayed
    When Art was young; dramas of living men,
    And recent things yet warm with life; a sea-fight,
    Shipwreck, or some domestic incident
    Divulged by Truth and magnified by Fame;
    Such as the daring brotherhood of late
    Set forth, too serious theme for that light place--
    I mean, O distant Friend! a story drawn
    From our own ground,--the Maid of Buttermere,--
    And how, unfaithful to a virtuous wife
    Deserted and deceived, the Spoiler came
    And wooed the artless daughter of the hills,
    And wedded her, in cruel mockery
    Of love and marriage bonds. These words to thee
    Must needs bring back the moment when we first,
    Ere the broad world rang with the maiden's name,
    Beheld her serving at the cottage inn;
    Both stricken, as she entered or withdrew,
    With admiration of her modest mien
    And carriage, marked by unexampled grace.
    We since that time not unfamiliarly
    Have seen her,--her discretion have observed,
    Her just opinions, delicate reserve,
    Her patience, and humility of mind
    Unspoiled by commendation and the excess
    Of public notice--an offensive light
    To a meek spirit suffering inwardly.

    From this memorial tribute to my theme
    I was returning, when, with sundry forms
    Commingled--shapes which met me in the way
    That we must tread--thy image rose again,
    Maiden of Buttermere! She lives in peace
    Upon the spot where she was born and reared;
    Without contamination doth she live
    In quietness, without anxiety:
    Beside the mountain chapel, sleeps in earth
    Her new-born infant, fearless as a lamb
    That, thither driven from some unsheltered place,
    Rests underneath the little rock-like pile
    When storms are raging. Happy are they both--
    Mother and child!--These feelings, in themselves
    Trite, do yet scarcely seem so when I think
    On those ingenuous moments of our youth
    Ere we have learnt by use to slight the crimes
    And sorrows of the world. Those simple days
    Are now my theme; and, foremost of the scenes,
    Which yet survive in memory, appears
    One, at whose centre sate a lovely Boy,
    A sportive infant, who, for six months' space,
    Not more, had been of age to deal about
    Articulate prattle--Child as beautiful
    As ever clung around a mother's neck,
    Or father fondly gazed upon with pride.
    There, too, conspicuous for stature tall
    And large dark eyes, beside her infant stood
    The mother; but, upon her cheeks diffused,
    False tints too well accorded with the glare
    From play-house lustres thrown without reserve
    On every object near. The Boy had been
    The pride and pleasure of all lookers-on
    In whatsoever place, but seemed in this
    A sort of alien scattered from the clouds.
    Of lusty vigour, more than infantine
    He was in limb, in cheek a summer rose
    Just three parts blown--a cottage-child--if e'er,
    By cottage-door on breezy mountain-side,
    Or in some sheltering vale, was seen a babe
    By Nature's gifts so favoured. Upon a board
    Decked with refreshments had this child been placed
    'His' little stage in the vast theatre,
    And there he sate, surrounded with a throng
    Of chance spectators, chiefly dissolute men
    And shameless women, treated and caressed;
    Ate, drank, and with the fruit and glasses played,
    While oaths and laughter and indecent speech
    Were rife about him as the songs of birds
    Contending after showers. The mother now
    Is fading out of memory, but I see
    The lovely Boy as I beheld him then
    Among the wretched and the falsely gay,
    Like one of those who walked with hair unsinged
    Amid the fiery furnace. Charms and spells
    Muttered on black and spiteful instigation
    Have stopped, as some believe, the kindliest growths.
    Ah, with how different spirit might a prayer
    Have been preferred, that this fair creature, checked
    By special privilege of Nature's love,
    Should in his childhood be detained for ever!
    But with its universal freight the tide
    Hath rolled along, and this bright innocent,
    Mary! may now have lived till he could look
    With envy on thy nameless babe that sleeps,
    Beside the mountain chapel, undisturbed.

    Four rapid years had scarcely then been told
    Since, travelling southward from our pastoral hills,
    I heard, and for the first time in my life,
    The voice of woman utter blasphemy--
    Saw woman as she is, to open shame
    Abandoned, and the pride of public vice;
    I shuddered, for a barrier seemed at once
    Thrown in that from humanity divorced
    Humanity, splitting the race of man
    In twain, yet leaving the same outward form.
    Distress of mind ensued upon the sight,
    And ardent meditation. Later years
    Brought to such spectacle a milder sadness,
    Feelings of pure commiseration, grief
    For the individual and the overthrow
    Of her soul's beauty; farther I was then
    But seldom led, or wished to go; in truth
    The sorrow of the passion stopped me there.

    But let me now, less moved, in order take
    Our argument. Enough is said to show
    How casual incidents of real life,
    Observed where pastime only had been sought,
    Outweighed, or put to flight, the set events
    And measured passions of the stage, albeit
    By Siddons trod in the fulness of her power.
    Yet was the theatre my dear delight;
    The very gilding, lamps and painted scrolls,
    And all the mean upholstery of the place,
    Wanted not animation, when the tide
    Of pleasure ebbed but to return as fast
    With the ever-shifting figures of the scene,
    Solemn or gay: whether some beauteous dame
    Advanced in radiance through a deep recess
    Of thick entangled forest, like the moon
    Opening the clouds; or sovereign king, announced
    With flourishing trumpet, came in full-blown state
    Of the world's greatness, winding round with train
    Of courtiers, banners, and a length of guards;
    Or captive led in abject weeds, and jingling
    His slender manacles; or romping girl
    Bounced, leapt, and pawed the air; or mumbling sire,
    A scare-crow pattern of old age dressed up
    In all the tatters of infirmity
    All loosely put together, hobbled in,
    Stumping upon a cane with which he smites,
    From time to time, the solid boards, and makes them
    Prate somewhat loudly of the whereabout
    Of one so overloaded with his years.
    But what of this! the laugh, the grin, grimace,
    The antics striving to outstrip each other,
    Were all received, the least of them not lost,
    With an unmeasured welcome. Through the night,
    Between the show, and many-headed mass
    Of the spectators, and each several nook
    Filled with its fray or brawl, how eagerly
    And with what flashes, as it were, the mind
    Turned this way--that way! sportive and alert
    And watchful, as a kitten when at play,
    While winds are eddying round her, among straws
    And rustling leaves. Enchanting age and sweet!
    Romantic almost, looked at through a space,
    How small, of intervening years! For then,
    Though surely no mean progress had been made
    In meditations holy and sublime,
    Yet something of a girlish child-like gloss
    Of novelty survived for scenes like these;
    Enjoyment haply handed down from times
    When at a country-playhouse, some rude barn
    Tricked out for that proud use, if I perchance
    Caught, on a summer evening through a chink
    In the old wall, an unexpected glimpse
    Of daylight, the bare thought of where I was
    Gladdened me more than if I had been led
    Into a dazzling cavern of romance,
    Crowded with Genii busy among works
    Not to be looked at by the common sun.

    The matter that detains us now may seem,
    To many, neither dignified enough
    Nor arduous, yet will not be scorned by them,
    Who, looking inward, have observed the ties
    That bind the perishable hours of life
    Each to the other, and the curious props
    By which the world of memory and thought
    Exists and is sustained. More lofty themes,
    Such as at least do wear a prouder face,
    Solicit our regard; but when I think
    Of these, I feel the imaginative power
    Languish within me; even then it slept,
    When, pressed by tragic sufferings, the heart
    Was more than full; amid my sobs and tears
    It slept, even in the pregnant season of youth.
    For though I was most passionately moved
    And yielded to all changes of the scene
    With an obsequious promptness, yet the storm
    Passed not beyond the suburbs of the mind;
    Save when realities of act and mien,
    The incarnation of the spirits that move
    In harmony amid the Poet's world,
    Rose to ideal grandeur, or, called forth
    By power of contrast, made me recognise,
    As at a glance, the things which I had shaped,
    And yet not shaped, had seen and scarcely seen,
    When, having closed the mighty Shakspeare's page,
    I mused, and thought, and felt, in solitude.

    Pass we from entertainments, that are such
    Professedly, to others titled higher,
    Yet, in the estimate of youth at least,
    More near akin to those than names imply,--
    I mean the brawls of lawyers in their courts
    Before the ermined judge, or that great stage
    Where senators, tongue-favoured men, perform,
    Admired and envied. Oh! the beating heart,
    When one among the prime of these rose up,--
    One, of whose name from childhood we had heard
    Familiarly, a household term, like those,
    The Bedfords, Glosters, Salsburys, of old,
    Whom the fifth Harry talks of. Silence! hush!
    This is no trifler, no short-flighted wit,
    No stammerer of a minute, painfully
    Delivered, No! the Orator hath yoked
    The Hours, like young Aurora, to his car:
    Thrice welcome Presence! how can patience e'er
    Grow weary of attending on a track
    That kindles with such glory! All are charmed,
    Astonished; like a hero in romance,
    He winds away his never-ending horn;
    Words follow words, sense seems to follow sense:
    What memory and what logic! till the strain
    Transcendent, superhuman as it seemed,
    Grows tedious even in a young man's ear.

    Genius of Burke! forgive the pen seduced
    By specious wonders, and too slow to tell
    Of what the ingenuous, what bewildered men,
    Beginning to mistrust their boastful guides,
    And wise men, willing to grow wiser, caught,
    Rapt auditors! from thy most eloquent tongue--
    Now mute, for ever mute in the cold grave.
    I see him,--old, but vigorous in age,--
    Stand like an oak whose stag-horn branches start
    Out of its leafy brow, the more to awe
    The younger brethren of the grove. But some--
    While he forewarns, denounces, launches forth,
    Against all systems built on abstract rights,
    Keen ridicule; the majesty proclaims
    Of Institutes and Laws, hallowed by time;
    Declares the vital power of social ties
    Endeared by Custom; and with high disdain,
    Exploding upstart Theory, insists
    Upon the allegiance to which men are born--
    Some--say at once a froward multitude--
    Murmur (for truth is hated, where not loved)
    As the winds fret within the Aeolian cave,
    Galled by their monarch's chain. The times were big
    With ominous change, which, night by night, provoked
    Keen struggles, and black clouds of passion raised;
    But memorable moments intervened,
    When Wisdom, like the Goddess from Jove's brain,
    Broke forth in armour of resplendent words,
    Startling the Synod. Could a youth, and one
    In ancient story versed, whose breast had heaved
    Under the weight of classic eloquence,
    Sit, see, and hear, unthankful, uninspired?

    Nor did the Pulpit's oratory fail
    To achieve its higher triumph. Not unfelt
    Were its admonishments, nor lightly heard
    The awful truths delivered thence by tongues
    Endowed with various power to search the soul;
    Yet ostentation, domineering, oft
    Poured forth harangues, how sadly out of place!--
    There have I seen a comely bachelor,
    Fresh from a toilette of two hours, ascend
    His rostrum, with seraphic glance look up,
    And, in a tone elaborately low
    Beginning, lead his voice through many a maze
    A minuet course; and, winding up his mouth,
    From time to time, into an orifice
    Most delicate, a lurking eyelet, small,
    And only not invisible, again
    Open it out, diffusing thence a smile
    Of rapt irradiation, exquisite.
    Meanwhile the Evangelists, Isaiah, Job,
    Moses, and he who penned, the other day,
    The Death of Abel, Shakspeare, and the Bard
    Whose genius spangled o'er a gloomy theme
    With fancies thick as his inspiring stars,
    And Ossian (doubt not--'tis the naked truth)
    Summoned from streamy Morven--each and all
    Would, in their turns, lend ornaments and flowers
    To entwine the crook of eloquence that helped
    This pretty Shepherd, pride of all the plains,
    To rule and guide his captivated flock.

    I glance but at a few conspicuous marks,
    Leaving a thousand others, that, in hall,
    Court, theatre, conventicle, or shop,
    In public room or private, park or street,
    Each fondly reared on his own pedestal,
    Looked out for admiration. Folly, vice,
    Extravagance in gesture, mien, and dress,
    And all the strife of singularity,
    Lies to the ear, and lies to every sense--
    Of these, and of the living shapes they wear,
    There is no end. Such candidates for regard,
    Although well pleased to be where they were found,
    I did not hunt after, nor greatly prize,
    Nor made unto myself a secret boast
    Of reading them with quick and curious eye;
    But, as a common produce, things that are
    To-day, to-morrow will be, took of them
    Such willing note, as, on some errand bound
    That asks not speed, a traveller might bestow
    On sea-shells that bestrew the sandy beach,
    Or daisies swarming through the fields of June.

    But foolishness and madness in parade,
    Though most at home in this their dear domain,
    Are scattered everywhere, no rarities,
    Even to the rudest novice of the Schools.
    Me, rather, it employed, to note, and keep
    In memory, those individual sights
    Of courage, or integrity, or truth,
    Or tenderness, which there, set off by foil,
    Appeared more touching. One will I select--
    A Father--for he bore that sacred name;--
    Him saw I, sitting in an open square,
    Upon a corner-stone of that low wall,
    Wherein were fixed the iron pales that fenced
    A spacious grass-plot; there, in silence, sate
    This One Man, with a sickly babe outstretched
    Upon his knee, whom he had thither brought
    For sunshine, and to breathe the fresher air.
    Of those who passed, and me who looked at him,
    He took no heed; but in his brawny arms
    (The Artificer was to the elbow bare,
    And from his work this moment had been stolen)
    He held the child, and, bending over it,
    As if he were afraid both of the sun
    And of the air, which he had come to seek,
    Eyed the poor babe with love unutterable.

    As the black storm upon the mountain top
    Sets off the sunbeam in the valley, so
    That huge fermenting mass of human-kind
    Serves as a solemn back-ground, or relief,
    To single forms and objects, whence they draw,
    For feeling and contemplative regard,
    More than inherent liveliness and power.
    How oft, amid those overflowing streets,
    Have I gone forward with the crowd, and said
    Unto myself, "The face of every one
    That passes by me is a mystery!"
    Thus have I looked, nor ceased to look, oppressed
    By thoughts of what and whither, when and how,
    Until the shapes before my eyes became
    A second-sight procession, such as glides
    Over still mountains, or appears in dreams;
    And once, far-travelled in such mood, beyond
    The reach of common indication, lost
    Amid the moving pageant, I was smitten
    Abruptly, with the view (a sight not rare)
    Of a blind Beggar, who, with upright face,
    Stood, propped against a wall, upon his chest
    Wearing a written paper, to explain
    His story, whence he came, and who he was.
    Caught by the spectacle my mind turned round
    As with the might of waters; and apt type
    This label seemed of the utmost we can know,
    Both of ourselves and of the universe;
    And, on the shape of that unmoving man,
    His steadfast face and sightless eyes, I gazed,
    As if admonished from another world.

    Though reared upon the base of outward things,
    Structures like these the excited spirit mainly
    Builds for herself; scenes different there are,
    Full-formed, that take, with small internal help,
    Possession of the faculties,--the peace
    That comes with night; the deep solemnity
    Of nature's intermediate hours of rest,
    When the great tide of human life stands still:
    The business of the day to come, unborn,
    Of that gone by, locked up, as in the grave;
    The blended calmness of the heavens and earth,
    Moonlight and stars, and empty streets, and sounds
    Unfrequent as in deserts; at late hours
    Of winter evenings, when unwholesome rains
    Are falling hard, with people yet astir,
    The feeble salutation from the voice
    Of some unhappy woman, now and then
    Heard as we pass, when no one looks about,
    Nothing is listened to. But these, I fear,
    Are falsely catalogued; things that are, are not,
    As the mind answers to them, or the heart
    Is prompt, or slow, to feel. What say you, then,
    To times, when half the city shall break out
    Full of one passion, vengeance, rage, or fear?
    To executions, to a street on fire,
    Mobs, riots, or rejoicings? From these sights
    Take one,--that ancient festival, the Fair,
    Holden where martyrs suffered in past time,
    And named of St. Bartholomew; there, see
    A work completed to our hands, that lays,
    If any spectacle on earth can do,
    The whole creative powers of man asleep!--
    For once, the Muse's help will we implore,
    And she shall lodge us, wafted on her wings,
    Above the press and danger of the crowd,
    Upon some showman's platform. What a shock
    For eyes and ears! what anarchy and din,
    Barbarian and infernal,--a phantasma,
    Monstrous in colour, motion, shape, sight, sound!
    Below, the open space, through every nook
    Of the wide area, twinkles, is alive
    With heads; the midway region, and above,
    Is thronged with staring pictures and huge scrolls,
    Dumb proclamations of the Prodigies;
    With chattering monkeys dangling from their poles,
    And children whirling in their roundabouts;
    With those that stretch the neck and strain the eyes,
    And crack the voice in rivalship, the crowd
    Inviting; with buffoons against buffoons
    Grimacing, writhing, screaming,--him who grinds
    The hurdy-gurdy, at the fiddle weaves,
    Rattles the salt-box, thumps the kettle-drum,
    And him who at the trumpet puffs his cheeks,
    The silver-collared Negro with his timbrel,
    Equestrians, tumblers, women, girls, and boys,
    Blue-breeched, pink-vested, with high-towering plumes.--
    All moveables of wonder, from all parts,
    Are here--Albinos, painted Indians, Dwarfs,
    The Horse of knowledge, and the learned Pig,
    The Stone-eater, the man that swallows fire,
    Giants, Ventriloquists, the Invisible Girl,
    The Bust that speaks and moves its goggling eyes,
    The Wax-work, Clock-work, all the marvellous craft
    Of modern Merlins, Wild Beasts, Puppet-shows,
    All out-o'-the-way, far-fetched, perverted things,
    All freaks of nature, all Promethean thoughts
    Of man, his dulness, madness, and their feats
    All jumbled up together, to compose
    A Parliament of Monsters. Tents and Booths
    Meanwhile, as if the whole were one vast mill,
    Are vomiting, receiving on all sides,
    Men, Women, three-years' Children, Babes in arms.

    Oh, blank confusion! true epitome
    Of what the mighty City is herself,
    To thousands upon thousands of her sons,
    Living amid the same perpetual whirl
    Of trivial objects, melted and reduced
    To one identity, by differences
    That have no law, no meaning, and no end--
    Oppression, under which even highest minds
    Must labour, whence the strongest are not free.
    But though the picture weary out the eye,
    By nature an unmanageable sight,
    It is not wholly so to him who looks
    In steadiness, who hath among least things
    An under-sense of greatest; sees the parts
    As parts, but with a feeling of the whole.
    This, of all acquisitions, first awaits
    On sundry and most widely different modes
    Of education, nor with least delight
    On that through which I passed. Attention springs, 0
    And comprehensiveness and memory flow,
    From early converse with the works of God
    Among all regions; chiefly where appear
    Most obviously simplicity and power.
    Think, how the everlasting streams and woods,
    Stretched and still stretching far and wide, exalt
    The roving Indian, on his desert sands:
    What grandeur not unfelt, what pregnant show
    Of beauty, meets the sun-burnt Arab's eye:
    And, as the sea propels, from zone to zone,
    Its currents; magnifies its shoals of life
    Beyond all compass; spreads, and sends aloft
    Armies of clouds,--even so, its powers and aspects
    Shape for mankind, by principles as fixed,
    The views and aspirations of the soul
    To majesty. Like virtue have the forms
    Perennial of the ancient hills; nor less
    The changeful language of their countenances
    Quickens the slumbering mind, and aids the thoughts,
    However multitudinous, to move
    With order and relation. This, if still,
    As hitherto, in freedom I may speak,
    Not violating any just restraint,
    As may be hoped, of real modesty,--
    This did I feel, in London's vast domain.
    The Spirit of Nature was upon me there;
    The soul of Beauty and enduring Life
    Vouchsafed her inspiration, and diffused,
    Through meagre lines and colours, and the press
    Of self-destroying, transitory things,
    Composure, and ennobling Harmony.

    NOTES

    3 The City of Goslar, in Lower Saxony.

    Wordsworth, William. 1888. Complete Poetical Works. London: Macmillan.









    BOOK EIGHTH. RETROSPECT--LOVE OF NATURE LEADING TO LOVE OF MAN



    WHAT sounds are those, Helvellyn, that are heard
    Up to thy summit, through the depth of air
    Ascending, as if distance had the power
    To make the sounds more audible? What crowd
    Covers, or sprinkles o'er, yon village green?
    Crowd seems it, solitary hill! to thee,
    Though but a little family of men,
    Shepherds and tillers of the ground--betimes
    Assembled with their children and their wives,
    And here and there a stranger interspersed.
    They hold a rustic fair--a festival,
    Such as, on this side now, and now on that,
    Repeated through his tributary vales,
    Helvellyn, in the silence of his rest,
    Sees annually, if clouds towards either ocean
    Blown from their favourite resting-place, or mists
    Dissolved, have left him an unshrouded head.
    Delightful day it is for all who dwell
    In this secluded glen, and eagerly
    They give it welcome. Long ere heat of noon,
    From byre or field the kine were brought; the sheep
    Are penned in cotes; the chaffering is begun.
    The heifer lows, uneasy at the voice
    Of a new master; bleat the flocks aloud.
    Booths are there none; a stall or two is here;
    A lame man or a blind, the one to beg,
    The other to make music; hither, too,
    From far, with basket, slung upon her arm,
    Of hawker's wares--books, pictures, combs, and pins--
    Some aged woman finds her way again,
    Year after year, a punctual visitant!
    There also stands a speech-maker by rote,
    Pulling the strings of his boxed raree-show;
    And in the lapse of many years may come
    Prouder itinerant, mountebank, or he
    Whose wonders in a covered wain lie hid.
    But one there is, the loveliest of them all,
    Some sweet lass of the valley, looking out
    For gains, and who that sees her would not buy?
    Fruits of her father's orchard are her wares,
    And with the ruddy produce she walks round
    Among the crowd, half pleased with, half ashamed
    Of, her new office, blushing restlessly.
    The children now are rich, for the old to-day
    Are generous as the young; and, if content
    With looking on, some ancient wedded pair
    Sit in the shade together; while they gaze,
    "A cheerful smile unbends the wrinkled brow,
    The days departed start again to life,
    And all the scenes of childhood reappear,
    Faint, but more tranquil, like the changing sun
    To him who slept at noon and wakes at eve."
    Thus gaiety and cheerfulness prevail,
    Spreading from young to old, from old to young,
    And no one seems to want his share.--Immense
    Is the recess, the circumambient world
    Magnificent, by which they are embraced:
    They move about upon the soft green turf:
    How little they, they and their doings, seem,
    And all that they can further or obstruct!
    Through utter weakness pitiably dear,
    As tender infants are: and yet how great!
    For all things serve them: them the morning light
    Loves, as it glistens on the silent rocks;
    And them the silent rocks, which now from high
    Look down upon them; the reposing clouds;
    The wild brooks prattling from invisible haunts;
    And old Helvellyn, conscious of the stir
    Which animates this day their calm abode.

    With deep devotion, Nature, did I feel,
    In that enormous City's turbulent world
    Of men and things, what benefit I owed
    To thee, and those domains of rural peace,
    Where to the sense of beauty first my heart
    Was opened; tract more exquisitely fair
    Than that famed paradise of ten thousand trees,
    Or Gehol's matchless gardens, for delight
    Of the Tartarian dynasty composed
    (Beyond that mighty wall, not fabulous,
    China's stupendous mound) by patient toil
    Of myriads and boon nature's lavish help;
    There, in a clime from widest empire chosen,
    Fulfilling (could enchantment have done more?)
    A sumptuous dream of flowery lawns, with domes
    Of pleasure sprinkled over, shady dells
    For eastern monasteries, sunny mounts
    With temples crested, bridges, gondolas,
    Rocks, dens, and groves of foliage taught to melt
    Into each other their obsequious hues,
    Vanished and vanishing in subtle chase,
    Too fine to be pursued; or standing forth
    In no discordant opposition, strong
    And gorgeous as the colours side by side
    Bedded among rich plumes of tropic birds;
    And mountains over all, embracing all;
    And all the landscape, endlessly enriched
    With waters running, falling, or asleep.

    But lovelier far than this, the paradise
    Where I was reared; in Nature's primitive gifts
    Favoured no less, and more to every sense
    Delicious, seeing that the sun and sky,
    The elements, and seasons as they change,
    Do find a worthy fellow-labourer there--
    Man free, man working for himself, with choice
    Of time, and place, and object; by his wants,
    His comforts, native occupations, cares,
    Cheerfully led to individual ends
    Or social, and still followed by a train
    Unwooed, unthought-of even--simplicity,
    And beauty, and inevitable grace.

    Yea, when a glimpse of those imperial bowers
    Would to a child be transport over-great,
    When but a half-hour's roam through such a place
    Would leave behind a dance of images,
    That shall break in upon his sleep for weeks;
    Even then the common haunts of the green earth,
    And ordinary interests of man,
    Which they embosom, all without regard
    As both may seem, are fastening on the heart
    Insensibly, each with the other's help.
    For me, when my affections first were led
    From kindred, friends, and playmates, to partake
    Love for the human creature's absolute self,
    That noticeable kindliness of heart
    Sprang out of fountains, there abounding most,
    Where sovereign Nature dictated the tasks
    And occupations which her beauty adorned,
    And Shepherds were the men that pleased me first;
    Not such as Saturn ruled 'mid Latian wilds,
    With arts and laws so tempered, that their lives
    Left, even to us toiling in this late day,
    A bright tradition of the golden age;
    Not such as, 'mid Arcadian fastnesses
    Sequestered, handed down among themselves
    Felicity, in Grecian song renowned;
    Nor such as--when an adverse fate had driven,
    From house and home, the courtly band whose fortunes
    Entered, with Shakspeare's genius, the wild woods
    Of Arden--amid sunshine or in shade
    Culled the best fruits of Time's uncounted hours,
    Ere Phoebe sighed for the false Ganymede;
    Or there where Perdita and Florizel
    Together danced, Queen of the feast, and King;
    Nor such as Spenser fabled. True it is,
    That I had heard (what he perhaps had seen)
    Of maids at sunrise bringing in from far
    Their May-bush, and along the streets in flocks
    Parading with a song of taunting rhymes,
    Aimed at the laggards slumbering within doors;
    Had also heard, from those who yet remembered,
    Tales of the May-pole dance, and wreaths that decked
    Porch, door-way, or kirk-pillar; and of youths,
    Each with his maid, before the sun was up,
    By annual custom, issuing forth in troops,
    To drink the waters of some sainted well,
    And hang it round with garlands. Love survives;
    But, for such purpose, flowers no longer grow:
    The times, too sage, perhaps too proud, have dropped
    These lighter graces; and the rural ways
    And manners which my childhood looked upon
    Were the unluxuriant produce of a life
    Intent on little but substantial needs,
    Yet rich in beauty, beauty that was felt.
    But images of danger and distress,
    Man suffering among awful Powers and Forms;
    Of this I heard, and saw enough to make
    Imagination restless; nor was free
    Myself from frequent perils; nor were tales
    Wanting,--the tragedies of former times,
    Hazards and strange escapes, of which the rocks
    Immutable, and everflowing streams,
    Where'er I roamed, were speaking monuments.

    Smooth life had flock and shepherd in old time,
    Long springs and tepid winters, on the banks
    Of delicate Galesus; and no less
    Those scattered along Adria's myrtle shores:
    Smooth life had herdsman, and his snow-white herd
    To triumphs and to sacrificial rites
    Devoted, on the inviolable stream
    Of rich Clitumnus; and the goat-herd lived
    As calmly, underneath the pleasant brows
    Of cool Lucretilis, where the pipe was heard
    Of Pan, Invisible God, thrilling the rocks
    With tutelary music, from all harm
    The fold protecting, I myself, mature
    In manhood then, have seen a pastoral tract
    Like one of these, where Fancy might run wild,
    Though under skies less generous, less serene:
    There, for her own delight had Nature framed
    A pleasure-ground, diffused a fair expanse
    Of level pasture, islanded with groves
    And banked with woody risings; but the Plain
    Endless, here opening widely out, and there
    Shut up in lesser lakes or beds of lawn
    And intricate recesses, creek or bay
    Sheltered within a shelter, where at large
    The shepherd strays, a rolling hut his home.
    Thither he comes with spring-time, there abides
    All summer, and at sunrise ye may hear
    His flageolet to liquid notes of love
    Attuned, or sprightly fife resounding far.
    Nook is there none, nor tract of that vast space
    Where passage opens, but the same shall have
    In turn its visitant, telling there his hours
    In unlaborious pleasure, with no task
    More toilsome than to carve a beechen bowl
    For spring or fountain, which the traveller finds,
    When through the region he pursues at will
    His devious course. A glimpse of such sweet life
    I saw when, from the melancholy walls
    Of Goslar, once imperial, I renewed
    My daily walk along that wide champaign,
    That, reaching to her gates, spreads east and west,
    And northwards, from beneath the mountainous verge
    Of the Hercynian forest. Yet, hail to you
    Moors, mountains, headlands, and ye hollow vales,
    Ye long deep channels for the Atlantic's voice,
    Powers of my native region! Ye that seize
    The heart with firmer grasp! Your snows and streams
    Ungovernable, and your terrifying winds,
    That howl so dismally for him who treads
    Companionless your awful solitudes!
    There, 'tis the shepherd's task the winter long
    To wait upon the storms: of their approach
    Sagacious, into sheltering coves he drives
    His flock, and thither from the homestead bears
    A toilsome burden up the craggy ways,
    And deals it out, their regular nourishment
    Strewn on the frozen snow. And when the spring
    Looks out, and all the pastures dance with lambs,
    And when the flock, with warmer weather, climbs
    Higher and higher, him his office leads
    To watch their goings, whatsoever track
    The wanderers choose. For this he quits his home
    At day-spring, and no sooner doth the sun
    Begin to strike him with a fire-like heat,
    Than he lies down upon some shining rock,
    And breakfasts with his dog. When they have stolen,
    As is their wont, a pittance from strict time,
    For rest not needed or exchange of love,
    Then from his couch he starts; and now his feet
    Crush out a livelier fragrance from the flowers
    Of lowly thyme, by Nature's skill enwrought
    In the wild turf: the lingering dews of morn
    Smoke round him, as from hill to hill he hies,
    His staff protending like a hunter's spear,
    Or by its aid leaping from crag to crag,
    And o'er the brawling beds of unbridged streams.
    Philosophy, methinks, at Fancy's call,
    Might deign to follow him through what he does
    Or sees in his day's march; himself he feels,
    In those vast regions where his service lies,
    A freeman, wedded to his life of hope
    And hazard, and hard labour interchanged
    With that majestic indolence so dear
    To native man. A rambling schoolboy, thus,
    I felt his presence in his own domain,
    As of a lord and master, or a power,
    Or genius, under Nature, under God,
    Presiding; and severest solitude
    Had more commanding looks when he was there.
    When up the lonely brooks on rainy days
    Angling I went, or trod the trackless hills
    By mists bewildered, suddenly mine eyes
    Have glanced upon him distant a few steps,
    In size a giant, stalking through thick fog,
    His sheep like Greenland bears; or, as he stepped
    Beyond the boundary line of some hill-shadow,
    His form hath flashed upon me, glorified
    By the deep radiance of the setting sun:
    Or him have I descried in distant sky,
    A solitary object and sublime,
    Above all height! like an aerial cross
    Stationed alone upon a spiry rock
    Of the Chartreuse, for worship. Thus was man
    Ennobled outwardly before my sight,
    And thus my heart was early introduced
    To an unconscious love and reverence
    Of human nature; hence the human form
    To me became an index of delight,
    Of grace and honour, power and worthiness.
    Meanwhile this creature--spiritual almost
    As those of books, but more exalted far;
    Far more of an imaginative form
    Than the gay Corin of the groves, who lives
    For his own fancies, or to dance by the hour,
    In coronal, with Phyllis in the midst--
    Was, for the purposes of kind, a man
    With the most common; husband, father; learned,
    Could teach, admonish; suffered with the rest
    From vice and folly, wretchedness and fear;
    Of this I little saw, cared less for it,
    But something must have felt.
    Call ye these appearances--
    Which I beheld of shepherds in my youth,
    This sanctity of Nature given to man--
    A shadow, a delusion, ye who pore
    On the dead letter, miss the spirit of things;
    Whose truth is not a motion or a shape
    Instinct with vital functions, but a block
    Or waxen image which yourselves have made,
    And ye adore! But blessed be the God
    Of Nature and of Man that this was so;
    That men before my inexperienced eyes
    Did first present themselves thus purified,
    Removed, and to a distance that was fit:
    And so we all of us in some degree
    Are led to knowledge, wheresoever led,
    And howsoever; were it otherwise,
    And we found evil fast as we find good
    In our first years, or think that it is found,
    How could the innocent heart bear up and live!
    But doubly fortunate my lot; not here
    Alone, that something of a better life
    Perhaps was round me than it is the privilege
    Of most to move in, but that first I looked
    At Man through objects that were great or fair;
    First communed with him by their help. And thus
    Was founded a sure safeguard and defence
    Against the weight of meanness, selfish cares,
    Coarse manners, vulgar passions, that beat in
    On all sides from the ordinary world
    In which we traffic. Starting from this point
    I had my face turned toward the truth, began
    With an advantage furnished by that kind
    Of prepossession, without which the soul
    Receives no knowledge that can bring forth good,
    No genuine insight ever comes to her.
    From the restraint of over-watchful eyes
    Preserved, I moved about, year after year,
    Happy, and now most thankful that my walk
    Was guarded from too early intercourse
    With the deformities of crowded life,
    And those ensuing laughters and contempts,
    Self-pleasing, which, if we would wish to think
    With a due reverence on earth's rightful lord,
    Here placed to be the inheritor of heaven,
    Will not permit us; but pursue the mind,
    That to devotion willingly would rise,
    Into the temple and the temple's heart.

    Yet deem not, Friend! that human kind with me
    Thus early took a place pre-eminent;
    Nature herself was, at this unripe time,
    But secondary to my own pursuits
    And animal activities, and all
    Their trivial pleasures; and when these had drooped
    And gradually expired, and Nature, prized
    For her own sake, became my joy, even then--
    And upwards through late youth, until not less
    Than two-and-twenty summers had been told--
    Was Man in my affections and regards
    Subordinate to her, her visible forms
    And viewless agencies: a passion, she,
    A rapture often, and immediate love
    Ever at hand; he, only a delight
    Occasional, an accidental grace,
    His hour being not yet come. Far less had then
    The inferior creatures, beast or bird, attuned
    My spirit to that gentleness of love,
    (Though they had long been carefully observed),
    Won from me those minute obeisances
    Of tenderness, which I may number now
    With my first blessings. Nevertheless, on these
    The light of beauty did not fall in vain,
    Or grandeur circumfuse them to no end.

    But when that first poetic faculty
    Of plain Imagination and severe,
    No longer a mute influence of the soul,
    Ventured, at some rash Muse's earnest call,
    To try her strength among harmonious words;
    And to book-notions and the rules of art
    Did knowingly conform itself; there came
    Among the simple shapes of human life
    A wilfulness of fancy and conceit;
    And Nature and her objects beautified
    These fictions, as in some sort, in their turn,
    They burnished her. From touch of this new power
    Nothing was safe: the elder-tree that grew
    Beside the well-known charnel-house had then
    A dismal look: the yew-tree had its ghost,
    That took his station there for ornament:
    The dignities of plain occurrence then
    Were tasteless, and truth's golden mean, a point
    Where no sufficient pleasure could be found.
    Then, if a widow, staggering with the blow
    Of her distress, was known to have turned her steps
    To the cold grave in which her husband slept,
    One night, or haply more than one, through pain
    Or half-insensate impotence of mind,
    The fact was caught at greedily, and there
    She must be visitant the whole year through,
    Wetting the turf with never-ending tears.

    Through quaint obliquities I might pursue
    These cravings; when the foxglove, one by one,
    Upwards through every stage of the tall stem,
    Had shed beside the public way its bells,
    And stood of all dismantled, save the last
    Left at the tapering ladder's top, that seemed
    To bend as doth a slender blade of grass
    Tipped with a rain-drop, Fancy loved to seat,
    Beneath the plant despoiled, but crested still
    With this last relic, soon itself to fall,
    Some vagrant mother, whose arch little ones,
    All unconcerned by her dejected plight,
    Laughed as with rival eagerness their hands
    Gathered the purple cups that round them lay,
    Strewing the turfs green slope.
    A diamond light
    (Whene'er the summer sun, declining, smote
    A smooth rock wet with constant springs) was seen
    Sparkling from out a copse-clad bank that rose
    Fronting our cottage. Oft beside the hearth
    Seated, with open door, often and long
    Upon this restless lustre have I gazed,
    That made my fancy restless as itself.
    'Twas now for me a burnished silver shield
    Suspended over a knight's tomb, who lay
    Inglorious, buried in the dusky wood:
    An entrance now into some magic cave
    Or palace built by fairies of the rock;
    Nor could I have been bribed to disenchant
    The spectacle, by visiting the spot.
    Thus wilful Fancy, in no hurtful mood,
    Engrafted far-fetched shapes on feelings bred
    By pure Imagination: busy Power
    She was, and with her ready pupil turned
    Instinctively to human passions, then
    Least understood. Yet, 'mid the fervent swarm
    Of these vagaries, with an eye so rich
    As mine was through the bounty of a grand
    And lovely region, I had forms distinct
    To steady me: each airy thought revolved
    Round a substantial centre, which at once
    Incited it to motion, and controlled.
    I did not pine like one in cities bred,
    As was thy melancholy lot, dear Friend!
    Great Spirit as thou art, in endless dreams
    Of sickliness, disjoining, joining, things
    Without the light of knowledge. Where the harm,
    If, when the woodman languished with disease
    Induced by sleeping nightly on the ground
    Within his sod-built cabin, Indian-wise,
    I called the pangs of disappointed love,
    And all the sad etcetera of the wrong,
    To help him to his grave? Meanwhile the man,
    If not already from the woods retired
    To die at home, was haply, as I knew,
    Withering by slow degrees, 'mid gentle airs,
    Birds, running streams, and hills so beautiful
    On golden evenings, while the charcoal pile
    Breathed up its smoke, an image of his ghost
    Or spirit that full soon must take her flight.
    Nor shall we not be tending towards that point
    Of sound humanity to which our Tale
    Leads, though by sinuous ways, if here I show
    How Fancy, in a season when she wove
    Those slender cords, to guide the unconscious Boy
    For the Man's sake, could feed at Nature's call
    Some pensive musings which might well beseem
    Maturer years.
    A grove there is whose boughs
    Stretch from the western marge of Thurstonmere
    With length of shade so thick, that whoso glides
    Along the line of low-roofed water, moves
    As in a cloister. Once--while, in that shade
    Loitering, I watched the golden beams of light
    Flung from the setting sun, as they reposed
    In silent beauty on the naked ridge
    Of a high eastern hill--thus flowed my thoughts
    In a pure stream of words fresh from the heart:
    Dear native Regions, wheresoe'er shall close
    My mortal course, there will I think on you;
    Dying, will cast on you a backward look;
    Even as this setting sun (albeit the Vale
    Is no where touched by one memorial gleam)
    Doth with the fond remains of his last power
    Still linger, and a farewell lustre sheds,
    On the dear mountain-tops where first he rose.

    Enough of humble arguments; recall,
    My Song! those high emotions which thy voice
    Has heretofore made known; that bursting forth
    Of sympathy, inspiring and inspired,
    When everywhere a vital pulse was felt,
    And all the several frames of things, like stars,
    Through every magnitude distinguishable,
    Shone mutually indebted, or half lost
    Each in the other's blaze, a galaxy
    Of life and glory. In the midst stood Man,
    Outwardly, inwardly contemplated,
    As, of all visible natures, crown, though born
    Of dust, and kindred to the worm; a Being,
    Both in perception and discernment, first
    In every capability of rapture,
    Through the divine effect of power and love;
    As, more than anything we know, instinct
    With godhead, and, by reason and by will,
    Acknowledging dependency sublime.

    Ere long, the lonely mountains left, I moved,
    Begirt, from day to day, with temporal shapes
    Of vice and folly thrust upon my view,
    Objects of sport, and ridicule, and scorn,
    Manners and characters discriminate,
    And little bustling passions that eclipse,
    As well they might, the impersonated thought,
    The idea, or abstraction of the kind.

    An idler among academic bowers,
    Such was my new condition, as at large
    Has been set forth; yet here the vulgar light
    Of present, actual, superficial life,
    Gleaming through colouring of other times,
    Old usages and local privilege,
    Was welcomed, softened, if not solemnised.
    This notwithstanding, being brought more near
    To vice and guilt, forerunning wretchedness,
    I trembled,--thought, at times, of human life
    With an indefinite terror and dismay,
    Such as the storms and angry elements
    Had bred in me; but gloomier far, a dim
    Analogy to uproar and misrule,
    Disquiet, danger, and obscurity.

    It might be told (but wherefore speak of things
    Common to all?) that, seeing, I was led
    Gravely to ponder--judging between good
    And evil, not as for the mind's delight
    But for her guidance--one who was to 'act',
    As sometimes to the best of feeble means
    I did, by human sympathy impelled:
    And, through dislike and most offensive pain,
    Was to the truth conducted; of this faith
    Never forsaken, that, by acting well,
    And understanding, I should learn to love
    The end of life, and everything we know.

    Grave Teacher, stern Preceptress! for at times
    Thou canst put on an aspect most severe;
    London, to thee I willingly return.
    Erewhile my verse played idly with the flowers
    Enwrought upon thy mantle; satisfied
    With that amusement, and a simple look
    Of child-like inquisition now and then
    Cast upwards on thy countenance, to detect
    Some inner meanings which might harbour there.
    But how could I in mood so light indulge,
    Keeping such fresh remembrance of the day,
    When, having thridded the long labyrinth
    Of the suburban villages, I first
    Entered thy vast dominion? On the roof
    Of an itinerant vehicle I sate,
    With vulgar men about me, trivial forms
    Of houses, pavement, streets, of men and things,--
    Mean shapes on every side: but, at the instant,
    When to myself it fairly might be said,
    The threshold now is overpast, (how strange
    That aught external to the living mind
    Should have such mighty sway! yet so it was),
    A weight of ages did at once descend
    Upon my heart; no thought embodied, no
    Distinct remembrances, but weight and power,--
    Power growing under weight: alas! I feel
    That I am trifling: 'twas a moment's pause,--
    All that took place within me came and went
    As in a moment; yet with Time it dwells,
    And grateful memory, as a thing divine.

    The curious traveller, who, from open day,
    Hath passed with torches into some huge cave,
    The Grotto of Antiparos, or the Den
    In old time haunted by that Danish Witch,
    Yordas; he looks around and sees the vault
    Widening on all sides; sees, or thinks he sees,
    Erelong, the massy roof above his head,
    That instantly unsettles and recedes,--
    Substance and shadow, light and darkness, all
    Commingled, making up a canopy
    Of shapes and forms and tendencies to shape
    That shift and vanish, change and interchange
    Like spectres,--ferment silent and sublime!
    That after a short space works less and less,
    Till, every effort, every motion gone,
    The scene before him stands in perfect view
    Exposed, and lifeless as a written book!--
    But let him pause awhile, and look again,
    And a new quickening shall succeed, at first
    Beginning timidly, then creeping fast,
    Till the whole cave, so late a senseless mass,
    Busies the eye with images and forms
    Boldly assembled,--here is shadowed forth
    From the projections, wrinkles, cavities,
    A variegated landscape,--there the shape
    Of some gigantic warrior clad in mail,
    The ghostly semblance of a hooded monk,
    Veiled nun, or pilgrim resting on his staff:
    Strange congregation! yet not slow to meet
    Eyes that perceive through minds that can inspire.

    Even in such sort had I at first been moved,
    Nor otherwise continued to be moved,
    As I explored the vast metropolis,
    Fount of my country's destiny and the world's;
    That great emporium, chronicle at once
    And burial-place of passions, and their home
    Imperial, their chief living residence.

    With strong sensations teeming as it did
    Of past and present, such a place must needs
    Have pleased me, seeking knowledge at that time
    Far less than craving power; yet knowledge came,
    Sought or unsought, and influxes of power
    Came, of themselves, or at her call derived
    In fits of kindliest apprehensiveness,
    From all sides, when whate'er was in itself
    Capacious found, or seemed to find, in me
    A correspondent amplitude of mind;
    Such is the strength and glory of our youth!
    The human nature unto which I felt
    That I belonged, and reverenced with love,
    Was not a punctual presence, but a spirit
    Diffused through time and space, with aid derived
    Of evidence from monuments, erect,
    Prostrate, or leaning towards their common rest
    In earth, the widely scattered wreck sublime
    Of vanished nations, or more clearly drawn
    From books and what they picture and record.

    'Tis true, the history of our native land--
    With those of Greece compared and popular Rome,
    And in our high-wrought modern narratives
    Stript of their harmonising soul, the life
    Of manners and familiar incidents--
    Had never much delighted me. And less
    Than other intellects had mine been used
    To lean upon extrinsic circumstance
    Of record or tradition; but a sense
    Of what in the Great City had been done
    And suffered, and was doing, suffering, still,
    Weighed with me, could support the test of thought;
    And, in despite of all that had gone by,
    Or was departing never to return,
    There I conversed with majesty and power
    Like independent natures. Hence the place
    Was thronged with impregnations like the Wilds
    In which my early feelings had been nursed--
    Bare hills and valleys, full of caverns, rocks,
    And audible seclusions, dashing lakes,
    Echoes and waterfalls, and pointed crags
    That into music touch the passing wind.
    Here then my young imagination found
    No uncongenial element; could here
    Among new objects serve or give command,
    Even as the heart's occasions might require,
    To forward reason's else too-scrupulous march.
    The effect was, still more elevated views
    Of human nature. Neither vice nor guilt,
    Debasement undergone by body or mind,
    Nor all the misery forced upon my sight,
    Misery not lightly passed, but sometimes scanned
    Most feelingly, could overthrow my trust
    In what we 'may' become; induce belief
    That I was ignorant, had been falsely taught,
    A solitary, who with vain conceits
    Had been inspired, and walked about in dreams.
    From those sad scenes when meditation turned,
    Lo! everything that was indeed divine
    Retained its purity inviolate,
    Nay brighter shone, by this portentous gloom
    Set off; such opposition as aroused
    The mind of Adam, yet in Paradise
    Though fallen from bliss, when in the East he saw
    Darkness ere day's mid course, and morning light
    More orient in the western cloud, that drew
    O'er the blue firmament a radiant white,
    Descending slow with something heavenly fraught.

    Add also, that among the multitudes
    Of that huge city, oftentimes was seen
    Affectingly set forth, more than elsewhere
    Is possible, the unity of man,
    One spirit over ignorance and vice
    Predominant, in good and evil hearts;
    One sense for moral judgments, as one eye
    For the sun's light. The soul when smitten thus
    By a sublime 'idea', whencesoe'er
    Vouchsafed for union or communion, feeds
    On the pure bliss, and takes her rest with God.

    Thus from a very early age, O Friend!
    My thoughts by slow gradations had been drawn
    To human-kind, and to the good and ill
    Of human life: Nature had led me on;
    And oft amid the "busy hum" I seemed
    To travel independent of her help,
    As if I had forgotten her; but no,
    The world of human-kind outweighed not hers
    In my habitual thoughts; the scale of love,
    Though filling daily, still was light, compared
    With that in which 'her' mighty objects lay.

    NOTES

    These lines are from a descriptive Poem--"Malvern Hills"--by one
    of Mr. Wordsworth's oldest friends, Mr. Joseph Cottle.

    8 See "Extract" (1786).

    1 From Milton, "Par. Lost," xi. 204.

    Wordsworth, William. 1888. Complete Poetical Works. London: Macmillan.










    BOOK NINTH. RESIDENCE IN FRANCE



    EVEN as a river,--partly (it might seem)
    Yielding to old remembrances, and swayed
    In part by fear to shape a way direct,
    That would engulph him soon in the ravenous sea--
    Turns, and will measure back his course, far back,
    Seeking the very regions which he crossed
    In his first outset; so have we, my Friend!
    Turned and returned with intricate delay.
    Or as a traveller, who has gained the brow
    Of some aerial Down, while there he halts
    For breathing-time, is tempted to review
    The region left behind him; and, if aught
    Deserving notice have escaped regard,
    Or been regarded with too careless eye,
    Strives, from that height, with one and yet one more
    Last look, to make the best amends he may:
    So have we lingered. Now we start afresh
    With courage, and new hope risen on our toil.
    Fair greetings to this shapeless eagerness,
    Whene'er it comes! needful in work so long,
    Thrice needful to the argument which now
    Awaits us! Oh, how much unlike the past!

    Free as a colt at pasture on the hill,
    I ranged at large, through London's wide domain,
    Month after month. Obscurely did I live,
    Not seeking frequent intercourse with men,
    By literature, or elegance, or rank,
    Distinguished. Scarcely was a year thus spent
    Ere I forsook the crowded solitude,
    With less regret for its luxurious pomp,
    And all the nicely-guarded shows of art,
    Than for the humble book-stalls in the streets,
    Exposed to eye and hand where'er I turned.

    France lured me forth; the realm that I had crossed
    So lately, journeying toward the snow-clad Alps.
    But now, relinquishing the scrip and staff,
    And all enjoyment which the summer sun
    Sheds round the steps of those who meet the day
    With motion constant as his own, I went
    Prepared to sojourn in a pleasant town,
    Washed by the current of the stately Loire.

    Through Paris lay my readiest course, and there
    Sojourning a few days, I visited
    In haste, each spot of old or recent fame,
    The latter chiefly, from the field of Mars
    Down to the suburbs of St. Antony,
    And from Mont Martre southward to the Dome
    Of Genevieve. In both her clamorous Halls,
    The National Synod and the Jacobins,
    I saw the Revolutionary Power
    Toss like a ship at anchor, rocked by storms;
    The Arcades I traversed, in the Palace huge
    Of Orleans; coasted round and round the line
    Of Tavern, Brothel, Gaming-house, and Shop,
    Great rendezvous of worst and best, the walk
    Of all who had a purpose, or had not;
    I stared and listened, with a stranger's ears,
    To Hawkers and Haranguers, hubbub wild!
    And hissing Factionists with ardent eyes,
    In knots, or pairs, or single. Not a look
    Hope takes, or Doubt or Fear is forced to wear,
    But seemed there present; and I scanned them all,
    Watched every gesture uncontrollable,
    Of anger, and vexation, and despite,
    All side by side, and struggling face to face,
    With gaiety and dissolute idleness.

    Where silent zephyrs sported with the dust
    Of the Bastille, I sate in the open sun,
    And from the rubbish gathered up a stone,
    And pocketed the relic, in the guise
    Of an enthusiast; yet, in honest truth,
    I looked for something that I could not find,
    Affecting more emotion than I felt;
    For 'tis most certain, that these various sights,
    However potent their first shock, with me
    Appeared to recompense the traveller's pains
    Less than the painted Magdalene of Le Brun,
    A beauty exquisitely wrought, with hair
    Dishevelled, gleaming eyes, and rueful cheek
    Pale and bedropped with overflowing tears.

    But hence to my more permanent abode
    I hasten; there, by novelties in speech,
    Domestic manners, customs, gestures, looks,
    And all the attire of ordinary life,
    Attention was engrossed; and, thus amused,
    I stood 'mid those concussions, unconcerned,
    Tranquil almost, and careless as a flower
    Glassed in a green-house, or a parlour shrub
    That spreads its leaves in unmolested peace,
    While every bush and tree, the country through,
    Is shaking to the roots: indifference this
    Which may seem strange: but I was unprepared
    With needful knowledge, had abruptly passed
    Into a theatre, whose stage was filled
    And busy with an action far advanced.
    Like others, I had skimmed, and sometimes read
    With care, the master pamphlets of the day;
    Nor wanted such half-insight as grew wild
    Upon that meagre soil, helped out by talk
    And public news; but having never seen
    A chronicle that might suffice to show
    Whence the main organs of the public power
    Had sprung, their transmigrations, when and how
    Accomplished, giving thus unto events
    A form and body; all things were to me
    Loose and disjointed, and the affections left
    Without a vital interest. At that time,
    Moreover, the first storm was overblown,
    And the strong hand of outward violence
    Locked up in quiet. For myself, I fear
    Now, in connection with so great a theme,
    To speak (as I must be compelled to do)
    Of one so unimportant; night by night
    Did I frequent the formal haunts of men,
    Whom, in the city, privilege of birth
    Sequestered from the rest, societies
    Polished in arts, and in punctilio versed;
    Whence, and from deeper causes, all discourse
    Of good and evil of the time was shunned
    With scrupulous care; but these restrictions soon
    Proved tedious, and I gradually withdrew
    Into a noisier world, and thus ere long
    Became a patriot; and my heart was all
    Given to the people, and my love was theirs.

    A band of military Officers,
    Then stationed in the city, were the chief
    Of my associates: some of these wore swords
    That had been seasoned in the wars, and all
    Were men well-born; the chivalry of France.
    In age and temper differing, they had yet
    One spirit ruling in each heart; alike
    (Save only one, hereafter to be named)
    Were bent upon undoing what was done:
    This was their rest and only hope; therewith
    No fear had they of bad becoming worse,
    For worst to them was come; nor would have stirred,
    Or deemed it worth a moment's thought to stir,
    In anything, save only as the act
    Looked thitherward. One, reckoning by years,
    Was in the prime of manhood, and erewhile
    He had sate lord in many tender hearts;
    Though heedless of such honours now, and changed:
    His temper was quite mastered by the times,
    And they had blighted him, had eaten away
    The beauty of his person, doing wrong
    Alike to body and to mind: his port,
    Which once had been erect and open, now
    Was stooping and contracted, and a face,
    Endowed by Nature with her fairest gifts
    Of symmetry and light and bloom, expressed,
    As much as any that was ever seen,
    A ravage out of season, made by thoughts
    Unhealthy and vexatious. With the hour,
    That from the press of Paris duly brought
    Its freight of public news, the fever came,
    A punctual visitant, to shake this man,
    Disarmed his voice and fanned his yellow cheek
    Into a thousand colours; while he read,
    Or mused, his sword was haunted by his touch
    Continually, like an uneasy place
    In his own body. 'Twas in truth an hour
    Of universal ferment; mildest men
    Were agitated, and commotions, strife
    Of passion and opinion, filled the walls
    Of peaceful houses with unquiet sounds.
    The soil of common life was, at that time,
    Too hot to tread upon. Oft said I then,
    And not then only, "What a mockery this
    Of history, the past and that to come!
    Now do I feel how all men are deceived,
    Reading of nations and their works, in faith,
    Faith given to vanity and emptiness;
    Oh! laughter for the page that would reflect
    To future times the face of what now is!"
    The land all swarmed with passion, like a plain
    Devoured by locusts,--Carra, Gorsas,--add
    A hundred other names, forgotten now,
    Nor to be heard of more; yet, they were powers,
    Like earthquakes, shocks repeated day by day,
    And felt through every nook of town and field.

    Such was the state of things. Meanwhile the chief
    Of my associates stood prepared for flight
    To augment the band of emigrants in arms
    Upon the borders of the Rhine, and leagued
    With foreign foes mustered for instant war.
    This was their undisguised intent, and they
    Were waiting with the whole of their desires
    The moment to depart.
    An Englishman,
    Born in a land whose very name appeared
    To license some unruliness of mind;
    A stranger, with youth's further privilege,
    And the indulgence that a half-learnt speech
    Wins from the courteous; I, who had been else
    Shunned and not tolerated, freely lived
    With these defenders of the Crown, and talked,
    And heard their notions; nor did they disdain
    The wish to bring me over to their cause.

    But though untaught by thinking or by books
    To reason well of polity or law,
    And nice distinctions, then on every tongue,
    Of natural rights and civil; and to acts
    Of nations and their passing interests,
    (If with unworldly ends and aims compared)
    Almost indifferent, even the historian's tale
    Prizing but little otherwise than I prized
    Tales of the poets, as it made the heart
    Beat high, and filled the fancy with fair forms,
    Old heroes and their sufferings and their deeds;
    Yet in the regal sceptre, and the pomp
    Of orders and degrees, I nothing found
    Then, or had ever, even in crudest youth,
    That dazzled me, but rather what I mourned
    And ill could brook, beholding that the best
    Ruled not, and feeling that they ought to rule.

    For, born in a poor district, and which yet
    Retaineth more of ancient homeliness,
    Than any other nook of English ground,
    It was my fortune scarcely to have seen,
    Through the whole tenor of my school-day time,
    The face of one, who, whether boy or man,
    Was vested with attention or respect
    Through claims of wealth or blood; nor was it least
    Of many benefits, in later years
    Derived from academic institutes
    And rules, that they held something up to view
    Of a Republic, where all stood thus far
    Upon equal ground; that we were brothers all
    In honour, as in one community,
    Scholars and gentlemen; where, furthermore,
    Distinction open lay to all that came,
    And wealth and titles were in less esteem
    Than talents, worth, and prosperous industry,
    Add unto this, subservience from the first
    To presences of God's mysterious power
    Made manifest in Nature's sovereignty,
    And fellowship with venerable books,
    To sanction the proud workings of the soul,
    And mountain liberty. It could not be
    But that one tutored thus should look with awe
    Upon the faculties of man, receive
    Gladly the highest promises, and hail,
    As best, the government of equal rights
    And individual worth. And hence, O Friend!
    If at the first great outbreak I rejoiced
    Less than might well befit my youth, the cause
    In part lay here, that unto me the events
    Seemed nothing out of nature's certain course,
    A gift that was come rather late than soon.
    No wonder, then, if advocates like these,
    Inflamed by passion, blind with prejudice,
    And stung with injury, at this riper day,
    Were impotent to make my hopes put on
    The shape of theirs, my understanding bend
    In honour to their honour: zeal, which yet
    Had slumbered, now in opposition burst
    Forth like a Polar summer: every word
    They uttered was a dart, by counter-winds
    Blown back upon themselves; their reason seemed
    Confusion-stricken by a higher power
    Than human understanding, their discourse
    Maimed, spiritless; and, in their weakness strong, 0
    I triumphed.
    Meantime, day by day, the roads
    Were crowded with the bravest youth of France,
    And all the promptest of her spirits, linked
    In gallant soldiership, and posting on
    To meet the war upon her frontier bounds.
    Yet at this very moment do tears start
    Into mine eyes: I do not say I weep--
    I wept not then,--but tears have dimmed my sight,
    In memory of the farewells of that time,
    Domestic severings, female fortitude
    At dearest separation, patriot love
    And self-devotion, and terrestrial hope,
    Encouraged with a martyr's confidence;
    Even files of strangers merely seen but once,
    And for a moment, men from far with sound
    Of music, martial tunes, and banners spread,
    Entering the city, here and there a face,
    Or person, singled out among the rest,
    Yet still a stranger and beloved as such;
    Even by these passing spectacles my heart
    Was oftentimes uplifted, and they seemed
    Arguments sent from Heaven to prove the cause
    Good, pure, which no one could stand up against,
    Who was not lost, abandoned, selfish, proud,
    Mean, miserable, wilfully depraved,
    Hater perverse of equity and truth.

    Among that band of Officers was one,
    Already hinted at, of other mould--
    A patriot, thence rejected by the rest,
    And with an oriental loathing spurned,
    As of a different caste. A meeker man
    Than this lived never, nor a more benign,
    Meek though enthusiastic. Injuries
    Made 'him' more gracious, and his nature then
    Did breathe its sweetness out most sensibly,
    As aromatic flowers on Alpine turf,
    When foot hath crushed them. He through the events
    Of that great change wandered in perfect faith,
    As through a book, an old romance, or tale
    Of Fairy, or some dream of actions wrought
    Behind the summer clouds. By birth he ranked
    With the most noble, but unto the poor
    Among mankind he was in service bound,
    As by some tie invisible, oaths professed
    To a religious order. Man he loved
    As man; and, to the mean and the obscure,
    And all the homely in their homely works,
    Transferred a courtesy which had no air
    Of condescension; but did rather seem
    A passion and a gallantry, like that
    Which he, a soldier, in his idler day
    Had paid to woman: somewhat vain he was,
    Or seemed so, yet it was not vanity,
    But fondness, and a kind of radiant joy
    Diffused around him, while he was intent
    On works of love or freedom, or revolved
    Complacently the progress of a cause,
    Whereof he was a part: yet this was meek
    And placid, and took nothing from the man
    That was delightful. Oft in solitude
    With him did I discourse about the end
    Of civil government, and its wisest forms;
    Of ancient loyalty, and chartered rights,
    Custom and habit, novelty and change;
    Of self-respect, and virtue in the few
    For patrimonial honour set apart,
    And ignorance in the labouring multitude.
    For he, to all intolerance indisposed,
    Balanced these contemplations in his mind;
    And I, who at that time was scarcely dipped
    Into the turmoil, bore a sounder judgment
    Than later days allowed; carried about me,
    With less alloy to its integrity,
    The experience of past ages, as, through help
    Of books and common life, it makes sure way
    To youthful minds, by objects over near
    Not pressed upon, nor dazzled or misled
    By struggling with the crowd for present ends.

    But though not deaf, nor obstinate to find
    Error without excuse upon the side
    Of them who strove against us, more delight
    We took, and let this freely be confessed,
    In painting to ourselves the miseries
    Of royal courts, and that voluptuous life
    Unfeeling, where the man who is of soul
    The meanest thrives the most; where dignity,
    True personal dignity, abideth not;
    A light, a cruel, and vain world cut off
    From the natural inlets of just sentiment,
    From lowly sympathy and chastening truth;
    Where good and evil interchange their names,
    And thirst for bloody spoils abroad is paired
    With vice at home. We added dearest themes--
    Man and his noble nature, as it is
    The gift which God has placed within his power,
    His blind desires and steady faculties
    Capable of clear truth, the one to break
    Bondage, the other to build liberty
    On firm foundations, making social life,
    Through knowledge spreading and imperishable,
    As just in regulation, and as pure
    As individual in the wise and good.

    We summoned up the honourable deeds
    Of ancient Story, thought of each bright spot,
    That would be found in all recorded time,
    Of truth preserved and error passed away;
    Of single spirits that catch the flame from Heaven,
    And how the multitudes of men will feed
    And fan each other; thought of sects, how keen
    They are to put the appropriate nature on,
    Triumphant over every obstacle
    Of custom, language, country, love, or hate,
    And what they do and suffer for their creed;
    How far they travel, and how long endure;
    How quickly mighty Nations have been formed,
    From least beginnings; how, together locked
    By new opinions, scattered tribes have made
    One body, spreading wide as clouds in heaven.
    To aspirations then of our own minds
    Did we appeal; and, finally, beheld
    A living confirmation of the whole
    Before us, in a people from the depth
    Of shameful imbecility uprisen,
    Fresh as the morning star. Elate we looked
    Upon their virtues; saw, in rudest men,
    Self-sacrifice the firmest; generous love,
    And continence of mind, and sense of right,
    Uppermost in the midst of fiercest strife.

    Oh, sweet it is, in academic groves,
    Or such retirement, Friend! as we have known
    In the green dales beside our Rotha's stream,
    Greta, or Derwent, or some nameless rill,
    To ruminate, with interchange of talk,
    On rational liberty, and hope in man,
    Justice and peace. But far more sweet such toil--
    Toil, say I, for it leads to thoughts abstruse--
    If nature then be standing on the brink
    Of some great trial, and we hear the voice
    Of one devoted,--one whom circumstance
    Hath called upon to embody his deep sense
    In action, give it outwardly a shape,
    And that of benediction, to the world.
    Then doubt is not, and truth is more than truth,--
    A hope it is, and a desire; a creed
    Of zeal, by an authority Divine
    Sanctioned, of danger, difficulty, or death.
    Such conversation, under Attic shades,
    Did Dion hold with Plato; ripened thus
    For a Deliverer's glorious task,--and such
    He, on that ministry already bound,
    Held with Eudemus and Timonides,
    Surrounded by adventurers in arms,
    When those two vessels with their daring freight,
    For the Sicilian Tyrant's overthrow,
    Sailed from Zacynthus,--philosophic war,
    Led by Philosophers. With harder fate,
    Though like ambition, such was he, O Friend!
    Of whom I speak. So Beaupuis (let the name
    Stand near the worthiest of Antiquity)
    Fashioned his life; and many a long discourse,
    With like persuasion honoured, we maintained:
    He, on his part, accoutred for the worst,
    He perished fighting, in supreme command,
    Upon the borders of the unhappy Loire,
    For liberty, against deluded men,
    His fellow-countrymen; and yet most blessed
    In this, that he the fate of later times
    Lived not to see, nor what we now behold,
    Who have as ardent hearts as he had then.

    Along that very Loire, with festal mirth
    Resounding at all hours, and innocent yet
    Of civil slaughter, was our frequent walk;
    Or in wide forests of continuous shade,
    Lofty and over-arched, with open space
    Beneath the trees, clear footing many a mile--
    A solemn region. Oft amid those haunts,
    From earnest dialogues I slipped in thought,
    And let remembrance steal to other times,
    When, o'er those interwoven roots, moss-clad,
    And smooth as marble or a waveless sea,
    Some Hermit, from his cell forth-strayed, might pace
    In sylvan meditation undisturbed;
    As on the pavement of a Gothic church
    Walks a lone Monk, when service hath expired,
    In peace and silence. But if e'er was heard,--
    Heard, though unseen,--a devious traveller,
    Retiring or approaching from afar
    With speed and echoes loud of trampling hoofs
    From the hard floor reverberated, then
    It was Angelica thundering through the woods
    Upon her palfrey, or that gentle maid
    Erminia, fugitive as fair as she.
    Sometimes methought I saw a pair of knights
    Joust underneath the trees, that as in storm
    Rocked high above their heads; anon, the din
    Of boisterous merriment, and music's roar,
    In sudden proclamation, burst from haunt
    Of Satyrs in some viewless glade, with dance
    Rejoicing o'er a female in the midst,
    A mortal beauty, their unhappy thrall.
    The width of those huge forests, unto me
    A novel scene, did often in this way
    Master my fancy while I wandered on
    With that revered companion. And sometimes--
    When to a convent in a meadow green,
    By a brook-side, we came, a roofless pile,
    And not by reverential touch of Time
    Dismantled, but by violence abrupt--
    In spite of those heart-bracing colloquies,
    In spite of real fervour, and of that
    Less genuine and wrought up within myself--
    I could not but bewail a wrong so harsh,
    And for the Matin-bell to sound no more
    Grieved, and the twilight taper, and the cross
    High on the topmost pinnacle, a sign
    (How welcome to the weary traveller's eyes!)
    Of hospitality and peaceful rest.
    And when the partner of those varied walks
    Pointed upon occasion to the site
    Of Romorentin, home of ancient kings,
    To the imperial edifice of Blois,
    Or to that rural castle, name now slipped
    From my remembrance, where a lady lodged,
    By the first Francis wooed, and bound to him
    In chains of mutual passion, from the tower,
    As a tradition of the country tells,
    Practised to commune with her royal knight
    By cressets and love-beacons, intercourse
    'Twixt her high-seated residence and his
    Far off at Chambord on the plain beneath;
    Even here, though less than with the peaceful house
    Religious, 'mid those frequent monuments
    Of Kings, their vices and their better deeds,
    Imagination, potent to inflame
    At times with virtuous wrath and noble scorn,
    Did also often mitigate the force
    Of civic prejudice, the bigotry,
    So call it, of a youthful patriot's mind;
    And on these spots with many gleams I looked
    Of chivalrous delight. Yet not the less,
    Hatred of absolute rule, where will of one
    Is law for all, and of that barren pride
    In them who, by immunities unjust,
    Between the sovereign and the people stand,
    His helper and not theirs, laid stronger hold
    Daily upon me, mixed with pity too
    And love; for where hope is, there love will be
    For the abject multitude, And when we chanced
    One day to meet a hunger-bitten girl,
    Who crept along fitting her languid gait
    Unto a heifer's motion, by a cord
    Tied to her arm, and picking thus from the lane
    Its sustenance, while the girl with pallid hands
    Was busy knitting in a heartless mood
    Of solitude, and at the sight my friend
    In agitation said, "'Tis against 'that'
    That we are fighting," I with him believed
    That a benignant spirit was abroad
    Which might not be withstood, that poverty
    Abject as this would in a little time
    Be found no more, that we should see the earth
    Unthwarted in her wish to recompense
    The meek, the lowly, patient child of toil,
    All institutes for ever blotted out
    That legalised exclusion, empty pomp
    Abolished, sensual state and cruel power
    Whether by edict of the one or few;
    And finally, as sum and crown of all,
    Should see the people having a strong hand
    In framing their own laws; whence better days
    To all mankind. But, these things set apart,
    Was not this single confidence enough
    To animate the mind that ever turned
    A thought to human welfare? That henceforth
    Captivity by mandate without law
    Should cease; and open accusation lead
    To sentence in the hearing of the world,
    And open punishment, if not the air
    Be free to breathe in, and the heart of man
    Dread nothing. From this height I shall not stoop
    To humbler matter that detained us oft
    In thought or conversation, public acts,
    And public persons, and emotions wrought
    Within the breast, as ever-varying winds
    Of record or report swept over us;
    But I might here, instead, repeat a tale,
    Told by my Patriot friend, of sad events,
    That prove to what low depth had struck the roots,
    How widely spread the boughs, of that old tree
    Which, as a deadly mischief, and a foul
    And black dishonour, France was weary of.

    Oh, happy time of youthful lovers, (thus
    The story might begin,) oh, balmy time,
    In which a love-knot, on a lady's brow,
    Is fairer than the fairest star in Heaven!
    So might--and with that prelude 'did' begin
    The record; and, in faithful verse, was given
    The doleful sequel.
    But our little bark
    On a strong river boldly hath been launched;
    And from the driving current should we turn
    To loiter wilfully within a creek,
    Howe'er attractive, Fellow voyager!
    Would'st thou not chide? Yet deem not my pains lost:
    For Vaudracour and Julia (so were named
    The ill-fated pair) in that plain tale will draw
    Tears from the hearts of others, when their own
    Shall beat no more. Thou, also, there may'st read,
    At leisure, how the enamoured youth was driven,
    By public power abased, to fatal crime,
    Nature's rebellion against monstrous law;
    How, between heart and heart, oppression thrust
    Her mandates, severing whom true love had joined,
    Harassing both; until he sank and pressed
    The couch his fate had made for him; supine,
    Save when the stings of viperous remorse,
    Trying their strength, enforced him to start up,
    Aghast and prayerless. Into a deep wood
    He fled, to shun the haunts of human kind;
    There dwelt, weakened in spirit more and more;
    Nor could the voice of Freedom, which through France 0
    Full speedily resounded, public hope,
    Or personal memory of his own worst wrongs,
    Rouse him; but, hidden in those gloomy shades,
    His days he wasted,--an imbecile mind.

    NOTES

    6 See "Vaudracour and Julia" (1805).

    Wordsworth, William. 1888. Complete Poetical Works. London: Macmillan.








    BOOK TENTH. RESIDENCE IN FRANCE (continued)



    IT was a beautiful and silent day
    That overspread the countenance of earth,
    Then fading with unusual quietness,--
    A day as beautiful as e'er was given
    To soothe regret, though deepening what it soothed,
    When by the gliding Loire I paused, and cast
    Upon his rich domains, vineyard and tilth,
    Green meadow-ground, and many-coloured woods,
    Again, and yet again, a farewell look;
    Then from the quiet of that scene passed on,
    Bound to the fierce Metropolis. From his throne
    The King had fallen, and that invading host--
    Presumptuous cloud, on whose black front was written
    The tender mercies of the dismal wind
    That bore it--on the plains of Liberty
    Had burst innocuous. Say in bolder words,
    They--who had come elate as eastern hunters
    Banded beneath the Great Mogul, when he
    Erewhile went forth from Agra or Lahore,
    Rajahs and Omrahs in his train, intent
    To drive their prey enclosed within a ring
    Wide as a province, but, the signal given,
    Before the point of the life-threatening spear
    Narrowing itself by moments--they, rash men,
    Had seen the anticipated quarry turned
    Into avengers, from whose wrath they fled
    In terror. Disappointment and dismay
    Remained for all whose fancies had run wild
    With evil expectations; confidence
    And perfect triumph for the better cause.

    The State--as if to stamp the final seal
    On her security, and to the world
    Show what she was, a high and fearless soul,
    Exulting in defiance, or heart-stung
    By sharp resentment, or belike to taunt
    With spiteful gratitude the baffled League,
    That had stirred up her slackening faculties
    To a new transition--when the King was crushed,
    Spared not the empty throne, and in proud haste
    Assumed the body and venerable name
    Of a Republic. Lamentable crimes,
    'Tis true, had gone before this hour, dire work
    Of massacre, in which the senseless sword
    Was prayed to as a judge; but these were past,
    Earth free from them for ever, as was thought,--
    Ephemeral monsters, to be seen but once!
    Things that could only show themselves and die.

    Cheered with this hope, to Paris I returned,
    And ranged, with ardour heretofore unfelt,
    The spacious city, and in progress passed
    The prison where the unhappy Monarch lay,
    Associate with his children and his wife
    In bondage; and the palace, lately stormed
    With roar of cannon by a furious host.
    I crossed the square (an empty area then!)
    Of the Carrousel, where so late had lain
    The dead, upon the dying heaped, and gazed
    On this and other spots, as doth a man
    Upon a volume whose contents he knows
    Are memorable, but from him locked up,
    Being written in a tongue he cannot read,
    So that he questions the mute leaves with pain,
    And half upbraids their silence. But that night
    I felt most deeply in what world I was,
    What ground I trod on, and what air I breathed.
    High was my room and lonely, near the roof
    Of a large mansion or hotel, a lodge
    That would have pleased me in more quiet times;
    Nor was it wholly without pleasure then.
    With unextinguished taper I kept watch,
    Reading at intervals; the fear gone by
    Pressed on me almost like a fear to come.
    I thought of those September massacres,
    Divided from me by one little month,
    Saw them and touched: the rest was conjured up
    From tragic fictions or true history,
    Remembrances and dim admonishments.
    The horse is taught his manage, and no star
    Of wildest course but treads back his own steps;
    For the spent hurricane the air provides
    As fierce a successor; the tide retreats
    But to return out of its hiding-place
    In the great deep; all things have second birth;
    The earthquake is not satisfied at once;
    And in this way I wrought upon myself,
    Until I seemed to hear a voice that cried,
    To the whole city, "Sleep no more." The trance
    Fled with the voice to which it had given birth;
    But vainly comments of a calmer mind
    Promised soft peace and sweet forgetfulness.
    The place, all hushed and silent as it was,
    Appeared unfit for the repose of night,
    Defenceless as a wood where tigers roam.

    With early morning towards the Palace-walk
    Of Orleans eagerly I turned: as yet
    The streets were still; not so those long Arcades;
    There, 'mid a peal of ill-matched sounds and cries,
    That greeted me on entering, I could hear
    Shrill voices from the hawkers in the throng,
    Bawling, "Denunciation of the Crimes
    Of Maximilian Robespierre;" the hand,
    Prompt as the voice, held forth a printed speech,
    The same that had been recently pronounced,
    When Robespierre, not ignorant for what mark
    Some words of indirect reproof had been
    Intended, rose in hardihood, and dared
    The man who had an ill surmise of him
    To bring his charge in openness; whereat,
    When a dead pause ensued, and no one stirred,
    In silence of all present, from his seat
    Louvet walked single through the avenue,
    And took his station in the Tribune, saying,
    "I, Robespierre, accuse thee!" Well is known
    The inglorious issue of that charge, and how
    He, who had launched the startling thunderbolt,
    The one bold man, whose voice the attack had sounded,
    Was left without a follower to discharge
    His perilous duty, and retire lamenting
    That Heaven's best aid is wasted upon men
    Who to themselves are false.
    But these are things 0
    Of which I speak, only as they were storm
    Or sunshine to my individual mind,
    No further. Let me then relate that now--
    In some sort seeing with my proper eyes
    That Liberty, and Life, and Death, would soon
    To the remotest corners of the land
    Lie in the arbitrement of those who ruled
    The capital City; what was struggled for,
    And by what combatants victory must be won;
    The indecision on their part whose aim
    Seemed best, and the straightforward path of those
    Who in attack or in defence were strong
    Through their impiety--my inmost soul
    Was agitated; yea, I could almost
    Have prayed that throughout earth upon all men,
    By patient exercise of reason made
    Worthy of liberty, all spirits filled
    With zeal expanding in Truth's holy light,
    The gift of tongues might fall, and power arrive
    From the four quarters of the winds to do
    For France, what without help she could not do,
    A work of honour; think not that to this
    I added, work of safety: from all doubt
    Or trepidation for the end of things
    Far was I, far as angels are from guilt.

    Yet did I grieve, nor only grieved, but thought
    Of opposition and of remedies:
    An insignificant stranger and obscure,
    And one, moreover, little graced with power
    Of eloquence even in my native speech,
    And all unfit for tumult or intrigue,
    Yet would I at this time with willing heart
    Have undertaken for a cause so great
    Service however dangerous. I revolved,
    How much the destiny of Man had still
    Hung upon single persons; that there was,
    Transcendent to all local patrimony,
    One nature, as there is one sun in heaven;
    That objects, even as they are great, thereby
    Do come within the reach of humblest eyes;
    That Man is only weak through his mistrust
    And want of hope where evidence divine
    Proclaims to him that hope should be most sure;
    Nor did the inexperience of my youth
    Preclude conviction, that a spirit strong
    In hope, and trained to noble aspirations,
    A spirit thoroughly faithful to itself,
    Is for Society's unreasoning herd
    A domineering instinct, serves at once
    For way and guide, a fluent receptacle
    That gathers up each petty straggling rill
    And vein of water, glad to be rolled on
    In safe obedience; that a mind, whose rest
    Is where it ought to be, in self-restraint,
    In circumspection and simplicity,
    Falls rarely in entire discomfiture
    Below its aim, or meets with, from without,
    A treachery that foils it or defeats;
    And, lastly, if the means on human will,
    Frail human will, dependent should betray
    Him who too boldly trusted them, I felt
    That 'mid the loud distractions of the world
    A sovereign voice subsists within the soul,
    Arbiter undisturbed of right and wrong,
    Of life and death, in majesty severe
    Enjoining, as may best promote the aims
    Of truth and justice, either sacrifice,
    From whatsoever region of our cares
    Or our infirm affections Nature pleads,
    Earnest and blind, against the stern decree.

    On the other side, I called to mind those truths
    That are the commonplaces of the schools--
    (A theme for boys, too hackneyed for their sires,)
    Yet, with a revelation's liveliness,
    In all their comprehensive bearings known
    And visible to philosophers of old,
    Men who, to business of the world untrained,
    Lived in the shade; and to Harmodius known
    And his compeer Aristogiton, known
    To Brutus--that tyrannic power is weak,
    Hath neither gratitude, nor faith, nor love,
    Nor the support of good or evil men
    To trust in; that the godhead which is ours
    Can never utterly be charmed or stilled;
    That nothing hath a natural right to last
    But equity and reason; that all else
    Meets foes irreconcilable, and at best
    Lives only by variety of disease.

    Well might my wishes be intense, my thoughts
    Strong and perturbed, not doubting at that time
    But that the virtue of one paramount mind
    Would have abashed those impious crests--have quelled
    Outrage and bloody power, and--in despite
    Of what the People long had been and were
    Through ignorance and false teaching, sadder proof
    Of immaturity, and--in the teeth
    Of desperate opposition from without--
    Have cleared a passage for just government,
    And left a solid birthright to the State,
    Redeemed, according to example given
    By ancient lawgivers.
    In this frame of mind,
    Dragged by a chain of harsh necessity,
    So seemed it,--now I thankfully acknowledge,
    Forced by the gracious providence of Heaven,--
    To England I returned, else (though assured
    That I both was and must be of small weight,
    No better than a landsman on the deck
    Of a ship struggling with a hideous storm)
    Doubtless, I should have then made common cause
    With some who perished; haply perished too,
    A poor mistaken and bewildered offering,--
    Should to the breast of Nature have gone back,
    With all my resolutions, all my hopes,
    A Poet only to myself, to men
    Useless, and even, beloved Friend! a soul
    To thee unknown!
    Twice had the trees let fall
    Their leaves, as often Winter had put on
    His hoary crown, since I had seen the surge
    Beat against Albion's shore, since ear of mine
    Had caught the accents of my native speech
    Upon our native country's sacred ground.
    A patriot of the world, how could I glide
    Into communion with her sylvan shades,
    Erewhile my tuneful haunt? It pleased me more
    To abide in the great City, where I found
    The general air still busy with the stir
    Of that first memorable onset made
    By a strong levy of humanity
    Upon the traffickers in Negro blood;
    Effort which, though defeated, had recalled
    To notice old forgotten principles,
    And through the nation spread a novel heat
    Of virtuous feeling. For myself, I own
    That this particular strife had wanted power
    To rivet my affections; nor did now
    Its unsuccessful issue much excite
    My sorrow; for I brought with me the faith
    That, if France prospered, good men would not long
    Pay fruitless worship to humanity,
    And this most rotten branch of human shame,
    Object, so seemed it, of superfluous pains
    Would fall together with its parent tree.
    What, then, were my emotions, when in arms
    Britain put forth her free-born strength in league,
    Oh, pity and shame! with those confederate Powers!
    Not in my single self alone I found,
    But in the minds of all ingenuous youth,
    Change and subversion from that hour. No shock
    Given to my moral nature had I known
    Down to that very moment; neither lapse
    Nor turn of sentiment that might be named
    A revolution, save at this one time;
    All else was progress on the self-same path
    On which, with a diversity of pace,
    I had been travelling: this a stride at once
    Into another region. As a light
    And pliant harebell, swinging in the breeze
    On some grey rock--its birth-place--so had I
    Wantoned, fast rooted on the ancient tower
    Of my beloved country, wishing not
    A happier fortune than to wither there:
    Now was I from that pleasant station torn
    And tossed about in whirlwind. I rejoiced,
    Yea, afterwards--truth most painful to record!--
    Exulted, in the triumph of my soul,
    When Englishmen by thousands were o'erthrown,
    Left without glory on the field, or driven,
    Brave hearts! to shameful flight. It was a grief,--
    Grief call it not, 'twas anything but that,--
    A conflict of sensations without name,
    Of which 'he' only, who may love the sight
    Of a village steeple, as I do, can judge,
    When, in the congregation bending all
    To their great Father, prayers were offered up,
    Or praises for our country's victories;
    And, 'mid the simple worshippers, perchance
    I only, like an uninvited guest
    Whom no one owned, sate silent, shall I add,
    Fed on the day of vengeance yet to come.

    Oh! much have they to account for, who could tear, 0
    By violence, at one decisive rent,
    From the best youth in England their dear pride,
    Their joy, in England; this, too, at a time
    In which worst losses easily might wean
    The best of names, when patriotic love
    Did of itself in modesty give way,
    Like the Precursor when the Deity
    Is come Whose harbinger he was; a time
    In which apostasy from ancient faith
    Seemed but conversion to a higher creed;
    Withal a season dangerous and wild,
    A time when sage Experience would have snatched
    Flowers out of any hedge-row to compose
    A chaplet in contempt of his grey locks.

    When the proud fleet that bears the red-cross flag
    In that unworthy service was prepared
    To mingle, I beheld the vessels lie,
    A brood of gallant creatures, on the deep;
    I saw them in their rest, a sojourner
    Through a whole month of calm and glassy days
    In that delightful island which protects
    Their place of convocation--there I heard,
    Each evening, pacing by the still sea-shore,
    A monitory sound that never failed,--
    The sunset cannon. While the orb went down
    In the tranquillity of nature, came
    That voice, ill requiem! seldom heard by me
    Without a spirit overcast by dark
    Imaginations, sense of woes to come,
    Sorrow for human kind, and pain of heart.

    In France, the men, who, for their desperate ends,
    Had plucked up mercy by the roots, were glad
    Of this new enemy. Tyrants, strong before
    In wicked pleas, were strong as demons now;
    And thus, on every side beset with foes,
    The goaded land waxed mad; the crimes of few
    Spread into madness of the many; blasts
    From hell came sanctified like airs from heaven.
    The sternness of the just, the faith of those
    Who doubted not that Providence had times
    Of vengeful retribution, theirs who throned
    The human Understanding paramount
    And made of that their God, the hopes of men
    Who were content to barter short-lived pangs
    For a paradise of ages, the blind rage
    Of insolent tempers, the light vanity
    Of intermeddlers, steady purposes
    Of the suspicious, slips of the indiscreet,
    And all the accidents of life--were pressed
    Into one service, busy with one work.
    The Senate stood aghast, her prudence quenched,
    Her wisdom stifled, and her justice scared,
    Her frenzy only active to extol
    Past outrages, and shape the way for new,
    Which no one dared to oppose or mitigate.

    Domestic carnage now filled the whole year
    With feast-days; old men from the chimney-nook,
    The maiden from the bosom of her love,
    The mother from the cradle of her babe,
    The warrior from the field--all perished, all--
    Friends, enemies, of all parties, ages, ranks,
    Head after head, and never heads enough
    For those that bade them fall. They found their joy,
    They made it proudly, eager as a child,
    (If like desires of innocent little ones
    May with such heinous appetites be compared),
    Pleased in some open field to exercise
    A toy that mimics with revolving wings
    The motion of a wind-mill; though the air
    Do of itself blow fresh, and make the vanes
    Spin in his eyesight, 'that' contents him not,
    But with the plaything at arm's length, he sets
    His front against the blast, and runs amain,
    That it may whirl the faster.
    Amid the depth
    Of those enormities, even thinking minds
    Forgot, at seasons, whence they had their being
    Forgot that such a sound was ever heard
    As Liberty upon earth: yet all beneath
    Her innocent authority was wrought,
    Nor could have been, without her blessed name.
    The illustrious wife of Roland, in the hour
    Of her composure, felt that agony,
    And gave it vent in her last words. O Friend!
    It was a lamentable time for man,
    Whether a hope had e'er been his or not:
    A woful time for them whose hopes survived
    The shock; most woful for those few who still
    Were flattered, and had trust in human kind:
    They had the deepest feeling of the grief.
    Meanwhile the Invaders fared as they deserved:
    The Herculean Commonwealth had put forth her arms,
    And throttled with an infant godhead's might
    The snakes about her cradle; that was well,
    And as it should be; yet no cure for them
    Whose souls were sick with pain of what would be
    Hereafter brought in charge against mankind.
    Most melancholy at that time, O Friend!
    Were my day-thoughts,--my nights were miserable;
    Through months, through years, long after the last beat
    Of those atrocities, the hour of sleep
    To me came rarely charged with natural gifts,
    Such ghastly visions had I of despair
    And tyranny, and implements of death;
    And innocent victims sinking under fear,
    And momentary hope, and worn-out prayer,
    Each in his separate cell, or penned in crowds
    For sacrifice, and struggling with fond mirth
    And levity in dungeons, where the dust
    Was laid with tears. Then suddenly the scene
    Changed, and the unbroken dream entangled me
    In long orations, which I strove to plead
    Before unjust tribunals,--with a voice
    Labouring, a brain confounded, and a sense,
    Death-like, of treacherous desertion, felt
    In the last place of refuge--my own soul.

    When I began in youth's delightful prime
    To yield myself to Nature, when that strong
    And holy passion overcame me first,
    Nor day nor night, evening or morn, was free
    From its oppression. But, O Power Supreme!
    Without Whose call this world would cease to breathe
    Who from the fountain of Thy grace dost fill
    The veins that branch through every frame of life,
    Making man what he is, creature divine,
    In single or in social eminence,
    Above the rest raised infinite ascents
    When reason that enables him to be
    Is not sequestered--what a change is here!
    How different ritual for this after-worship,
    What countenance to promote this second love!
    The first was service paid to things which lie
    Guarded within the bosom of Thy will.
    Therefore to serve was high beatitude;
    Tumult was therefore gladness, and the fear
    Ennobling, venerable; sleep secure,
    And waking thoughts more rich than happiest dreams.

    But as the ancient Prophets, borne aloft
    In vision, yet constrained by natural laws
    With them to take a troubled human heart,
    Wanted not consolations, nor a creed
    Of reconcilement, then when they denounced,
    On towns and cities, wallowing in the abyss
    Of their offences, punishment to come;
    Or saw, like other men, with bodily eyes,
    Before them, in some desolated place,
    The wrath consummate and the threat fulfilled;
    So, with devout humility be it said,
    So, did a portion of that spirit fall
    On me uplifted from the vantage-ground
    Of pity and sorrow to a state of being
    That through the time's exceeding fierceness saw
    Glimpses of retribution, terrible,
    And in the order of sublime behests:
    But, even if that were not, amid the awe
    Of unintelligible chastisement,
    Not only acquiescences of faith
    Survived, but daring sympathies with power,
    Motions not treacherous or profane, else why
    Within the folds of no ungentle breast
    Their dread vibration to this hour prolonged?
    Wild blasts of music thus could find their way
    Into the midst of turbulent events;
    So that worst tempests might be listened to.
    Then was the truth received into my heart,
    That, under heaviest sorrow earth can bring,
    If from the affliction somewhere do not grow
    Honour which could not else have been, a faith,
    An elevation, and a sanctity,
    If new strength be not given nor old restored,
    The blame is ours, not Nature's. When a taunt
    Was taken up by scoffers in their pride,
    Saying, "Behold the harvest that we reap
    From popular government and equality,"
    I clearly saw that neither these nor aught
    Of wild belief engrafted on their names
    By false philosophy had caused the woe,
    But a terrific reservoir of guilt
    And ignorance filled up from age to age,
    That could no longer hold its loathsome charge,
    But burst and spread in deluge through the land.

    And as the desert hath green spots, the sea
    Small islands scattered amid stormy waves,
    So 'that' disastrous period did not want
    Bright sprinklings of all human excellence,
    To which the silver wands of saints in Heaven
    Might point with rapturous joy. Yet not the less,
    For those examples, in no age surpassed,
    Of fortitude and energy and love,
    And human nature faithful to herself
    Under worst trials, was I driven to think
    Of the glad times when first I traversed France
    A youthful pilgrim; above all reviewed
    That eventide, when under windows bright
    With happy faces and with garlands hung,
    And through a rainbow-arch that spanned the street,
    Triumphal pomp for liberty confirmed,
    I paced, a dear companion at my side,
    The town of Arras, whence with promise high
    Issued, on delegation to sustain
    Humanity and right, 'that' Robespierre,
    He who thereafter, and in how short time!
    Wielded the sceptre of the Atheist crew.
    When the calamity spread far and wide--
    And this same city, that did then appear
    To outrun the rest in exultation, groaned
    Under the vengeance of her cruel son,
    As Lear reproached the winds--I could almost
    Have quarrelled with that blameless spectacle
    For lingering yet an image in my mind
    To mock me under such a strange reverse.

    O Friend! few happier moments have been mine
    Than that which told the downfall of this Tribe
    So dreaded, so abhorred. The day deserves
    A separate record. Over the smooth sands
    Of Leven's ample estuary lay
    My journey, and beneath a genial sun,
    With distant prospect among gleams of sky
    And clouds and intermingling mountain tops,
    In one inseparable glory clad,
    Creatures of one ethereal substance met
    In consistory, like a diadem
    Or crown of burning seraphs as they sit
    In the empyrean. Underneath that pomp
    Celestial, lay unseen the pastoral vales
    Among whose happy fields I had grown up
    From childhood. On the fulgent spectacle,
    That neither passed away nor changed, I gazed
    Enrapt; but brightest things are wont to draw
    Sad opposites out of the inner heart,
    As even their pensive influence drew from mine.
    How could it otherwise? for not in vain
    That very morning had I turned aside
    To seek the ground where, 'mid a throng of graves,
    An honoured teacher of my youth was laid,
    And on the stone were graven by his desire
    Lines from the churchyard elegy of Gray.
    This faithful guide, speaking from his deathbed,
    Added no farewell to his parting counsel,
    But said to me, "My head will soon lie low;"
    And when I saw the turf that covered him,
    After the lapse of full eight years, those words,
    With sound of voice and countenance of the Man,
    Came back upon me, so that some few tears
    Fell from me in my own despite. But now
    I thought, still traversing that widespread plain,
    With tender pleasure of the verses graven
    Upon his tombstone, whispering to myself:
    He loved the Poets, and, if now alive,
    Would have loved me, as one not destitute
    Of promise, nor belying the kind hope
    That he had formed, when I, at his command,
    Began to spin, with toil, my earliest songs.

    As I advanced, all that I saw or felt
    Was gentleness and peace. Upon a small
    And rocky island near, a fragment stood,
    (Itself like a sea rock) the low remains
    (With shells encrusted, dark with briny weeds)
    Of a dilapidated structure, once
    A Romish chapel, where the vested priest
    Said matins at the hour that suited those
    Who crossed the sands with ebb of morning tide.
    Not far from that still ruin all the plain
    Lay spotted with a variegated crowd
    Of vehicles and travellers, horse and foot,
    Wading beneath the conduct of their guide
    In loose procession through the shallow stream
    Of inland waters; the great sea meanwhile
    Heaved at safe distance, far retired. I paused,
    Longing for skill to paint a scene so bright
    And cheerful, but the foremost of the band
    As he approached, no salutation given
    In the familiar language of the day,
    Cried, "Robespierre is dead!" nor was a doubt,
    After strict question, left within my mind
    That he and his supporters all were fallen.

    Great was my transport, deep my gratitude
    To everlasting Justice, by this fiat
    Made manifest. "Come now, ye golden times,"
    Said I forth-pouring on those open sands
    A hymn of triumph: "as the morning comes
    From out the bosom of the night, come ye:
    Thus far our trust is verified; behold!
    They who with clumsy desperation brought
    A river of Blood, and preached that nothing else
    Could cleanse the Augean stable, by the might
    Of their own helper have been swept away;
    Their madness stands declared and visible;
    Elsewhere will safety now be sought, and earth
    March firmly towards righteousness and peace."--
    Then schemes I framed more calmly, when and how
    The madding factions might be tranquillised,
    And how through hardships manifold and long
    The glorious renovation would proceed.
    Thus interrupted by uneasy bursts
    Of exultation, I pursued my way
    Along that very shore which I had skimmed
    In former days, when--spurring from the Vale
    Of Nightshade, and St. Mary's mouldering fane,
    And the stone abbot, after circuit made
    In wantonness of heart, a joyous band
    Of schoolboys hastening to their distant home
    Along the margin of the moonlight sea--
    We beat with thundering hoofs the level sand.

    Wordsworth, William. 1888. Complete Poetical Works. London: Macmillan.







    BOOK ELEVENTH. FRANCE (concluded)



    FROM that time forth, Authority in France
    Put on a milder face; Terror had ceased,
    Yet everything was wanting that might give
    Courage to them who looked for good by light
    Of rational Experience, for the shoots
    And hopeful blossoms of a second spring:
    Yet, in me, confidence was unimpaired;
    The Senate's language, and the public acts
    And measures of the Government, though both
    Weak, and of heartless omen, had not power
    To daunt me; in the People was my trust:
    And, in the virtues which mine eyes had seen,
    I knew that wound external could not take
    Life from the young Republic; that new foes
    Would only follow, in the path of shame,
    Their brethren, and her triumphs be in the end
    Great, universal, irresistible.
    This intuition led me to confound
    One victory with another, higher far,--
    Triumphs of unambitious peace at home,
    And noiseless fortitude. Beholding still
    Resistance strong as heretofore, I thought
    That what was in degree the same was likewise
    The same in quality,--that, as the worse
    Of the two spirits then at strife remained
    Untired, the better, surely, would preserve
    The heart that first had roused him. Youth maintains,
    In all conditions of society,
    Communion more direct and intimate
    With Nature,--hence, ofttimes, with reason too--
    Than age or manhood, even. To Nature, then,
    Power had reverted: habit, custom, law,
    Had left an interregnum's open space
    For 'her' to move about in, uncontrolled.
    Hence could I see how Babel-like their task,
    Who, by the recent deluge stupified,
    With their whole souls went culling from the day
    Its petty promises, to build a tower
    For their own safety; laughed with my compeers
    At gravest heads, by enmity to France
    Distempered, till they found, in every blast
    Forced from the street-disturbing newsman's horn,
    For her great cause record or prophecy
    Of utter ruin. How might we believe
    That wisdom could, in any shape, come near
    Men clinging to delusions so insane?
    And thus, experience proving that no few
    Of our opinions had been just, we took
    Like credit to ourselves where less was due,
    And thought that other notions were as sound
    Yea, could not but be right, because we saw
    That foolish men opposed them.
    To a strain
    More animated I might here give way,
    And tell, since juvenile errors are my theme,
    What in those days, through Britain, was performed
    To turn 'all' judgments out of their right course;
    But this is passion over-near ourselves,
    Reality too close and too intense,
    And intermixed with something, in my mind,
    Of scorn and condemnation personal,
    That would profane the sanctity of verse.
    Our Shepherds, this say merely, at that time
    Acted, or seemed at least to act, like men
    Thirsting to make the guardian crook of law
    A tool of murder; they who ruled the State--
    Though with such awful proof before their eyes
    That he, who would sow death, reaps death, or worse,
    And can reap nothing better--child-like longed
    To imitate, not wise enough to avoid;
    Or left (by mere timidity betrayed)
    The plain straight road, for one no better chosen
    Than if their wish had been to undermine
    Justice, and make an end of Liberty.

    But from these bitter truths I must return
    To my own history. It hath been told
    That I was led to take an eager part
    In arguments of civil polity,
    Abruptly, and indeed before my time:
    I had approached, like other youths, the shield
    Of human nature from the golden side,
    And would have fought, even to the death, to attest
    The quality of the metal which I saw.
    What there is best in individual man,
    Of wise in passion, and sublime in power,
    Benevolent in small societies,
    And great in large ones, I had oft revolved,
    Felt deeply, but not thoroughly understood
    By reason: nay, far from it; they were yet,
    As cause was given me afterwards to learn,
    Not proof against the injuries of the day;
    Lodged only at the sanctuary's door,
    Not safe within its bosom. Thus prepared,
    And with such general insight into evil,
    And of the bounds which sever it from good,
    As books and common intercourse with life
    Must needs have given--to the inexperienced mind,
    When the world travels in a beaten road,
    Guide faithful as is needed--I began
    To meditate with ardour on the rule
    And management of nations; what it is
    And ought to be; and strove to learn how far
    Their power or weakness, wealth or poverty,
    Their happiness or misery, depends
    Upon their laws, and fashion of the State.

    O pleasant exercise of hope and joy!
    For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
    Upon our side, us who were strong in love!
    Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
    But to be young was very Heaven! O times,
    In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
    Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
    The attraction of a country in romance!
    When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights
    When most intent on making of herself
    A prime enchantress--to assist the work,
    Which then was going forward in her name!
    Not favoured spots alone, but the whole Earth,
    The beauty wore of promise--that which sets
    (As at some moments might not be unfelt
    Among the bowers of Paradise itself)
    The budding rose above the rose full blown.
    What temper at the prospect did not wake
    To happiness unthought of? The inert
    Were roused, and lively natures rapt away!
    They who had fed their childhood upon dreams,
    The play-fellows of fancy, who had made
    All powers of swiftness, subtilty, and strength
    Their ministers,--who in lordly wise had stirred
    Among the grandest objects of the sense,
    And dealt with whatsoever they found there
    As if they had within some lurking right
    To wield it;--they, too, who of gentle mood
    Had watched all gentle motions, and to these
    Had fitted their own thoughts, schemers more mild,
    And in the region of their peaceful selves;--
    Now was it that 'both' found, the meek and lofty
    Did both find, helpers to their hearts' desire,
    And stuff at hand, plastic as they could wish,--
    Were called upon to exercise their skill,
    Not in Utopia,--subterranean fields,--
    Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where!
    But in the very world, which is the world
    Of all of us,--the place where, in the end,
    We find our happiness, or not at all!

    Why should I not confess that Earth was then
    To me, what an inheritance, new-fallen,
    Seems, when the first time visited, to one
    Who thither comes to find in it his home?
    He walks about and looks upon the spot
    With cordial transport, moulds it and remoulds,
    And is half-pleased with things that are amiss,
    'Twill be such joy to see them disappear.

    An active partisan, I thus convoked
    From every object pleasant circumstance
    To suit my ends; I moved among mankind
    With genial feelings still predominant;
    When erring, erring on the better part,
    And in the kinder spirit; placable,
    Indulgent, as not uninformed that men
    See as they have been taught--Antiquity
    Gives rights to error; and aware, no less
    That throwing off oppression must be work
    As well of License as of Liberty;
    And above all--for this was more than all--
    Not caring if the wind did now and then
    Blow keen upon an eminence that gave
    Prospect so large into futurity;
    In brief, a child of Nature, as at first,
    Diffusing only those affections wider
    That from the cradle had grown up with me,
    And losing, in no other way than light
    Is lost in light, the weak in the more strong.

    In the main outline, such it might be said
    Was my condition, till with open war
    Britain opposed the liberties of France.
    This threw me first out of the pale of love;
    Soured and corrupted, upwards to the source,
    My sentiments; was not, as hitherto,
    A swallowing up of lesser things in great,
    But change of them into their contraries;
    And thus a way was opened for mistakes
    And false conclusions, in degree as gross,
    In kind more dangerous. What had been a pride,
    Was now a shame; my likings and my loves
    Ran in new channels, leaving old ones dry;
    And hence a blow that, in maturer age,
    Would but have touched the judgment, struck more deep
    Into sensations near the heart: meantime,
    As from the first, wild theories were afloat,
    To whose pretensions, sedulously urged,
    I had but lent a careless ear, assured
    That time was ready to set all things right,
    And that the multitude, so long oppressed,
    Would be oppressed no more.
    But when events
    Brought less encouragement, and unto these
    The immediate proof of principles no more
    Could be entrusted, while the events themselves,
    Worn out in greatness, stripped of novelty,
    Less occupied the mind, and sentiments
    Could through my understanding's natural growth
    No longer keep their ground, by faith maintained
    Of inward consciousness, and hope that laid
    Her hand upon her object--evidence
    Safer, of universal application, such
    As could not be impeached, was sought elsewhere.

    But now, become oppressors in their turn,
    Frenchmen had changed a war of self-defence
    For one of conquest, losing sight of all
    Which they had struggled for: up mounted now,
    Openly in the eye of earth and heaven,
    The scale of liberty. I read her doom,
    With anger vexed, with disappointment sore,
    But not dismayed, nor taking to the shame
    Of a false prophet. While resentment rose
    Striving to hide, what nought could heal, the wounds
    Of mortified presumption, I adhered
    More firmly to old tenets, and, to prove
    Their temper, strained them more; and thus, in heat
    Of contest, did opinions every day
    Grow into consequence, till round my mind
    They clung, as if they were its life, nay more,
    The very being of the immortal soul.

    This was the time, when, all things tending fast
    To depravation, speculative schemes--
    That promised to abstract the hopes of Man
    Out of his feelings, to be fixed thenceforth
    For ever in a purer element--
    Found ready welcome. Tempting region 'that'
    For Zeal to enter and refresh herself,
    Where passions had the privilege to work,
    And never hear the sound of their own names.
    But, speaking more in charity, the dream
    Flattered the young, pleased with extremes, nor least
    With that which makes our Reason's naked self
    The object of its fervour. What delight!
    How glorious! in self-knowledge and self-rule,
    To look through all the frailties of the world,
    And, with a resolute mastery shaking off
    Infirmities of nature, time, and place,
    Build social upon personal Liberty,
    Which, to the blind restraints of general laws,
    Superior, magisterially adopts
    One guide, the light of circumstances, flashed
    Upon an independent intellect.
    Thus expectation rose again; thus hope,
    From her first ground expelled, grew proud once more.
    Oft, as my thoughts were turned to human kind,
    I scorned indifference; but, inflamed with thirst
    Of a secure intelligence, and sick
    Of other longing, I pursued what seemed
    A more exalted nature; wished that Man
    Should start out of his earthy, worm-like state,
    And spread abroad the wings of Liberty,
    Lord of himself, in undisturbed delight--
    A noble aspiration! 'yet' I feel
    (Sustained by worthier as by wiser thoughts)
    The aspiration, nor shall ever cease
    To feel it;--but return we to our course.

    Enough, 'tis true--could such a plea excuse
    Those aberrations--had the clamorous friends
    Of ancient Institutions said and done
    To bring disgrace upon their very names;
    Disgrace, of which, custom and written law,
    And sundry moral sentiments as props
    Or emanations of those institutes,
    Too justly bore a part. A veil had been
    Uplifted; why deceive ourselves? in sooth,
    'Twas even so; and sorrow for the man
    Who either had not eyes wherewith to see,
    Or, seeing, had forgotten! A strong shock
    Was given to old opinions; all men's minds
    Had felt its power, and mine was both let loose,
    Let loose and goaded. After what hath been
    Already said of patriotic love,
    Suffice it here to add, that, somewhat stern
    In temperament, withal a happy man,
    And therefore bold to look on painful things,
    Free likewise of the world, and thence more bold,
    I summoned my best skill, and toiled, intent
    To anatomise the frame of social life;
    Yea, the whole body of society
    Searched to its heart. Share with me, Friend! the wish
    That some dramatic tale, endued with shapes
    Livelier, and flinging out less guarded words
    Than suit the work we fashion, might set forth
    What then I learned, or think I learned, of truth,
    And the errors into which I fell, betrayed
    By present objects, and by reasonings false
    From their beginnings, inasmuch as drawn
    Out of a heart that had been turned aside
    From Nature's way by outward accidents,
    And which was thus confounded, more and more
    Misguided, and misguiding. So I fared,
    Dragging all precepts, judgments, maxims, creeds,
    Like culprits to the bar; calling the mind,
    Suspiciously, to establish in plain day
    Her titles and her honours; now believing,
    Now disbelieving; endlessly perplexed
    With impulse, motive, right and wrong, the ground
    Of obligation, what the rule and whence
    The sanction; till, demanding formal 'proof',
    And seeking it in every thing, I lost
    All feeling of conviction, and, in fine,
    Sick, wearied out with contrarieties,
    Yielded up moral questions in despair.

    This was the crisis of that strong disease,
    This the soul's last and lowest ebb; I drooped,
    Deeming our blessed reason of least use
    Where wanted most: "The lordly attributes
    Of will and choice," I bitterly exclaimed
    "What are they but a mockery of a Being
    Who hath in no concerns of his a test
    Of good and evil; knows not what to fear
    Or hope for, what to covet or to shun;
    And who, if those could be discerned, would yet
    Be little profited, would see, and ask
    Where is the obligation to enforce?
    And, to acknowledged law rebellious, still,
    As selfish passion urged, would act amiss;
    The dupe of folly, or the slave of crime."

    Depressed, bewildered thus, I did not walk
    With scoffers, seeking light and gay revenge
    From indiscriminate laughter, nor sate down
    In reconcilement with an utter waste
    Of intellect; such sloth I could not brook,
    (Too well I loved, in that my spring of life,
    Pains-taking thoughts, and truth, their dear reward)
    But turned to abstract science, and there sought
    Work for the reasoning faculty enthroned
    Where the disturbances of space and time--
    Whether in matters various, properties
    Inherent, or from human will and power
    Derived--find no admission. Then it was--
    Thanks to the bounteous Giver of all good!--
    That the beloved Sister in whose sight
    Those days were passed, now speaking in a voice
    Of sudden admonition--like a brook
    That did but 'cross' a lonely road, and now
    Is seen, heard, felt, and caught at every turn,
    Companion never lost through many a league--
    Maintained for me a saving intercourse
    With my true self; for, though bedimmed and changed
    Much, as it seemed, I was no further changed
    Than as a clouded and a waning moon:
    She whispered still that brightness would return;
    She, in the midst of all, preserved me still
    A Poet, made me seek beneath that name,
    And that alone, my office upon earth;
    And, lastly, as hereafter will be shown,
    If willing audience fail not, Nature's self,
    By all varieties of human love
    Assisted, led me back through opening day
    To those sweet counsels between head and heart
    Whence grew that genuine knowledge, fraught with peace,
    Which, through the later sinkings of this cause,
    Hath still upheld me, and upholds me now
    In the catastrophe (for so they dream,
    And nothing less), when, finally to close
    And seal up all the gains of France, a Pope
    Is summoned in, to crown an Emperor--
    This last opprobrium, when we see a people,
    That once looked up in faith, as if to Heaven
    For manna, take a lesson from the dog
    Returning to his vomit; when the sun
    That rose in splendour, was alive, and moved
    In exultation with a living pomp
    Of clouds--his glory's natural retinue--
    Hath dropped all functions by the gods bestowed,
    And, turned into a gewgaw, a machine,
    Sets like an Opera phantom.
    Thus, O Friend!
    Through times of honour and through times of shame
    Descending, have I faithfully retraced
    The perturbations of a youthful mind
    Under a long-lived storm of great events--
    A story destined for thy ear, who now,
    Among the fallen of nations, dost abide
    Where Etna, over hill and valley, casts
    His shadow stretching towards Syracuse,
    The city of Timoleon! Righteous Heaven!
    How are the mighty prostrated! They first,
    They first of all that breathe should have awaked
    When the great voice was heard from out the tombs
    Of ancient heroes. If I suffered grief
    For ill-requited France, by many deemed
    A trifler only in her proudest day;
    Have been distressed to think of what she once
    Promised, now is; a far more sober cause
    Thine eyes must see of sorrow in a land,
    To the reanimating influence lost
    Of memory, to virtue lost and hope,
    Though with the wreck of loftier years bestrewn.

    But indignation works where hope is not,
    And thou, O Friend! wilt be refreshed. There is
    One great society alone on earth:
    The noble Living and the noble Dead.

    Thine be such converse strong and sanative,
    A ladder for thy spirit to reascend
    To health and joy and pure contentedness;
    To me the grief confined, that thou art gone
    From this last spot of earth, where Freedom now
    Stands single in her only sanctuary;
    A lonely wanderer, art gone, by pain
    Compelled and sickness, at this latter day,
    This sorrowful reverse for all mankind.
    I feel for thee, must utter what I feel:
    The sympathies erewhile in part discharged,
    Gather afresh, and will have vent again:
    My own delights do scarcely seem to me
    My own delights; the lordly Alps themselves,
    Those rosy peaks, from which the Morning looks
    Abroad on many nations, are no more
    For me that image of pure gladsomeness
    Which they were wont to be. Through kindred scenes,
    For purpose, at a time, how different!
    Thou tak'st thy way, carrying the heart and soul
    That Nature gives to Poets, now by thought
    Matured, and in the summer of their strength.
    Oh! wrap him in your shades, ye giant woods,
    On Etna's side; and thou, O flowery field
    Of Enna! is there not some nook of thine,
    From the first play-time of the infant world
    Kept sacred to restorative delight,
    When from afar invoked by anxious love?

    Child of the mountains, among shepherds reared,
    Ere yet familiar with the classic page,
    I learnt to dream of Sicily; and lo,
    The gloom, that, but a moment past, was deepened
    At thy command, at her command gives way;
    A pleasant promise, wafted from her shores,
    Comes o'er my heart: in fancy I behold
    Her seas yet smiling, her once happy vales;
    Nor can my tongue give utterance to a name
    Of note belonging to that honoured isle,
    Philosopher or Bard, Empedocles,
    Or Archimedes, pure abstracted soul!
    That doth not yield a solace to my grief:
    And, O Theocritus, so far have some
    Prevailed among the powers of heaven and earth,
    By their endowments, good or great, that they
    Have had, as thou reportest, miracles
    Wrought for them in old time: yea, not unmoved,
    When thinking on my own beloved friend,
    I hear thee tell how bees with honey fed
    Divine Comates, by his impious lord
    Within a chest imprisoned; how they came
    Laden from blooming grove or flowery field,
    And fed him there, alive, month after month,
    Because the goatherd, blessed man! had lips
    Wet with the Muses' nectar.
    Thus I soothe
    The pensive moments by this calm fire-side,
    And find a thousand bounteous images
    To cheer the thoughts of those I love, and mine.
    Our prayers have been accepted; thou wilt stand
    On Etna's summit, above earth and sea,
    Triumphant, winning from the invaded heavens
    Thoughts without bound, magnificent designs,
    Worthy of poets who attuned their harps
    In wood or echoing cave, for discipline
    Of heroes; or, in reverence to the gods,
    'Mid temples, served by sapient priests, and choirs 0
    Of virgins crowned with roses. Not in vain
    Those temples, where they in their ruins yet
    Survive for inspiration, shall attract
    Thy solitary steps: and on the brink
    Thou wilt recline of pastoral Arethuse;
    Or, if that fountain be in truth no more,
    Then, near some other spring--which, by the name
    Thou gratulatest, willingly deceived--
    I see thee linger a glad votary,
    And not a captive pining for his home.

    NOTES

    5 See "French Revolution" (1805).

    7 Theocrit. "Idyll." vii. 78.

    Wordsworth, William. 1888. Complete Poetical Works. London: Macmillan.







    BOOK TWELFTH. IMAGINATION AND TASTE, HOW IMPAIRED AND RESTORED



    LONG time have human ignorance and guilt
    Detained us, on what spectacles of woe
    Compelled to look, and inwardly oppressed
    With sorrow, disappointment, vexing thoughts,
    Confusion of the judgment, zeal decayed,
    And, lastly, utter loss of hope itself
    And things to hope for! Not with these began
    Our song, and not with these our song must end.
    Ye motions of delight, that haunt the sides
    Of the green hills; ye breezes and soft airs,
    Whose subtle intercourse with breathing flowers,
    Feelingly watched, might teach Man's haughty race
    How without Injury to take, to give
    Without offence; ye who, as if to show
    The wondrous influence of power gently used,
    Bend the complying heads of lordly pines,
    And, with a touch, shift the stupendous clouds
    Through the whole compass of the sky; ye brooks,
    Muttering along the stones, a busy noise
    By day, a quiet sound in silent night;
    Ye waves, that out of the great deep steal forth
    In a calm hour to kiss the pebbly shore,
    Not mute, and then retire, fearing no storm;
    And you, ye groves, whose ministry it is
    To interpose the covert of your shades,
    Even as a sleep, between the heart of man
    And outward troubles, between man himself,
    Not seldom, and his own uneasy heart:
    Oh! that I had a music and a voice
    Harmonious as your own, that I might tell
    What ye have done for me. The morning shines,
    Nor heedeth Man's perverseness; Spring returns,--
    I saw the Spring return, and could rejoice,
    In common with the children of her love,
    Piping on boughs, or sporting on fresh fields,
    Or boldly seeking pleasure nearer heaven
    On wings that navigate cerulean skies.
    So neither were complacency, nor peace,
    Nor tender yearnings, wanting for my good
    Through these distracted times; in Nature still
    Glorying, I found a counterpoise in her,
    Which, when the spirit of evil reached its height,
    Maintained for me a secret happiness.

    This narrative, my Friend! hath chiefly told
    Of intellectual power, fostering love,
    Dispensing truth, and, over men and things,
    Where reason yet might hesitate, diffusing
    Prophetic sympathies of genial faith:
    So was I favoured--such my happy lot--
    Until that natural graciousness of mind
    Gave way to overpressure from the times
    And their disastrous issues. What availed,
    When spells forbade the voyager to land,
    That fragrant notice of a pleasant shore
    Wafted, at intervals, from many a bower
    Of blissful gratitude and fearless love?
    Dare I avow that wish was mine to see,
    And hope that future times 'would' surely see,
    The man to come, parted, as by a gulph,
    From him who had been; that I could no more
    Trust the elevation which had made me one
    With the great family that still survives
    To illuminate the abyss of ages past,
    Sage, warrior, patriot, hero; for it seemed
    That their best virtues were not free from taint
    Of something false and weak, that could not stand
    The open eye of Reason. Then I said,
    "Go to the Poets, they will speak to thee
    More perfectly of purer creatures;--yet
    If reason be nobility in man,
    Can aught be more ignoble than the man
    Whom they delight in, blinded as he is
    By prejudice, the miserable slave
    Of low ambition or distempered love?"

    In such strange passion, if I may once more
    Review the past, I warred against myself--
    A bigot to a new idolatry--
    Like a cowled monk who hath forsworn the world,
    Zealously laboured to cut off my heart
    From all the sources of her former strength;
    And as, by simple waving of a wand,
    The wizard instantaneously dissolves
    Palace or grove, even so could I unsoul
    As readily by syllogistic words
    Those mysteries of being which have made,
    And shall continue evermore to make,
    Of the whole human race one brotherhood.

    What wonder, then, if, to a mind so far
    Perverted, even the visible Universe
    Fell under the dominion of a taste
    Less spiritual, with microscopic view
    Was scanned, as I had scanned the moral world?

    O Soul of Nature! excellent and fair!
    That didst rejoice with me, with whom I, too,
    Rejoiced through early youth, before the winds
    And roaring waters, and in lights and shades
    That marched and countermarched about the hills
    In glorious apparition, Powers on whom
    I daily waited, now all eye and now
    All ear; but never long without the heart
    Employed, and man's unfolding intellect:
    O Soul of Nature! that, by laws divine
    Sustained and governed, still dost overflow
    With an impassioned life, what feeble ones
    Walk on this earth! how feeble have I been
    When thou wert in thy strength! Nor this through stroke
    Of human suffering, such as justifies
    Remissness and inaptitude of mind,
    But through presumption; even in pleasure pleased
    Unworthily, disliking here, and there
    Liking; by rules of mimic art transferred
    To things above all art; but more,--for this,
    Although a strong infection of the age,
    Was never much my habit--giving way
    To a comparison of scene with scene,
    Bent overmuch on superficial things,
    Pampering myself with meagre novelties
    Of colour and proportion; to the moods
    Of time and season, to the moral power,
    The affections and the spirit of the place,
    Insensible. Nor only did the love
    Of sitting thus in judgment interrupt
    My deeper feelings, but another cause,
    More subtle and less easily explained,
    That almost seems inherent in the creature,
    A twofold frame of body and of mind.
    I speak in recollection of a time
    When the bodily eye, in every stage of life
    The most despotic of our senses, gained
    Such strength in 'me' as often held my mind
    In absolute dominion. Gladly here,
    Entering upon abstruser argument,
    Could I endeavour to unfold the means
    Which Nature studiously employs to thwart
    This tyranny, summons all the senses each
    To counteract the other, and themselves,
    And makes them all, and the objects with which all
    Are conversant, subservient in their turn
    To the great ends of Liberty and Power.
    But leave we this: enough that my delights
    (Such as they were) were sought insatiably.
    Vivid the transport, vivid though not profound;
    I roamed from hill to hill, from rock to rock,
    Still craving combinations of new forms,
    New pleasure, wider empire for the sight,
    Proud of her own endowments, and rejoiced
    To lay the inner faculties asleep.
    Amid the turns and counterturns, the strife
    And various trials of our complex being,
    As we grow up, such thraldom of that sense
    Seems hard to shun. And yet I knew a maid,
    A young enthusiast, who escaped these bonds;
    Her eye was not the mistress of her heart;
    Far less did rules prescribed by passive taste,
    Or barren intermeddling subtleties,
    Perplex her mind; but, wise as women are
    When genial circumstance hath favoured them,
    She welcomed what was given, and craved no more;
    Whate'er the scene presented to her view
    That was the best, to that she was attuned
    By her benign simplicity of life,
    And through a perfect happiness of soul,
    Whose variegated feelings were in this
    Sisters, that they were each some new delight.
    Birds in the bower, and lambs in the green field,
    Could they have known her, would have loved; methought
    Her very presence such a sweetness breathed,
    That flowers, and trees, and even the silent hills,
    And everything she looked on, should have had
    An intimation how she bore herself
    Towards them and to all creatures. God delights
    In such a being; for, her common thoughts
    Are piety, her life is gratitude.

    Even like this maid, before I was called forth
    From the retirement of my native hills,
    I loved whate'er I saw: nor lightly loved,
    But most intensely; never dreamt of aught
    More grand, more fair, more exquisitely framed
    Than those few nooks to which my happy feet
    Were limited. I had not at that time
    Lived long enough, nor in the least survived
    The first diviner influence of this world,
    As it appears to unaccustomed eyes.
    Worshipping them among the depth of things,
    As piety ordained, could I submit
    To measured admiration, or to aught
    That should preclude humility and love?
    I felt, observed, and pondered; did not judge,
    Yea, never thought of judging; with the gift
    Of all this glory filled and satisfied.
    And afterwards, when through the gorgeous Alps
    Roaming, I carried with me the same heart:
    In truth, the degradation--howsoe'er
    Induced, effect, in whatsoe'er degree,
    Of custom that prepares a partial scale
    In which the little oft outweighs the great;
    Or any other cause that hath been named;
    Or lastly, aggravated by the times
    And their impassioned sounds, which well might make
    The milder minstrelsies of rural scenes
    Inaudible--was transient; I had known
    Too forcibly, too early in my life,
    Visitings of imaginative power
    For this to last: I shook the habit off
    Entirely and for ever, and again
    In Nature's presence stood, as now I stand,
    A sensitive being, a 'creative' soul.

    There are in our existence spots of time,
    That with distinct pre-eminence retain
    A renovating virtue, whence--depressed
    By false opinion and contentious thought,
    Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight,
    In trivial occupations, and the round
    Of ordinary intercourse--our minds
    Are nourished and invisibly repaired;
    A virtue, by which pleasure is enhanced,
    That penetrates, enables us to mount,
    When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen.
    This efficacious spirit chiefly lurks
    Among those passages of life that give
    Profoundest knowledge to what point, and how,
    The mind is lord and master--outward sense
    The obedient servant of her will. Such moments
    Are scattered everywhere, taking their date
    From our first childhood. I remember well,
    That once, while yet my inexperienced hand
    Could scarcely hold a bridle, with proud hopes
    I mounted, and we journeyed towards the hills:
    An ancient servant of my father's house
    Was with me, my encourager and guide:
    We had not travelled long, ere some mischance
    Disjoined me from my comrade; and, through fear
    Dismounting, down the rough and stony moor
    I led my horse, and, stumbling on, at length
    Came to a bottom, where in former times
    A murderer had been hung in iron chains.
    The gibbet-mast had mouldered down, the bones
    And iron case were gone; but on the turf,
    Hard by, soon after that fell deed was wrought,
    Some unknown hand had carved the murderer's name.
    The monumental letters were inscribed
    In times long past; but still, from year to year
    By superstition of the neighbourhood,
    The grass is cleared away, and to this hour
    The characters are fresh and visible:
    A casual glance had shown them, and I fled,
    Faltering and faint, and ignorant of the road:
    Then, reascending the bare common, saw
    A naked pool that lay beneath the hills,
    The beacon on the summit, and, more near,
    A girl, who bore a pitcher on her head,
    And seemed with difficult steps to force her way
    Against the blowing wind. It was, in truth,
    An ordinary sight; but I should need
    Colours and words that are unknown to man,
    To paint the visionary dreariness
    Which, while I looked all round for my lost guide,
    Invested moorland waste and naked pool,
    The beacon crowning the lone eminence,
    The female and her garments vexed and tossed
    By the strong wind. When, in the blessed hours
    Of early love, the loved one at my side,
    I roamed, in daily presence of this scene,
    Upon the naked pool and dreary crags,
    And on the melancholy beacon, fell
    A spirit of pleasure and youth's golden gleam;
    And think ye not with radiance more sublime
    For these remembrances, and for the power
    They had left behind? So feeling comes in aid
    Of feeling, and diversity of strength
    Attends us, if but once we have been strong.
    Oh! mystery of man, from what a depth
    Proceed thy honours. I am lost, but see
    In simple childhood something of the base
    On which thy greatness stands; but this I feel,
    That from thyself it comes, that thou must give,
    Else never canst receive. The days gone by
    Return upon me almost from the dawn
    Of life: the hiding-places of man's power
    Open; I would approach them, but they close.
    I see by glimpses now; when age comes on,
    May scarcely see at all; and I would give,
    While yet we may, as far as words can give,
    Substance and life to what I feel, enshrining,
    Such is my hope, the spirit of the Past
    For future restoration.--Yet another
    Of these memorials:--
    One Christmas-time,
    On the glad eve of its dear holidays,
    Feverish, and tired, and restless, I went forth
    Into the fields, impatient for the sight
    Of those led palfreys that should bear us home;
    My brothers and myself. There rose a crag,
    That, from the meeting-point of two highways
    Ascending, overlooked them both, far stretched;
    Thither, uncertain on which road to fix
    My expectation, thither I repaired,
    Scout-like, and gained the summit; 'twas a day
    Tempestuous, dark, and wild, and on the grass
    I sate half-sheltered by a naked wall;
    Upon my right hand couched a single sheep,
    Upon my left a blasted hawthorn stood;
    With those companions at my side, I watched
    Straining my eyes intensely, as the mist
    Gave intermitting prospect of the copse
    And plain beneath. Ere we to school returned,--
    That dreary time,--ere we had been ten days
    Sojourners in my father's house, he died;
    And I and my three brothers, orphans then,
    Followed his body to the grave. The event,
    With all the sorrow that it brought, appeared
    A chastisement; and when I called to mind
    That day so lately past, when from the crag
    I looked in such anxiety of hope;
    With trite reflections of morality,
    Yet in the deepest passion, I bowed low
    To God, Who thus corrected my desires;
    And, afterwards, the wind and sleety rain,
    And all the business of the elements,
    The single sheep, and the one blasted tree,
    And the bleak music from that old stone wall,
    The noise of wood and water, and the mist
    That on the line of each of those two roads
    Advanced in such indisputable shapes;
    All these were kindred spectacles and sounds
    To which I oft repaired, and thence would drink,
    As at a fountain; and on winter nights,
    Down to this very time, when storm and rain
    Beat on my roof, or, haply, at noon-day,
    While in a grove I walk, whose lofty trees,
    Laden with summer's thickest foliage, rock
    In a strong wind, some working of the spirit,
    Some inward agitations thence are brought,
    Whate'er their office, whether to beguile
    Thoughts over busy in the course they took,
    Or animate an hour of vacant ease.

    Wordsworth, William. 1888. Complete Poetical Works. London: Macmillan.













    BOOK THIRTEENTH. IMAGINATION AND TASTE, HOW IMPAIRED AND RESTORED (concluded)



    FROM Nature doth emotion come, and moods
    Of calmness equally are Nature's gift:
    This is her glory; these two attributes
    Are sister horns that constitute her strength.
    Hence Genius, born to thrive by interchange
    Of peace and excitation, finds in her
    His best and purest friend; from her receives
    That energy by which he seeks the truth,
    From her that happy stillness of the mind
    Which fits him to receive it when unsought.

    Such benefit the humblest intellects
    Partake of, each in their degree; 'tis mine
    To speak, what I myself have known and felt;
    Smooth task! for words find easy way, inspired
    By gratitude, and confidence in truth.
    Long time in search of knowledge did I range
    The field of human life, in heart and mind
    Benighted; but, the dawn beginning now
    To re-appear, 'twas proved that not in vain
    I had been taught to reverence a Power
    That is the visible quality and shape
    And image of right reason; that matures
    Her processes by steadfast laws; gives birth
    To no impatient or fallacious hopes,
    No heat of passion or excessive zeal,
    No vain conceits; provokes to no quick turns
    Of self-applauding intellect; but trains
    To meekness, and exalts by humble faith;
    Holds up before the mind intoxicate
    With present objects, and the busy dance
    Of things that pass away, a temperate show
    Of objects that endure; and by this course
    Disposes her, when over-fondly set
    On throwing off incumbrances, to seek
    In man, and in the frame of social life,
    Whate'er there is desirable and good
    Of kindred permanence, unchanged in form
    And function, or, through strict vicissitude
    Of life and death, revolving. Above all
    Were re-established now those watchful thoughts
    Which, seeing little worthy or sublime
    In what the Historian's pen so much delights
    To blazon--power and energy detached
    From moral purpose--early tutored me
    To look with feelings of fraternal love
    Upon the unassuming things that hold
    A silent station in this beauteous world.

    Thus moderated, thus composed, I found
    Once more in Man an object of delight,
    Of pure imagination, and of love;
    And, as the horizon of my mind enlarged,
    Again I took the intellectual eye
    For my instructor, studious more to see
    Great truths, than touch and handle little ones.
    Knowledge was given accordingly; my trust
    Became more firm in feelings that had stood
    The test of such a trial; clearer far
    My sense of excellence--of right and wrong:
    The promise of the present time retired
    Into its true proportion; sanguine schemes,
    Ambitious projects, pleased me less; I sought
    For present good in life's familiar face,
    And built thereon my hopes of good to come.

    With settling judgments now of what would last
    And what would disappear; prepared to find
    Presumption, folly, madness, in the men
    Who thrust themselves upon the passive world
    As Rulers of the world; to see in these,
    Even when the public welfare is their aim,
    Plans without thought, or built on theories
    Vague and unsound; and having brought the books
    Of modern statists to their proper test,
    Life, human life, with all its sacred claims
    Of sex and age, and heaven-descended rights,
    Mortal, or those beyond the reach of death;
    And having thus discerned how dire a thing
    Is worshipped in that idol proudly named
    "The Wealth of Nations," 'where' alone that wealth
    Is lodged, and how increased; and having gained
    A more judicious knowledge of the worth
    And dignity of individual man,
    No composition of the brain, but man
    Of whom we read, the man whom we behold
    With our own eyes--I could not but inquire--
    Not with less interest than heretofore,
    But greater, though in spirit more subdued--
    Why is this glorious creature to be found
    One only in ten thousand? What one is,
    Why may not millions be? What bars are thrown
    By Nature in the way of such a hope?
    Our animal appetites and daily wants,
    Are these obstructions insurmountable?
    If not, then others vanish into air.
    "Inspect the basis of the social pile:
    Inquire," said I, "how much of mental power
    And genuine virtue they possess who live
    By bodily toil, labour exceeding far
    Their due proportion, under all the weight
    Of that injustice which upon ourselves
    Ourselves entail." Such estimate to frame
    I chiefly looked (what need to look beyond?)
    Among the natural abodes of men,
    Fields with their rural works; recalled to mind
    My earliest notices; with these compared
    The observations made in later youth,
    And to that day continued.--For, the time
    Had never been when throes of mighty Nations
    And the world's tumult unto me could yield,
    How far soe'er transported and possessed,
    Full measure of content; but still I craved
    An intermingling of distinct regards
    And truths of individual sympathy
    Nearer ourselves. Such often might be gleaned
    From the great City, else it must have proved
    To me a heart-depressing wilderness;
    But much was wanting: therefore did I turn
    To you, ye pathways, and ye lonely roads;
    Sought you enriched with everything I prized,
    With human kindnesses and simple joys.

    Oh! next to one dear state of bliss, vouchsafed, 0
    Alas! to few in this untoward world,
    The bliss of walking daily in life's prime
    Through field or forest with the maid we love,
    While yet our hearts are young, while yet we breathe
    Nothing but happiness, in some lone nook,
    Deep vale, or anywhere, the home of both,
    From which it would be misery to stir:
    Oh! next to such enjoyment of our youth,
    In my esteem, next to such dear delight,
    Was that of wandering on from day to day
    Where I could meditate in peace, and cull
    Knowledge that step by step might lead me on
    To wisdom; or, as lightsome as a bird
    Wafted upon the wind from distant lands,
    Sing notes of greeting to strange fields or groves,
    Which lacked not voice to welcome me in turn:
    And, when that pleasant toil had ceased to please,
    Converse with men, where if we meet a face
    We almost meet a friend, on naked heaths
    With long long ways before, by cottage bench,
    Or well-spring where the weary traveller rests.

    Who doth not love to follow with his eye
    The windings of a public way? the sight,
    Familiar object as it is, hath wrought
    On my imagination since the morn
    Of childhood, when a disappearing line,
    One daily present to my eyes, that crossed
    The naked summit of a far-off hill
    Beyond the limits that my feet had trod,
    Was like an invitation into space
    Boundless, or guide into eternity.
    Yes, something of the grandeur which invests
    The mariner, who sails the roaring sea
    Through storm and darkness, early in my mind
    Surrounded, too, the wanderers of the earth;
    Grandeur as much, and loveliness far more.
    Awed have I been by strolling Bedlamites;
    From many other uncouth vagrants (passed
    In fear) have walked with quicker step; but why
    Take note of this? When I began to enquire,
    To watch and question those I met, and speak
    Without reserve to them, the lonely roads
    Were open schools in which I daily read
    With most delight the passions of mankind,
    Whether by words, looks, sighs, or tears, revealed;
    There saw into the depth of human souls,
    Souls that appear to have no depth at all
    To careless eyes. And--now convinced at heart
    How little those formalities, to which
    With overweening trust alone we give
    The name of Education, have to do
    With real feeling and just sense; how vain
    A correspondence with the talking world
    Proves to the most; and called to make good search
    If man's estate, by doom of Nature yoked
    With toil, be therefore yoked with ignorance;
    If virtue be indeed so hard to rear,
    And intellectual strength so rare a boon--
    I prized such walks still more, for there I found
    Hope to my hope, and to my pleasure peace
    And steadiness, and healing and repose
    To every angry passion. There I heard,
    From mouths of men obscure and lowly, truths
    Replete with honour; sounds in unison
    With loftiest promises of good and fair.

    There are who think that strong affection, love
    Known by whatever name, is falsely deemed
    A gift, to use a term which they would use,
    Of vulgar nature; that its growth requires
    Retirement, leisure, language purified
    By manners studied and elaborate;
    That whoso feels such passion in its strength
    Must live within the very light and air
    Of courteous usages refined by art.
    True is it, where oppression worse than death
    Salutes the being at his birth, where grace
    Of culture hath been utterly unknown,
    And poverty and labour in excess
    From day to day pre-occupy the ground
    Of the affections, and to Nature's self
    Oppose a deeper nature; there, indeed,
    Love cannot be; nor does it thrive with ease
    Among the close and overcrowded haunts
    Of cities, where the human heart is sick,
    And the eye feeds it not, and cannot feed.
    --Yes, in those wanderings deeply did I feel
    How we mislead each other; above all,
    How books mislead us, seeking their reward
    From judgments of the wealthy Few, who see
    By artificial lights; how they debase
    The Many for the pleasure of those Few;
    Effeminately level down the truth
    To certain general notions, for the sake
    Of being understood at once, or else
    Through want of better knowledge in the heads
    That framed them; flattering self-conceit with words,
    That, while they most ambitiously set forth
    Extrinsic differences, the outward marks
    Whereby society has parted man
    From man, neglect the universal heart.

    Here, calling up to mind what then I saw,
    A youthful traveller, and see daily now
    In the familiar circuit of my home,
    Here might I pause, and bend in reverence
    To Nature, and the power of human minds,
    To men as they are men within themselves.
    How oft high service is performed within,
    When all the external man is rude in show,--
    Not like a temple rich with pomp and gold,
    But a mere mountain chapel, that protects
    Its simple worshippers from sun and shower.
    Of these, said I, shall be my song; of these,
    If future years mature me for the task,
    Will I record the praises, making verse
    Deal boldly with substantial things; in truth
    And sanctity of passion, speak of these,
    That justice may be done, obeisance paid
    Where it is due: thus haply shall I teach,
    Inspire; through unadulterated ears
    Pour rapture, tenderness, and hope,--my theme
    No other than the very heart of man,
    As found among the best of those who live--
    Not unexalted by religious faith,
    Nor uninformed by books, good books, though few--
    In Nature's presence: thence may I select
    Sorrow, that is not sorrow, but delight;
    And miserable love, that is not pain
    To hear of, for the glory that redounds
    Therefrom to human kind, and what we are.
    Be mine to follow with no timid step
    Where knowledge leads me: it shall be my pride
    That I have dared to tread this holy ground,
    Speaking no dream, but things oracular;
    Matter not lightly to be heard by those
    Who to the letter of the outward promise
    Do read the invisible soul; by men adroit
    In speech, and for communion with the world
    Accomplished; minds whose faculties are then
    Most active when they are most eloquent,
    And elevated most when most admired.
    Men may be found of other mould than these,
    Who are their own upholders, to themselves
    Encouragement, and energy, and will,
    Expressing liveliest thoughts in lively words
    As native passion dictates. Others, too,
    There are among the walks of homely life
    Still higher, men for contemplation framed,
    Shy, and unpractised in the strife of phrase;
    Meek men, whose very souls perhaps would sink
    Beneath them, summoned to such intercourse:
    Theirs is the language of the heavens, the power,
    The thought, the image, and the silent joy:
    Words are but under-agents in their souls;
    When they are grasping with their greatest strength,
    They do not breathe among them: this I speak
    In gratitude to God, Who feeds our hearts
    For His own service; knoweth, loveth us,
    When we are unregarded by the world.

    Also, about this time did I receive
    Convictions still more strong than heretofore,
    Not only that the inner frame is good,
    And graciously composed, but that, no less,
    Nature for all conditions wants not power
    To consecrate, if we have eyes to see,
    The outside of her creatures, and to breathe
    Grandeur upon the very humblest face
    Of human life. I felt that the array
    Of act and circumstance, and visible form,
    Is mainly to the pleasure of the mind
    What passion makes them; that meanwhile the forms
    Of Nature have a passion in themselves,
    That intermingles with those works of man
    To which she summons him; although the works
    Be mean, have nothing lofty of their own;
    And that the Genius of the Poet hence
    May boldly take his way among mankind
    Wherever Nature leads; that he hath stood
    By Nature's side among the men of old,
    And so shall stand for ever. Dearest Friend!
    If thou partake the animating faith
    That Poets, even as Prophets, each with each
    Connected in a mighty scheme of truth,
    Have each his own peculiar faculty,
    Heaven's gift, a sense that fits him to perceive
    Objects unseen before, thou wilt not blame
    The humblest of this band who dares to hope
    That unto him hath also been vouchsafed
    An insight that in some sort he possesses,
    A privilege whereby a work of his,
    Proceeding from a source of untaught things,
    Creative and enduring, may become
    A power like one of Nature's. To a hope
    Not less ambitious once among the wilds
    Of Sarum's Plain, my youthful spirit was raised;
    There, as I ranged at will the pastoral downs
    Trackless and smooth, or paced the bare white roads
    Lengthening in solitude their dreary line,
    Time with his retinue of ages fled
    Backwards, nor checked his flight until I saw
    Our dim ancestral Past in vision clear;
    Saw multitudes of men, and, here and there,
    A single Briton clothed in wolf-skin vest,
    With shield and stone-axe, stride across the wold;
    The voice of spears was heard, the rattling spear
    Shaken by arms of mighty bone, in strength,
    Long mouldered, of barbaric majesty.
    I called on Darkness--but before the word
    Was uttered, midnight darkness seemed to take
    All objects from my sight; and lo! again
    The Desert visible by dismal flames;
    It is the sacrificial altar, fed
    With living men--how deep the groans! the voice
    Of those that crowd the giant wicker thrills
    The monumental hillocks, and the pomp
    Is for both worlds, the living and the dead.
    At other moments--(for through that wide waste
    Three summer days I roamed) where'er the Plain
    Was figured o'er with circles, lines, or mounds,
    That yet survive, a work, as some divine,
    Shaped by the Druids, so to represent
    Their knowledge of the heavens, and image forth
    The constellations--gently was I charmed
    Into a waking dream, a reverie
    That, with believing eyes, where'er I turned,
    Beheld long-bearded teachers, with white wands
    Uplifted, pointing to the starry sky,
    Alternately, and plain below, while breath
    Of music swayed their motions, and the waste
    Rejoiced with them and me in those sweet sounds.

    This for the past, and things that may be viewed 0
    Or fancied in the obscurity of years
    From monumental hints: and thou, O Friend!
    Pleased with some unpremeditated strains
    That served those wanderings to beguile, hast said
    That then and there my mind had exercised
    Upon the vulgar forms of present things,
    The actual world of our familiar days,
    Yet higher power; had caught from them a tone,
    An image, and a character, by books
    Not hitherto reflected. Call we this
    A partial judgment--and yet why? for 'then'
    We were as strangers; and I may not speak
    Thus wrongfully of verse, however rude,
    Which on thy young imagination, trained
    In the great City, broke like light from far.
    Moreover, each man's Mind is to herself
    Witness and judge; and I remember well
    That in life's every-day appearances
    I seemed about this time to gain clear sight
    Of a new world--a world, too, that was fit
    To be transmitted, and to other eyes
    Made visible; as ruled by those fixed laws
    Whence spiritual dignity originates,
    Which do both give it being and maintain
    A balance, an ennobling interchange
    Of action from without and from within;
    The excellence, pure function, and best power
    Both of the objects seen, and eye that sees.


    BOOK FOURTEENTH. CONCLUSION



    IN one of those excursions (may they ne'er
    Fade from remembrance!) through the Northern tracts
    Of Cambria ranging with a youthful friend,
    I left Bethgelert's huts at couching-time,
    And westward took my way, to see the sun
    Rise, from the top of Snowdon. To the door
    Of a rude cottage at the mountain's base
    We came, and roused the shepherd who attends
    The adventurous stranger's steps, a trusty guide;
    Then, cheered by short refreshment, sallied forth.

    It was a close, warm, breezeless summer night,
    Wan, dull, and glaring, with a dripping fog
    Low-hung and thick that covered all the sky;
    But, undiscouraged, we began to climb
    The mountain-side. The mist soon girt us round,
    And, after ordinary travellers' talk
    With our conductor, pensively we sank
    Each into commerce with his private thoughts:
    Thus did we breast the ascent, and by myself
    Was nothing either seen or heard that checked
    Those musings or diverted, save that once
    The shepherd's lurcher, who, among the crags,
    Had to his joy unearthed a hedgehog, teased
    His coiled-up prey with barkings turbulent.
    This small adventure, for even such it seemed
    In that wild place and at the dead of night,
    Being over and forgotten, on we wound
    In silence as before. With forehead bent
    Earthward, as if in opposition set
    Against an enemy, I panted up
    With eager pace, and no less eager thoughts.
    Thus might we wear a midnight hour away,
    Ascending at loose distance each from each,
    And I, as chanced, the foremost of the band;
    When at my feet the ground appeared to brighten,
    And with a step or two seemed brighter still;
    Nor was time given to ask or learn the cause,
    For instantly a light upon the turf
    Fell like a flash, and lo! as I looked up,
    The Moon hung naked in a firmament
    Of azure without cloud, and at my feet
    Rested a silent sea of hoary mist.
    A hundred hills their dusky backs upheaved
    All over this still ocean; and beyond,
    Far, far beyond, the solid vapours stretched,
    In headlands, tongues, and promontory shapes,
    Into the main Atlantic, that appeared
    To dwindle, and give up his majesty,
    Usurped upon far as the sight could reach.
    Not so the ethereal vault; encroachment none
    Was there, nor loss; only the inferior stars
    Had disappeared, or shed a fainter light
    In the clear presence of the full-orbed Moon,
    Who, from her sovereign elevation, gazed
    Upon the billowy ocean, as it lay
    All meek and silent, save that through a rift--
    Not distant from the shore whereon we stood,
    A fixed, abysmal, gloomy, breathing-place--
    Mounted the roar of waters, torrents, streams
    Innumerable, roaring with one voice!
    Heard over earth and sea, and, in that hour,
    For so it seemed, felt by the starry heavens.

    When into air had partially dissolved
    That vision, given to spirits of the night
    And three chance human wanderers, in calm thought
    Reflected, it appeared to me the type
    Of a majestic intellect, its acts
    And its possessions, what it has and craves,
    What in itself it is, and would become.
    There I beheld the emblem of a mind
    That feeds upon infinity, that broods
    Over the dark abyss, intent to hear
    Its voices issuing forth to silent light
    In one continuous stream; a mind sustained
    By recognitions of transcendent power,
    In sense conducting to ideal form,
    In soul of more than mortal privilege.
    One function, above all, of such a mind
    Had Nature shadowed there, by putting forth,
    'Mid circumstances awful and sublime,
    That mutual domination which she loves
    To exert upon the face of outward things,
    So moulded, joined, abstracted, so endowed
    With interchangeable supremacy,
    That men, least sensitive, see, hear, perceive,
    And cannot choose but feel. The power, which all
    Acknowledge when thus moved, which Nature thus
    To bodily sense exhibits, is the express
    Resemblance of that glorious faculty
    That higher minds bear with them as their own.
    This is the very spirit in which they deal
    With the whole compass of the universe:
    They from their native selves can send abroad
    Kindred mutations; for themselves create
    A like existence; and, whene'er it dawns
    Created for them, catch it, or are caught
    By its inevitable mastery,
    Like angels stopped upon the wing by sound
    Of harmony from Heaven's remotest spheres.
    Them the enduring and the transient both
    Serve to exalt; they build up greatest things
    From least suggestions; ever on the watch,
    Willing to work and to be wrought upon,
    They need not extraordinary calls
    To rouse them; in a world of life they live,
    By sensible impressions not enthralled,
    But by their quickening impulse made more prompt
    To hold fit converse with the spiritual world,
    And with the generations of mankind
    Spread over time, past, present, and to come,
    Age after age, till Time shall be no more.
    Such minds are truly from the Deity,
    For they are Powers; and hence the highest bliss
    That flesh can know is theirs--the consciousness
    Of Whom they are, habitually infused
    Through every image and through every thought,
    And all affections by communion raised
    From earth to heaven, from human to divine;
    Hence endless occupation for the Soul,
    Whether discursive or intuitive;
    Hence cheerfulness for acts of daily life,
    Emotions which best foresight need not fear,
    Most worthy then of trust when most intense.
    Hence, amid ills that vex and wrongs that crush
    Our hearts--if here the words of Holy Writ
    May with fit reverence be applied--that peace
    Which passeth understanding, that repose
    In moral judgments which from this pure source
    Must come, or will by man be sought in vain.

    Oh! who is he that hath his whole life long
    Preserved, enlarged, this freedom in himself?
    For this alone is genuine liberty:
    Where is the favoured being who hath held
    That course unchecked, unerring, and untired,
    In one perpetual progress smooth and bright?--
    A humbler destiny have we retraced,
    And told of lapse and hesitating choice,
    And backward wanderings along thorny ways:
    Yet--compassed round by mountain solitudes,
    Within whose solemn temple I received
    My earliest visitations, careless then
    Of what was given me; and which now I range,
    A meditative, oft a suffering, man--
    Do I declare--in accents which, from truth
    Deriving cheerful confidence, shall blend
    Their modulation with these vocal streams--
    That, whatsoever falls my better mind,
    Revolving with the accidents of life,
    May have sustained, that, howsoe'er misled,
    Never did I, in quest of right and wrong,
    Tamper with conscience from a private aim;
    Nor was in any public hope the dupe
    Of selfish passions; nor did ever yield
    Wilfully to mean cares or low pursuits,
    But shrunk with apprehensive jealousy
    From every combination which might aid
    The tendency, too potent in itself,
    Of use and custom to bow down the soul
    Under a growing weight of vulgar sense,
    And substitute a universe of death
    For that which moves with light and life informed,
    Actual, divine, and true. To fear and love,
    To love as prime and chief, for there fear ends,
    Be this ascribed; to early intercourse,
    In presence of sublime or beautiful forms,
    With the adverse principles of pain and joy--
    Evil as one is rashly named by men
    Who know not what they speak. By love subsists
    All lasting grandeur, by pervading love;
    That gone, we are as dust.--Behold the fields
    In balmy spring-time full of rising flowers
    And joyous creatures; see that pair, the lamb
    And the lamb's mother, and their tender ways
    Shall touch thee to the heart; thou callest this love,
    And not inaptly so, for love it is,
    Far as it carries thee. In some green bower
    Rest, and be not alone, but have thou there
    The One who is thy choice of all the world:
    There linger, listening, gazing, with delight
    Impassioned, but delight how pitiable!
    Unless this love by a still higher love
    Be hallowed, love that breathes not without awe;
    Love that adores, but on the knees of prayer,
    By heaven inspired; that frees from chains the soul,
    Lifted, in union with the purest, best,
    Of earth-born passions, on the wings of praise
    Bearing a tribute to the Almighty's Throne.

    This spiritual Love acts not nor can exist
    Without Imagination, which, in truth,
    Is but another name for absolute power
    And clearest insight, amplitude of mind,
    And Reason in her most exalted mood.
    This faculty hath been the feeding source
    Of our long labour: we have traced the stream
    From the blind cavern whence is faintly heard
    Its natal murmur; followed it to light
    And open day; accompanied its course
    Among the ways of Nature, for a time
    Lost sight of it bewildered and engulphed;
    Then given it greeting as it rose once more
    In strength, reflecting from its placid breast
    The works of man and face of human life;
    And lastly, from its progress have we drawn
    Faith in life endless, the sustaining thought
    Of human Being, Eternity, and God.

    Imagination having been our theme,
    So also hath that intellectual Love,
    For they are each in each, and cannot stand
    Dividually.--Here must thou be, O Man!
    Power to thyself; no Helper hast thou here;
    Here keepest thou in singleness thy state:
    No other can divide with thee this work:
    No secondary hand can intervene
    To fashion this ability; 'tis thine,
    The prime and vital principle is thine
    In the recesses of thy nature, far
    From any reach of outward fellowship,
    Else is not thine at all. But joy to him,
    Oh, joy to him who here hath sown, hath laid
    Here, the foundation of his future years!
    For all that friendship, all that love can do,
    All that a darling countenance can look
    Or dear voice utter, to complete the man,
    Perfect him, made imperfect in himself,
    All shall be his: and he whose soul hath risen
    Up to the height of feeling intellect
    Shall want no humbler tenderness; his heart
    Be tender as a nursing mother's heart;
    Of female softness shall his life be full,
    Of humble cares and delicate desires,
    Mild interests and gentlest sympathies.

    Child of my parents! Sister of my soul!
    Thanks in sincerest verse have been elsewhere
    Poured out for all the early tenderness
    Which I from thee imbibed: and 'tis most true
    That later seasons owed to thee no less;
    For, spite of thy sweet influence and the touch
    Of kindred hands that opened out the springs
    Of genial thought in childhood, and in spite
    Of all that unassisted I had marked
    In life or nature of those charms minute
    That win their way into the heart by stealth
    (Still to the very going-out of youth)
    I too exclusively esteemed 'that' love,
    And sought 'that' beauty, which, as Milton sings,
    Hath terror in it. Thou didst soften down
    This over-sternness; but for thee, dear Friend!
    My soul, too reckless of mild grace, had stood
    In her original self too confident,
    Retained too long a countenance severe;
    A rock with torrents roaring, with the clouds
    Familiar, and a favourite of the stars:
    But thou didst plant its crevices with flowers,
    Hang it with shrubs that twinkle in the breeze,
    And teach the little birds to build their nests
    And warble in its chambers. At a time
    When Nature, destined to remain so long
    Foremost in my affections, had fallen back
    Into a second place, pleased to become
    A handmaid to a nobler than herself,
    When every day brought with it some new sense
    Of exquisite regard for common things,
    And all the earth was budding with these gifts
    Of more refined humanity, thy breath,
    Dear Sister! was a kind of gentler spring
    That went before my steps. Thereafter came
    One whom with thee friendship had early paired;
    She came, no more a phantom to adorn
    A moment, but an inmate of the heart,
    And yet a spirit, there for me enshrined
    To penetrate the lofty and the low;
    Even as one essence of pervading light
    Shines, in the brightest of ten thousand stars
    And the meek worm that feeds her lonely lamp
    Couched in the dewy grass.
    With such a theme,
    Coleridge! with this my argument, of thee
    Shall I be silent? O capacious Soul!
    Placed on this earth to love and understand,
    And from thy presence shed the light of love,
    Shall I be mute, ere thou be spoken of?
    Thy kindred influence to my heart of hearts
    Did also find its way. Thus fear relaxed
    Her overweening grasp; thus thoughts and things
    In the self-haunting spirit learned to take
    More rational proportions; mystery,
    The incumbent mystery of sense and soul,
    Of life and death, time and eternity,
    Admitted more habitually a mild
    Interposition--a serene delight
    In closelier gathering cares, such as become
    A human creature, howsoe'er endowed,
    Poet, or destined for a humbler name;
    And so the deep enthusiastic joy,
    The rapture of the hallelujah sent
    From all that breathes and is, was chastened, stemmed
    And balanced by pathetic truth, by trust
    In hopeful reason, leaning on the stay
    Of Providence; and in reverence for duty,
    Here, if need be, struggling with storms, and there
    Strewing in peace life's humblest ground with herbs, 0
    At every season green, sweet at all hours.

    And now, O Friend! this history is brought
    To its appointed close: the discipline
    And consummation of a Poet's mind,
    In everything that stood most prominent,
    Have faithfully been pictured; we have reached
    The time (our guiding object from the first)
    When we may, not presumptuously, I hope,
    Suppose my powers so far confirmed, and such
    My knowledge, as to make me capable
    Of building up a Work that shall endure.
    Yet much hath been omitted, as need was;
    Of books how much! and even of the other wealth
    That is collected among woods and fields,
    Far more: for Nature's secondary grace
    Hath hitherto been barely touched upon,
    The charm more superficial that attends
    Her works, as they present to Fancy's choice
    Apt illustrations of the moral world,
    Caught at a glance, or traced with curious pains.

    Finally, and above all, O Friend! (I speak
    With due regret) how much is overlooked
    In human nature and her subtle ways,
    As studied first in our own hearts, and then
    In life among the passions of mankind,
    Varying their composition and their hue,
    Where'er we move, under the diverse shapes
    That individual character presents
    To an attentive eye. For progress meet,
    Along this intricate and difficult path,
    Whate'er was wanting, something had I gained,
    As one of many schoolfellows compelled,
    In hardy independence, to stand up
    Amid conflicting interests, and the shock
    Of various tempers; to endure and note
    What was not understood, though known to be;
    Among the mysteries of love and hate,
    Honour and shame, looking to right and left,
    Unchecked by innocence too delicate,
    And moral notions too intolerant,
    Sympathies too contracted. Hence, when called
    To take a station among men, the step
    Was easier, the transition more secure,
    More profitable also; for, the mind
    Learns from such timely exercise to keep
    In wholesome separation the two natures,
    The one that feels, the other that observes.

    Yet one word more of personal concern;--
    Since I withdrew unwillingly from France,
    I led an undomestic wanderer's life,
    In London chiefly harboured, whence I roamed,
    Tarrying at will in many a pleasant spot
    Of rural England's cultivated vales
    Or Cambrian solitudes. A youth--(he bore
    The name of Calvert--it shall live, if words
    Of mine can give it life,) in firm belief
    That by endowments not from me withheld
    Good might be furthered--in his last decay
    By a bequest sufficient for my needs
    Enabled me to pause for choice, and walk
    At large and unrestrained, nor damped too soon
    By mortal cares. Himself no Poet, yet
    Far less a common follower of the world,
    He deemed that my pursuits and labours lay
    Apart from all that leads to wealth, or even
    A necessary maintenance insures,
    Without some hazard to the finer sense;
    He cleared a passage for me, and the stream
    Flowed in the bent of Nature.
    Having now
    Told what best merits mention, further pains
    Our present purpose seems not to require,
    And I have other tasks. Recall to mind
    The mood in which this labour was begun,
    O Friend! The termination of my course
    Is nearer now, much nearer; yet even then,
    In that distraction and intense desire,
    I said unto the life which I had lived,
    Where art thou? Hear I not a voice from thee
    Which 'tis reproach to hear? Anon I rose
    As if on wings, and saw beneath me stretched
    Vast prospect of the world which I had been
    And was; and hence this Song, which, like a lark,
    I have protracted, in the unwearied heavens
    Singing, and often with more plaintive voice
    To earth attempered and her deep-drawn sighs,
    Yet centring all in love, and in the end
    All gratulant, if rightly understood.

    Whether to me shall be allotted life,
    And, with life, power to accomplish aught of worth,
    That will be deemed no insufficient plea
    For having given the story of myself,
    Is all uncertain: but, beloved Friend!
    When, looking back, thou seest, in clearer view
    Than any liveliest sight of yesterday,
    That summer, under whose indulgent skies,
    Upon smooth Quantock's airy ridge we roved
    Unchecked, or loitered 'mid her sylvan combs,
    Thou in bewitching words, with happy heart,
    Didst chaunt the vision of that Ancient Man,
    The bright-eyed Mariner, and rueful woes
    Didst utter of the Lady Christabel;
    And I, associate with such labour, steeped
    In soft forgetfulness the livelong hours,
    Murmuring of him who, joyous hap, was found,
    After the perils of his moonlight ride,
    Near the loud waterfall; or her who sate
    In misery near the miserable Thorn--
    When thou dost to that summer turn thy thoughts,
    And hast before thee all which then we were,
    To thee, in memory of that happiness,
    It will be known, by thee at least, my Friend!
    Felt, that the history of a Poet's mind
    Is labour not unworthy of regard;
    To thee the work shall justify itself.

    The last and later portions of this gift
    Have been prepared, not with the buoyant spirits
    That were our daily portion when we first
    Together wantoned in wild Poesy,
    But, under pressure of a private grief,
    Keen and enduring, which the mind and heart,
    That in this meditative history
    Have been laid open, needs must make me feel
    More deeply, yet enable me to bear
    More firmly; and a comfort now hath risen
    From hope that thou art near, and wilt be soon
    Restored to us in renovated health;
    When, after the first mingling of our tears,
    'Mong other consolations, we may draw
    Some pleasure from this offering of my love.

    Oh! yet a few short years of useful life,
    And all will be complete, thy race be run,
    Thy monument of glory will be raised;
    Then, though (too weak to tread the ways of truth)
    This age fall back to old idolatry,
    Though men return to servitude as fast
    As the tide ebbs, to ignominy and shame,
    By nations, sink together, we shall still
    Find solace--knowing what we have learnt to know,
    Rich in true happiness if allowed to be
    Faithful alike in forwarding a day
    Of firmer trust, joint labourers in the work
    (Should Providence such grace to us vouchsafe)
    Of their deliverance, surely yet to come.
    Prophets of Nature, we to them will speak
    A lasting inspiration, sanctified
    By reason, blest by faith: what we have loved,
    Others will love, and we will teach them how;
    Instruct them how the mind of man becomes
    A thousand times more beautiful than the earth
    On which he dwells, above this frame of things
    (Which, 'mid all revolution in the hopes
    And fears of men, doth still remain unchanged)
    In beauty exalted, as it is itself
    Of quality and fabric more divine.