Delphi Complete Works of William Wordsworth

by William Wordsworth

  Known by whatever name, is falsely deemed

  A gift, to use a term which they would use,

  Of vulgar nature; that its growth requires

  Retirement, leisure, language purified 190

  By manners studied and elaborate;

  That whoso feels such passion in its strength

  Must live within the very light and air

  Of courteous usages refined by art.

  True is it, where oppression worse than death

  Salutes the being at his birth, where grace

  Of culture hath been utterly unknown,

  And poverty and labour in excess

  From day to day pre-occupy the ground

  Of the affections, and to Nature’s self 200

  Oppose a deeper nature; there, indeed,

  Love cannot be; nor does it thrive with ease

  Among the close and overcrowded haunts

  Of cities, where the human heart is sick,

  And the eye feeds it not, and cannot feed.

  —Yes, in those wanderings deeply did I feel

  How we mislead each other; above all,

  How books mislead us, seeking their reward

  From judgments of the wealthy Few, who see

  By artificial lights; how they debase 210

  The Many for the pleasure of those Few;

  Effeminately level down the truth

  To certain general notions, for the sake

  Of being understood at once, or else

  Through want of better knowledge in the heads

  That framed them; flattering self-conceit with words,

  That, while they most ambitiously set forth

  Extrinsic differences, the outward marks

  Whereby society has parted man

  From man, neglect the universal heart. 220

  Here, calling up to mind what then I saw,

  A youthful traveller, and see daily now

  In the familiar circuit of my home,

  Here might I pause, and bend in reverence

  To Nature, and the power of human minds,

  To men as they are men within themselves.

  How oft high service is performed within,

  When all the external man is rude in show,—

  Not like a temple rich with pomp and gold,

  But a mere mountain chapel, that protects 230

  Its simple worshippers from sun and shower.

  Of these, said I, shall be my song; of these,

  If future years mature me for the task,

  Will I record the praises, making verse

  Deal boldly with substantial things; in truth

  And sanctity of passion, speak of these,

  That justice may be done, obeisance paid

  Where it is due: thus haply shall I teach,

  Inspire; through unadulterated ears

  Pour rapture, tenderness, and hope,—my theme 240

  No other than the very heart of man,

  As found among the best of those who live—

  Not unexalted by religious faith,

  Nor uninformed by books, good books, though few—

  In Nature’s presence: thence may I select

  Sorrow, that is not sorrow, but delight;

  And miserable love, that is not pain

  To hear of, for the glory that redounds

  Therefrom to human kind, and what we are.

  Be mine to follow with no timid step 250

  Where knowledge leads me: it shall be my pride

  That I have dared to tread this holy ground,

  Speaking no dream, but things oracular;

  Matter not lightly to be heard by those

  Who to the letter of the outward promise

  Do read the invisible soul; by men adroit

  In speech, and for communion with the world

  Accomplished; minds whose faculties are then

  Most active when they are most eloquent,

  And elevated most when most admired. 260

  Men may be found of other mould than these,

  Who are their own upholders, to themselves

  Encouragement, and energy, and will,

  Expressing liveliest thoughts in lively words

  As native passion dictates. Others, too,

  There are among the walks of homely life

  Still higher, men for contemplation framed,

  Shy, and unpractised in the strife of phrase;

  Meek men, whose very souls perhaps would sink

  Beneath them, summoned to such intercourse: 270

  Theirs is the language of the heavens, the power,

  The thought, the image, and the silent joy:

  Words are but under-agents in their souls;

  When they are grasping with their greatest strength,

  They do not breathe among them: this I speak

  In gratitude to God, Who feeds our hearts

  For His own service; knoweth, loveth us,

  When we are unregarded by the world.

  Also, about this time did I receive

  Convictions still more strong than heretofore, 280

  Not only that the inner frame is good,

  And graciously composed, but that, no less,

  Nature for all conditions wants not power

  To consecrate, if we have eyes to see,

  The outside of her creatures, and to breathe

  Grandeur upon the very humblest face

  Of human life. I felt that the array

  Of act and circumstance, and visible form,

  Is mainly to the pleasure of the mind

  What passion makes them; that meanwhile the forms 290

  Of Nature have a passion in themselves,

  That intermingles with those works of man

  To which she summons him; although the works

  Be mean, have nothing lofty of their own;

  And that the Genius of the Poet hence

  May boldly take his way among mankind

  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 gia
nt 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.

  THE PRELUDE 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 t
he 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,