Delphi Complete Works of William Wordsworth

by William Wordsworth

The threshold, and large golden characters, 150

  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. 160

  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 170

  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 180

  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 190

  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 200

  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 210

  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, 220

  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, 230

  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. 240

  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 250

  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 260

  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, 270

  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 280

  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, 290

  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 sympathie
s,

  And gentle agitations of the mind

  From manifold distinctions, difference

  Perceived in things, where, to the unwatchful eye, 300

  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. 310

  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 320

  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 330

  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 340

  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 350

  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; 360

  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, 370

  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 380

  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, 390

  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 400

  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, 410

  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, 420

  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 430

  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 440

  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,
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  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 450

  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 460

  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 470

  Be many, and a blessing to mankind.

  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; 10

  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 20

  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