Delphi Complete Works of William Wordsworth

by William Wordsworth

  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 550

  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 560

  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, 570

  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 580

  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, 590

  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, 600

  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.

  THE PRELUDE 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 10

  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 20

  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 30

  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, 40

  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 50

  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 60

  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, 70

  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, 80


  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, 90

  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, 100

  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 110

  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: 120

  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 130

  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 140

  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) 150

  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, 160

  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. 170

  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 180

  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, 190

  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, 200

  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 210

  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, 220

  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-count
enance, 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 230

  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 240

  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 250

  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 260

  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, 270

  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, 280