Delphi Complete Works of William Wordsworth

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by William Wordsworth

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 300

  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, 310

  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; 320

  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; 330

  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 340

  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 350

  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 360

  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 370

  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. 10

  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 20

  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 30

  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 40

  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 50

  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! 60

  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 70

  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, 80

  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. 90

  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 100

  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, 110

  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; 120

  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 130

  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 140

  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, 150

  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 160

  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 170

  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! 180

  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 190

  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 200

  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.—H
ere must thou be, O Man!

  Power to thyself; no Helper hast thou here; 210

  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! 220

  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, 230

  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 240

  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; 250

  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, 260

  When every day brought with it some new sense

  Of exquisite regard for common things,

  And all the earth was budding with these gifts

 

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