Delphi Complete Works of William Wordsworth

by William Wordsworth

  Of courtiers, banners, and a length of guards;

  Or captive led in abject weeds, and jingling 455

  His slender manacles; or romping girl

  Bounced, leapt, and pawed the air; or mumbling sire,

  A scarecrow pattern of old age, patched up

  Of all the tatters of infirmity,

  All loosely put together, hobbled in 460

  Stumping upon a cane, with which he smites

  From time to time the solid boards and makes them

  Prat somewhat loudly of the whereabout

  Of one so overloaded with his years.

  But what of this? — the laugh, the grin, grimace, 465

  And all the antics and buffoonery,

  The least of them not lost, were all received

  With charitable pleasure. Through the night,

  Between the show, and many-headed mass

  Of the spectators, and each little nook 470

  That had 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 blowing round her, among grass 475

  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, 480

  Yet something of a girlish childlike gloss

  Of novelty survived for scenes like these —

  Pleasure that had been handed down from times

  When at a country playhouse, having caught

  In summer through the fractured wall a glimpse 485

  Of daylight, at the thought of where I was

  I gladdened more than if I had beheld

  Before me some bright cavern of romance,

  Or than we do when on our beds we lie

  At night, in warmth, when rains are beating hard. 490

  The matter which detains me now will seem

  To many neither dignified enough

  Nor arduous, and is doubtless in itself

  Humble and low — yet not to be despised

  By those who have observed the curious props 495

  By which the perishable hours of life

  Rest on each other, and the world of thought

  Exists and is sustained. More lofty themes,

  Such as at least do wear a prouder face,

  Might here be spoken of; but when I think 500

  Of these I feel the imaginative power

  Languish within me. Even then it slept,

  When, wrought upon by tragic sufferings,

  The heart was full — amid my sobs and tears

  It slept, even in the season of my youth. 505

  For though I was most passionately moved,

  And yielded to the changes of the scene

  With most obsequious feeling, yet all this

  Passed not beyond the suburbs of the mind.

  If aught there were of real grandeur here 510

  ‘Twas only then when gross realities,

  The incarnation of the spirits that moved

  Amid the poet’s beauteous world — called forth

  With that distinctness which a contrast gives,

  Or opposition — made me recognise 515

  As by a glimpse, the things which I had shaped

  And yet not shaped, had seen and scarcely seen,

  Had felt, and thought of in my solitude.

  Pass we from entertainments that are such

  Professedly, to others titled higher, 520

  Yet, in the estimate of youth at least,

  More near akin to these than names imply —

  I mean the brawls of lawyers in their courts

  Before the ermined judge, or that great stage

  Where senators, tongue-favored men, perform, 525

  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, Glocesters, Salisburys of old — 530

  Which 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 — 535

  O presence of delight, can patience e’er

  Grow weary of attending on a track

  That kindles with such glory? Marvellous,

  The enchantment spreads and rises — all are rapt

  Astonished — like a hero in romance 540

  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 is,

  Grows tedious even in a young man’s ear. 545

  These are grave follies; other public shows

  The capital city teems with of a kind

  More light — and where but in the holy church?

  There have I seen a comely bachelor,

  fresh from a toilette of two hours, ascend 550

  The pulpit, 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 555

  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, 560

  Moses, and he who penned the other day

  The Death of Abel, Shakespear, Doctor Young,

  And Ossian — doubt not, ‘tis the naked truth —

  Summoned from streamy Morven, each and all

  Must in their turn lend ornament and flowers 565

  To entwine the crook of eloquence with which

  This pretty shepherd, pride of all the plains,

  Leads up and down his captivated flock.

  I glance but at a few conspicuous marks,

  Leaving ten thousand others that do each — 570

  In hall or court, conventicle, or shop,

  In public room or private, park or street —

  With fondness reared on his own pedestal,

  Look out for admiration. Folly, vice,

  Extravagance in gesture, mien and dress, 575

  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, 580

  I did not hunt after or 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

  Today, tomorrow will be — took of them 585

  Such willing note as, on some errand bound

  Of pleasure or of love, some traveller might,

  Among a thousand other images,

  Of sea-shells that bestud the sandy beach,

  Or daisies swarming through the fields in June. 590

  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.

  O friend, one feeling was there which belonged 595

  To this great city by exclusive right:

  How often in the overflowing streets

  Have I gone forwards with the crow
d, and said

  Unto myself, ‘The face of every one

  That passes by me is a mystery.’ 600

  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 montains, or appears in dreams, 605

  And all the ballast of familiar life —

  The present, and the past, hope, fear, all stays,

  All laws of acting, thinking, speaking man —

  Went from me, neither knowing me, nor known.

  And once, far travelled in such mood, beyond 610

  The reach of common indications, lost

  Amid the moving pageant, ‘twas my chance

  Abruptly to be smitten with the view

  Of a blind beggar, who, with upright face,

  Stood propped against a wall, upon his chest 615

  Wearing a written paper, to explain

  The story of the man, and who he was.

  My mind did at this spectacle turn round

  As with the might of waters, and it seemed

  To me that in this label was a type 620

  Or emblem of the utmost that we know

  Both of ourselves and of the universe,

  And on the shape of this unmoving man,

  His fix`ed face and sightless eyes, I looked,

  As if admonished from another world. 625

  Though reared upon the base of outward things,

  These chiefly are such structures as the mind

  Builds for itself. Scenes different there are —

  Full-formed — which take, with small internal help,

  Possession of the faculties: the peace 630

  Of night, for instance, the 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; 635

  The calmness, beauty, of the spectacle,

  Sky, stillness, moonshine, empty streets, and sounds

  Unfrequent as in desarts; at late hours

  Of winter evenings when unwholesome rains

  Are falling hard, with people yet astir, 640

  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, 645

  Even as we give them welcome, or assist —

  Are prompt, or are remiss. 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, 650

  Mobs, riots, or rejoicings? From those sights

  Take one, an annual festival, the fair

  Holden where martyrs suffered in past time,

  And named of St. Bartholomew, there see

  A work that’s finished to our hands, that lays, 655

  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 — 660

  Upon some showman’s platform. What a hell

  For eyes and ears, what anarchy and din

  Barbarian and infernal—’tis a dream

  Monstrous in colour, motion, shape, sight, sound.

  Below, the open space, through every nook 665

  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;

  And chattering monkeys dangling from their poles, 670

  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 675

  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, 680

  Blue-breeched, pink-vested, and with 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, 685

  Giants, ventriloquists, the invisible girl,

  The bust that speaks and moves its goggling eyes,

  The waxwork, clockwork, all the marvellous craft

  Of modern Merlins, wild beasts, puppet-shows,

  All out-o’-th’-way, far-fetched, perverted things, 690

  All freaks of Nature, all Promethean thoughts

  Of man — his dulness, madness, and other feats,

  All jumbled up together to make up

  This parliament of monsters. Tents and booths

  Meanwhile — as if the whole were one vast mill — 695

  Are vomiting, receiving, on all sides,

  Men, women, three-years’ children, babes in arms.

  O, blank confusion, and a type not false

  Of what the mighty city is itself

  To all, except a straggler here and there — 700

  To the whole swarm of its inhabitants —

  An undistinguishable world to men,

  The slaves unrespited of low pursuits,

  Living amid the same perpetual flow

  Of trivial objects, melted and reduced 705

  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, 710

  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. 715

  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 comes,

  And comprehensiveness and memory, 720

  From early converse with the works of God

  Among all regions, chiefly where appear

  Most obviously simplicity and power.

  By influence habitual to the mind

  The mountain’s outline and its steady form 725

  Gives a pure grandeur, and its presence shapes

  The measure and the prospect of the soul

  To majesty: such virtue have the forms

  Perennial of the ancient hills — nor less

  The changeful language of their countenances 730

  Gives movement of the thoughts, and multitude,

  With order and relation. This (if still,

  As hitherto, with freedom I may speak,

  And the same perfect openness of mind,

  Not violating any just restraint, 735

  As I would hope, of real modesty),

  This did I feel in that vast receptacle.

  The spirit of Nature was upon me here,

  The soul of beauty and enduring life

  Was present as a habit, and diffused — 740

  Through meagre lines and colours, and the press

  Of self-destroying, transitory things —<
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  Composure and ennobling harmony.

  BOOK EIGHTH.

  RETROSPECT: LOVE OF NATURE LEADING TO LOVE OF MANKIND

  WHAT sounds are those, Helvellyn, which 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

  Is yon, assembled in the gay green field? 5

  Crowd seems it, solitary hill, to thee,

  Though but a little family of men —

  Twice twenty — with their children and their wives,

  And here and there a stranger interspersed.

  It is a summer festival, a fair, 10

  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 storms be not abroad

  And mists have left him an unshrouded head. 15

  Delightful day it is for all who dwell

  In this secluded glen, and eagerly

  They give it welcome. Long ere heat of noon,

  Behold the cattle are driven down; the sheep

  That have for traffic been culled out are penned 20

  In cotes that stand together on the plain

  Ranged side by side; 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, 25

  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, 30

  Year after year a punctual visitant;

  The showman with his freight upon his back,

  And once perchance in lapse of many years,

  Prouder itinerant — mountebank, or he

  Whose wonders in a covered wain lie hid. 35

  But one is here, 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, apples, pears

  (On that day only to such office stooping), 40

  She carries in her basket, and walks round

  Among the crowd, half pleased with, half ashamed

  Of her new calling, blushing restlessly.

  The children now are rich, the old man now

  Is generous, so gaiety prevails 45

  Which all partake of, young and old.

  Immense

  Is the recess, the circumambient world

  Magnificent, by which they are embraced.

  They move about upon the soft green field; 50

  How little they, they and their doings, seem,