With that majestic indolence so dear
To native man.
A rambling schoolboy, thus
Have I beheld him; without knowing why, 395
Have 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
Seemed more commanding oft when he was there. 400
Seeking the raven’s nest and suddenly
Surprized with vapours, or on rainy days
When I have angled up the lonely brooks,
Mine eyes have glanced upon him, few steps off,
In size a giant, stalking through the fog, 405
His sheep like Greenland bears. At other times,
When round some shady promontory turning,
His form hath flashed upon me glorified
By the deep radiance of the setting sun;
Or him have I descried in distant sky, 410
A solitary object and sublime,
Above all height, like an a¨erial cross,
As it is stationed on some spiry rock
Of the Chartreuse, for worship. Thus was man
Ennobled outwardly before mine eyes, 415
And thus my heart at first was introduced
To an unconscious love and reverence
Of human nature; hence the human form
To me was like an index of delight,
Of grace and honour, power and worthiness. 420
Meanwhile, this creature — spiritual almost
As those of books, but more exalted far,
Far more of an imaginative form —
Was not a Corin of the groves, who lives
For his own fancies, or to dance by the hour 425
In coronal, with Phyllis in the midst,
But, for the purpose 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. 430
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, 435
A shadow, a delusion? — ye who are fed
By the dead letter, not 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, 440
And ye adore. But bless`ed be the God
Of Nature and of man that this was so,
That men did at the first present themselves
Before my untaught eyes thus purified,
Removed, and at a distance that was fit. 445
And so we all of us in some degree
Are led to knowledge, whencesoever 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, 450
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 455
At man through objects that were great and 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 460
On all sides from the ordinary world
In which we traffic. Starting from this point,
I had my face towards the truth, began
With an advantage, furnished with that kind
Of prepossession without which the soul 465
Receives no knowledge that can bring forth good —
No genuine insight ever comes to her —
Happy in this, that I with Nature walked,
Not having a too early intercourse
With the deformities of crowded life, 470
And those ensuing laughters and contempts
Self-pleasing, which if we would wish to think
With admiration and respect of man
Will not permit us, but pursue the mind
That to devotion willingly would be raised, 475
Into the temple of the temple’s heart.
Yet do not deem, my friend, though thus I speak
Of man as having taken in my mind
A place thus early which might almost seem
Preeminent, that this was really so. 480
Nature herself was at this unripe time
But secondary to my own pursuits
And animal activities, and all
Their trivial pleasures. And long afterwards
When those had died away, and Nature did 485
For her own sake become my joy, even then,
And upwards through late youth until not less
Than three-and-twenty summers had been told,
Was man in my affections and regards
Subordinate to her, her awful forms 490
And viewless agencies — a passion, she,
A rapture often, and immediate joy
Ever at hand; he distant, but a grace
Occasional, and accidental thought,
His hour being not yet come. Far less had then 495
The inferior creatures, beast or bird, attuned
My spirit to that gentleness of love,
Won from me those minute obeisances
Of tenderness which I may number now
With my first blessings. Nevertheless, on these 500
The light of beauty did not fall in vain,
Or grandeur circumfuse them to no end.
Why should I speak of tillers of the soil? —
The ploughman and his team; or men and boys
In festive summer busy with the rake, 505
Old men and ruddy maids, and little ones
All out together, and in sun and shade
Dispersed among the hay-grounds alder-fringed;
The quarryman, far heard, that blasts the rock;
The fishermen in pairs, the one to row, 510
And one to drop the net, plying their trade
‘‘Mid tossing lakes and tumbling boats’ and winds
Whistling; the miner, melancholy man,
That works by taper-light, while all the hills
Are shining with the glory of the day. 515
But when that first poetic faculty
Of plain imagination and severe —
No longer a mute influence of the soul,
An element of the nature’s inner self —
Began to have some promptings to put on 520
A visible shape, and to the works of art,
The notions and the images of books,
Did knowingly conform itself (by these
Enflamed, and proud of that her new delight),
There came among these shapes of human life 525
A wilfulness of fancy and conceit
Which gave them new importance to the mind —
And Nature and her objects beautified
These fictions, as, in some sort, in their turn
They banished her. From touch of this new power 530
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 its station there for ornament.
Then common death was none, common mishap, 535
But matter for this humour everywhere,
The tragic super-tragic, else left short.
Then, if a widow staggering with the blow
Of her distress was known to have made her way
To the cold grave in which her husband slept, 540
One night, or haply more than one — through pain
Or half-insensate impotence of mind —
The fact was caught at greedily, and there
She was a visitant the whole year through,
Wetting the turf with never-ending tears, 545
And all the storms of heaven must beat on her.
Through wild obliquities could I pursue
Among all objects of the fields and groves
These cravings: when the foxglove, one by one,
Upwards through every stage of its tall stem 550
Had shed its bells, and stood by the wayside
Dismantled, with a single one perhaps
Left at the ladder’s top, with which the plant
Appeared to stoop, as slender blades of grass
Tipped with a bead of rain or dew, behold, 555
If such a sight were seen, would fancy bring
Some vagrant thither with her babes and seat her
Upon the turf beneath the stately flower,
Drooping in sympathy and making so
A melancholy crest above the head 560
Of the lorn creature, while her little ones,
All unconcerned with her unhappy plight,
Were sporting with the purple cups that lay
Scattered upon the ground. There was a copse,
An upright bank of wood and woody rock 565
That opposite our rural dwelling stood,
In which a sparkling patch of diamond light
Was in bright weather duly to be seen
On summer afternoons, within the wood
At the same place. ‘Twas doubtless nothing more 570
Than a black rock, which, wet with constant springs,
Glistered far seen from out its lurking-place
As soon as ever the declining sun
Had smitten it. Beside our cottage hearth
Sitting with open door, a hundred times 575
Upon this lustre have I gazed, that seemed
To have some meaning which I could not find —
And now it was a burnished shield, I fancied,
Suspended over a knight’s tomb, who lay
Inglorious, buried in the dusky wood; 580
An entrance now into some magic cave,
Or palace for a fairy of the rock.
Nor would I, though not certain whence the cause
Of the effulgence, thither have repaired
Without a precious bribe, and day by day 585
And month by month I saw the spectacle,
Nor ever once have visited the spot
Unto this hour. Thus sometimes were the shapes
Of wilful fancy grafted upon feelings
Of the imagination, and they rose 590
In worth accordingly.
My present theme
Is to retrace the way that led me on
Through Nature to the love of human-kind;
Nor could I with such object overlook 595
The influence of this power which turned itself
Instinctively to human passions, things
Least understood — ,of this adulterate power,
For so it may be called, and without wrong,
When with that first compared. Yet in the midst 600
Of these vagaries, with an eye so rich
As mine was — through the chance, on me not wasted,
Of having been brought up in such a grand
And lovely region — I had forms distinct
To steady me. These thoughts did oft revolve 605
About some centre palpable, which at once
Incited them to motion, and controlled,
And whatsoever shape the fit might take,
And whencesoever it might come, I still
At all times had a real solid world 610
Of images about me, did not pine
As one in cities bred might do — as thou,
Beloved friend, hast told me that thou didst,
Great spirit as thou art — in endless dreams
Of sickness, disjoining, joining things, 615
Without the light of knowledge. Where the harm
If when the woodman languished with disease
From sleeping night by night among the woods
Within his sod-built cabin, Indian-wise,
I called the pangs of disappointed love 620
And all the long etcetera of such thought
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,
Pining alone among the gentle airs, 625
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 was soon to take its flight.
There came a time of greater dignity, 630
Which had been gradually prepared, and now
Rushed in as if on wings — the time in which
The pulse of being everywhere was felt,
When all the several frames of things, like stars
Through every magnitude distinguishable, 635
Were half confounded in each other’s blaze,
One galaxy of life and joy. Then rose
Man, inwardly contemplated, and present
In my own being, to a loftier height —
As of all visible natures crown, and first 640
In capability of feeling what
Was to be felt, in being rapt away
By the divine effect of power and love —
As, more than any thing we know, instinct
With godhead, and by reason and by will 645
Acknowledging dependency sublime.
Erelong, transported hence as in a dream,
I found myself begirt with temporal shapes
Of vice and folly thrust upon my view,
Objects of sport and ridicule and scorn, 650
Manners and characters discriminate,
And little busy passions that eclipsed,
As well they might, the impersonated thought,
The idea or abstraction of the kind.
An idler among academic bowers, 655
Such was my new condition — as at large
Hath been set forth — yet here the vulgar light
Of present, actual, superficial life,
Gleaming through colouring of other times,
Old usages and local privilege, 660
Thereby was softened, almost solemnized,
And rendered apt and pleasing to the view.
This notwithstanding, being brought more near
As I was now to guilt and wretchedness,
I trembled, thought of human life at times 665
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. 670
It might be told (but wherefore speak of things
Common to all?) that, seeing, I essayed
To give relief, began to deem myself
A moral agent, judging between good
And evil not as for the mind’s delight 675
But for her safety, one who was to act —
As sometimes to the best of my weak means
I did, by human sympathy impelled,
And through dislike and most offensive pain
Was to the truth conducted — of this faith 680
Never forsaken, that by acting well,
And understanding, I should learn to love
The end of life and every thing we know.
Preceptress stern, that didst instruct me next,
London, to thee I willingly return. 685
Erewhile my verse played only with the flower
s
Enwrought upon the mantle, satisfied
With this amusement, and a simple look
Of childlike inquisition now and then
Cast upwards on thine eye to puzzle out 690
Some inner meanings which might harbour there.
Yet did I not give way to this light mood
Wholly beguiled, as one incapable
Of higher things, and ignorant that high things
Were round me. Never shall I forget the hour, 695
The moment rather say, when, having thridded
The labyrinth of suburban villages,
At length I did unto myself first seem
To enter the great city. On the roof
Of an itinerant vehicle I sate, 700
With vulgar men about me, vulgar forms
Of houses, pavement, streets, of men and things,
Mean shapes on every side; but, at the time,
When to myself it fairly might be said
(The very moment that I seemed to know) 705
‘The threshold now is overpast’, great God!
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 710
Distinct remembrances, but weight and power,
Power growing with the 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, and I only now 715
Remember that it was a thing divine.
As when a traveller hath from open day
With torches passed into some vault of earth,
The grotto of Antiparos, or the den
Of Yordas among Craven’s mountain tracts, 720
He looks and sees the cavern spread and grow,
Widening itself on all sides, sees, or thinks
He sees, erelong, the roof above his head,
Which instantly unsettles and recedes —
Substance and shadow, light and darkness, all 725
Commingled, making up a canopy
Of shapes, and forms, and tendencies to shape,
That shift and vanish, change and interchange
Like spectres — ferment quiet and sublime,
Which, after a short space, works less and less 730
Till, every effort, every motion gone,
The scene before him lies 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 735
Beginning timidly, then creeping fast
Through all which he beholds: the senseless mass,
In its projections, wrinkles, cavities,
Through all its surface, with all colours streaming,
Like a magician’s airy pageant, parts, 740
Unites, embodying everywhere some pressure
Delphi Complete Works of William Wordsworth Page 101