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16193
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
(1770-1850)
BY FREDERIC W. H. MYERS
TIS no easy matter for a disciple of Wordsworth's to write
a brief estimate of his work which shall fall into its due
place in a collection of the great writers of the world :* the
claim which must needs be made for him is so high, the drawbacks
are so obvious. Between prosiness and puerility, the ordinary reader
may feel as though he had been invited to a banquet, and regaled
with bread and water.
Much indeed which might be thought prosy or puerile can be put
aside at once without loss. Wordsworth wrote poetry for nearly half
a century. For about ten years (1798-1808) he was at his best, and for
ten years more (1808–1818) he was still from time to time inspired;
after that date the poems worthy of him were short and few. t
A great mass of valuable work remains; mainly in poems indi-
vidually brief, and difficult to classify except in chronological order.
For the sake of clear treatment in a brief essay, I may divide these
into three stages, roughly chronological. First will come the simple
poems, in the style of Lyrical Ballads'; then the poems in inter-
mediate style, of mixed simplicity and grandeur; and lastly the
poems in the grand style, such as Laodamia' and many of the son-
nets,-a style in which he continued at times to be able to write
* In 1881 I published a Life of Wordsworth) (now attainable in a cheap
shilling edition), in Mr. John Morley's series of English Men of Letters)
(Macmillan & Co. , London and New York). I was there able to give a
fuller introduction to the study of Wordsworth than space here allows; and
the reader who may turn to that book will find some of its ideas and expres-
sions repeated in the course of this essay, among other thoughts which the
years since elapsed have suggested, on a theme on which, in spite of all that
has been written, there is so much yet left to feel and to say.
+ The reader may, I think, omit the following poems: Juvenile Pieces,
(Thorn, Idiot Boy,' Borderers, Vaudracour and Julia, Artegal and
Elidure, (White Doe of Rylstone, (Lament of Mary Queen of Scots,' (Sons
of Burns,' (Vernal Ode, (Thanksgiving Ode, (Invocation to Earth,' Memo-
rials of Tour on Continent) (1820), and most of the "Ecclesiastical Sketches,'
(Sonnets on Duddon,' and (Excursion. '
XXVII-1013
(
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16194
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
when his early gift of exquisite simplicity had left him. The simple
poems are largely concerned with the Lake Country, and with rustic
emotion. As the style merges into grandeur, it deals rather with
themes of legendary or national dignity. And through all styles
alike runs an undercurrent of prophetic conviction as to the relation
of the visible world to a world unseen. *
I pass at once to a brief consideration of each group in turn.
Wordsworth, as is well known, began by preaching both by precept
and example the duty of throwing aside the so-called dignity and the
so-called language of poetry, and of appealing in the speech of real
life to the primary emotions of unsophisticated men. But his instruc-
tions sometimes resembled the conjurer's mystifying explanations of
artifices, which, however attentively we may listen, we can none the
better understand. Plainly one must not bring one's objects on the
stage in an obvious basket of “poetical diction”; but how produce a
canary from one's pocket-handkerchief at the moment desired? As
a matter of actual history the gift of poetical melody,—“the charm of
words, a charm no words can say,” — has been of all artistic gifts the
rarest and the most unteachable; simplicity of aim makes it no easier,
and few men - and they but rarely — have breathed into phrases of
absolute naïveté that touch of haunting joy.
«Sweet Emma Moreland of yonder town
Met me walking on yonder way,” —
lines such as these may sound easy enough; yet I doubt whether
even Tennyson ever caught quite that note again. And to me
Wordsworth's
poems on
(Matthew,' on Lucy,' the Cuckoo,' the
"Solitary Reaper, and the like, seem more marvelous, more excep-
tional as poetical tours de force, than even his sonnets; although I
agree with those who maintain that he has left us the finest collec-
tion of sonnets which any English poet has to show.
-
*1 may mention the following poems as examples of the different styles
alluded to above, - styles which of course run into each other:- Simple style:
(We are Seven); Lucy Gray); Poet's Epitaph); Pet Lamb); (Poor Susan);
Poems on Matthew; “Expostulation) and < Tables Turned); Fragment); (Stray
Pleasures); Poems on Lucy; My Heart Leaps Up); (Louisa'; (Sparrow's
Nest); Daffodils ); (Highland Girl); (Phantom of Delight); (Solitary Reaper);
Nightingale); Cuckoo. ' Transition to grand style: (Tintern Abbey);
(Brougham Castle); Leech-Gatherer); (AMiction of Margaret); "There was a
Boy); Peele Castle); Death of Fox); Nutting”; (Prelude. Grand style
(Happy Warrior); (Yew-Trees); (Laodamia); Dion); (Ode on Immortality `;
"Ode to Duty); "Wisdom and Spirit); (Patriotic and Other Sonnets ); Even-
ing Ode. )


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WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
16195
I quote in illustration three stanzas of the type which in Words-
worth's early days was a mark for general derision:-
“And turning from her grave, I met
Beside the church-yard yew,
A blooming girl, whose hair was wet
With points of morning dew.
«A basket on her head she bare ;
Her brow was smooth and white:
To see a child so very fair,
It was a pure delight!
«No fountain from its rocky cave
E'er tripped with foot so free;
She seemed as happy as a wave
That dances on the sea. )
Something here is imitable; something, I think, beyond imitation.
In “The Two April Mornings,' from which these stanzas are taken,
there is of course a pathetic attitude of mind to which the lines lead
up: that of the bereaved father, who would not, if he could, renew
the past joy at the risk of renewing the past sorrow. Others might
have chosen that theme; might have adorned into simplicity and
elaborated into naïveté a similar recital. But in what mind save
Wordsworth's would the couplets which close each of the three
stanzas have arisen: the exquisite truth of the look of the child's
hair in the dew; the innocent intensity of Matthew's gaze; the spring-
ing buoyancy of that last simile,- fresh and vivid as of old was
ocean's many-twinkling smile," - and the magical melody, which,
with its few rustic notes, translates the scene and transfigures it into
poetry's ideal world?
I have said that Wordsworth's simpler poems were largely
concerned with the English Lake Country; with the race and the
environment which it was his mission both to represent and to con-
secrate. For a Cumbrian born within a few miles of Wordsworth's
home, and a few years before his death, the inward picture of that
country's past, present, future, cannot rise without a touch of pain.
« Yea, all that now enchants thee," — said Wordsworth once of how
much smaller an invasion than has actually occurred ! -
(
« Yea, all that now enchants thee, from the day
On which it should be touched, would melt, and melt away. ”
The best remaining hope is still in Wordsworth; it is the hope
that his abiding spirit may exert an ever deeper influence upon those
who look upon the land which he loved. The visitors to the Lake
Country, indeed, are not now mainly such intruders as he most feared.


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16196
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
In growing proportion they are men and women who have a right to
be there; the right involved in real power of appreciation, in real
effort of voyage and journey made to reach the reverenced shrine.
And even now to Wordsworth it might perhaps have seemed that his
lakes and hills might yet subserve a new virtue wider than the old.
Here is what we in England have of fairest, of most sacred, to offer.
Let us offer it to all our kin. Let our great race, whose tribes are
mighty nations, find here an unchallenged sanctuary, and a central
memory of peace.
There can be nothing incongruous in any passage from simplicity
to greatness; and we find in Wordsworth's poems that transition
often occurring without conscious change of tone. This is especially
noticeable in the Prelude,' – a kind of epic on the poet's own edu-
cation; where the sense of tedium and egotism which such a subject
inspires is constantly yielding to our sense of the narrator's candor
and dignity, and to the psychological interest of the exposition of a
character than which I know none of better augury for the future of
mankind.
The Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle,' again, stands mid-
way between Wordsworth's simple style and his grand style. It rises
from rustic naïveté into chivalric ardor, and from chivalric ardor into
the benign tranquillity of the environing eternal world.
How charged with the spirit of the mountains is the harper's story
of the childhood of the Shepherd Lord!
a
(And both the undying fish that swim
Through Bowscale Tarn did wait on him;
The pair were servants of his eye
In their immortality;
And glancing, gleaming, dark or bright,
Moved to and fro for his delight. ”
on
How swiftly that minstrel passes, as one high note, to his
heroic cry!
«Armor rusting in his halls
On the blood of Clifford calls:
"Quell the Scot, exclaims the Lance,
(Bear me to the heart of France,
Is the longing of the Shield – »
(
At last the poet himself resumes the strain; and how sublime in
its simplicity is that return and uprising from the wild tale of war
and tumult to the true victory and the imperishable peace!
“Alas, the impassioned minstrel did not know
That for a tranquil soul the lay was framed,


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WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
16197
Who, long compelled in humble walks to go,
Was softened into feeling, soothed, and tamed.
«Love had he found in huts where poor men lie.
His daily teachers had been woods and rills,
The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills. )
But there was matter enough near home to call forth all Words-
worth's martial impulses, and to raise his style to its last eleva-
tion, a pure clear tone of heroic grandeur. During the prime of the
poet's powers, England was engaged in her most desperate struggle,
with her worst and mightiest foe. It is a strange fact that Words-
worth's (Sonnets Dedicated to Liberty' - the lofty appeals of a
grave recluse — should form the most permanent record in our liter-
ature of the Napoleonic war. Except Campbell's two songs, and Ten-
nyson's great ode on the death of the Duke of Wellington, half a
century later, they stand practically alone. The contest, indeed, was
one well fitted for treatment by this bard of “a few strong instincts
and a few plain rules. ” It was typified in mighty figures on either
hand. Napoleon's career afforded a poetic example — impressive as
that of Xerxes to the Greeks - of lawless and intoxicated power.
And on the other side - on the other side it happens by a singular
destiny that England, with a thousand years of noble history behind
her, has chosen for her best loved, for her national hero, not an Ar-
minius from the age of legend, not a Henri Quatre from the age of
chivalry, but a man whom the fathers of men still living have seen
and known. Close at hand for Wordsworth lay the crowning example
of impassioned self-devotedness, of heroic honor.
And indeed between these two men, so different in outward fates,
— between the “adored, the incomparable Nelson,” and the homely
poet, “retired as noontide dew," — there was a moral likeness so pro-
found that the ideal of the recluse was realized in the public life of
the hero, while on the other hand the hero himself is only seen as
completely heroic when his impetuous life stands out for us from the
solemn background of the poet's calm. Surely these two natures
taken together make the perfect Englishman. Nor is there any por-
trait fitter than that of 'The Happy Warrior' to go forth to all lands
as representing the British character at its height - a figure not ill-
matching with “Plutarch's men. ” *
*I have transcribed these last sentences from my previous work. I may
now (1897) add the mention of yet another felicity. The fame and the name
of Nelson have been felt to be matters for no one nation's pride alone; and
the career of the great Admiral has been narrated, in a spirit concordant with
Nelson's and Wordsworth's own, by the first of naval historians, a citizen of
the United States.


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16198
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
We have briefly traced Wordsworth's mode of response to his
local and to his national environment. His poetry has reflected first,
the charm of Cumberland, and then the patriotism and moral energy
of the whole English folk. And in each case that poetry has been
for us no mere spectacle, - no brilliant effort of mastery over lan-
guage, on which we gaze admiring but unchanged,— but rather an
impulse and an intuition; stirring us to a new emotion by the con-
vincing avowal of emotion intenser than our own. Even more pene-
trating, more enlightening, was Wordsworth's response to the widest,
the cosmic environment. It was a sense sublime,” in those oft
quoted words with which his solemn message began, “of something
far more deeply interfused”;- of the interaction, the interpenetra-
tion, as we may now express it, of a spiritual with this material
world. His intuition had unified for him the sum of things; he had
learnt, that is to say, to see earth's confused phenomena no longer
“in disconnection dull and spiritless, but — like Plato before him—
as the lovely transitory veil or image of a pre-existent and imperish-
able world. The prenatal recollection, or the meditative ecstasy, had
stablished him in an inward peace; had poured for him a magic
gladness through the cuckoo's song; had lent to his great odes their
lofty accent, as of a spirit who has looked on the universe with
insight beyond our own, and has seen that it was good.
To these upsoarings of Wordsworth's spirit many a soul in need
has clung.
Insensibly implied, obscurely apprehended, they have
given to his poetry a sustaining, a vitalizing power; nay, that poetry
has seemed to many to sound the introit into an age of new revela-
tion.
Yet to such heights this mortal frame can bear man seldom, or on
them permit him to linger long. In the Evening Ode' of 1818 we
find the seer standing at the close of his own apocalypse; lamenting
that celestial light, "full early lost and fruitlessly deplored”; sinking
back with constancy into an earthly life, prolonged through another
generation of men, but in which the vision came to him no more.
1
“Or if some vestige of those gleams
Survived, 'twas only in his dreams. »
It was during the calm declining years which followed that the
power of Wordsworth went out upon that new generation. His
poems indeed were never popular with the popularity of Byron or of
Scott. It was rather the leaders of thought who reverenced him, and
who imposed their reverence on that larger public which even yet,
perhaps, has scarcely recognized his in most charm.
Meanwhile the aging man pursued his quiet way. He still went
“ booing about,” — as his peasant neighbors called it, - murmuring his
(


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WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
16199
verses on the green hill terraces near Rydal Mount. He still made
on foot his grave Excursions,' to meet the friends who had gathered
near him from love at once of the country and of its poet. Some
of those friends he had aided — it was a task which delighted him-
to choose the site and shape the surroundings of a home among the
hills. More than one seat in the Lake Country among them one
home of pre-eminent beauty — have owed to Wordsworth no small
part of their ordered charm. In this way too the poet is with us
still: his presence has a strange reality as we look on some majestic
prospect of interwinding lake and mountain, which his design has
made more beautifully visible for the children's children of those he
loved; as we stand, perhaps, in some shadowed garden ground where
his will has had its way,— has framed Helvellyn's far-off summit in
an arch of tossing green, and embayed in towering forest trees the
long lawns of a silent valley, fit haunt for lofty aspiration and for
brooding calm.
The group which thus surrounded him was not unconscious of
his worth. To two adult generations he was already dear; and one
young child at least, whom hereditary friendships introduced to his
notice, felt in that hallowed presence as a child might have felt in
Arcadia, encountering tutelary Pan.
For the poet himself these lingering years were full of grave
retrospection, of humble self-judgment, of hopeful looking to the end.
« Worldly-minded I am not,” he wrote to an intimate friend near his
life's close; "on the contrary, my wish to benefit those within my
humble sphere strengthens seemingly in exact proportion to my
inability to realize those wishes. What I lament most is that the
spirituality of my nature does not expand and rise the nearer I
approach the grave, as yours does, and as it fares with my beloved
partner. ”
The aged poet might feel the loss of some vividness of emotion;
but his thoughts dwelt more and more constantly on the beloved
ones who had gone before him, and on the true and unseen world.
One of the images which recurs oftenest to his friends is that of the
old man as he would stand against the window of the dining-room
at Rydal Mount, and read the Psalms and Lessons for the day; of
the tall bowed figure and the silvery hair; of the deep voice which
always faltered when among the prayers he came to the words
which give thanks for those who have departed this life in Thy
faith and fear. »
«Retirement then might hourly look
Upon a soothing scene;
Age steal to his allotted nook
Contented and serene:


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16200
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
With heart as calm as lakes that sleep,
In frosty moonlight glistening,
Or mountain torrents where they creep
Along a channel smooth and deep,
To their own far-off murmurs listening. ”
Among all Virgil's categories of the Blessed, it is the pi vates who
are the truest friends of man. We need not be ashamed to linger on
them fondly; to imagine analogies between the impression which one
or another poet makes on us with the sights or sounds, the scents or
savors, of the great open world. Shakespeare (one may say) is like
breezy daylight; and Dante like the furnace glow. Lucretius is like
che storm, and Æschylus like the thunder, and Homer like the mov-
ing sea. Pindar is like wine; and Wordsworth like water, - which
Pindar said was best. Often that drink seems fat enough: but let
the wounded soldier crawl to the well-spring, and he knows that water
is best indeed; it is the very life of men.
1
1
Fungen
was
[NOTE. —William Wordsworth born of old North Country
stock, on the 7th of April, 1770, at Cockermouth in the Cumberland
highlands. Neither at school nor at college was he distinguished as a
scholar. Filled with enthusiasm for the French Revolution, he spent
a year in Paris, whence he was driven by the Reign of Terror. From
1796 until his death he lived almost continuously in the Lake Coun-
try; the record of his secluded, uneventful, and happy life being
found in his poems. He died at Rydal Mount, on the 23d of April,
1850. ]
LINES COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE
TINTERN ABBEY
ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING A TOUR
F"
IVE years have passed; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain springs
With a soft inland murmur. Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress


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WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
16201
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage ground, these orchard tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, - hardly hedge-rows,— little lines
Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up in silence from among the trees!
With some uncertain notice, as might seem
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some hermit's cave, where by his fire
The hermit sits alone.
These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration : feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure; such perhaps
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,–
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime: that blessed mood
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened; that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul;
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.


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16202
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
If this
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft -
In darkness and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart-
How oft in spirit have I turned to thee,
O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer through the woods,
How often has my spirit turned to thee!
And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again;
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope,
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
I came among these hills: when like a roe
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led; more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements, all gone by)
To me was all in all: I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colors and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, nor any interest
Unborrowed from the eye. — That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur: other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense.
For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth: but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity;
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
---


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WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
16203
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains: and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear,— both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognize
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being:
Nor perchance,
If I were not thus taught, should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou my dearest friend,
My dear, dear friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh, yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear sister! and this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her: 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy; for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;


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16204
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
And let the misty mountain-winds be free
To blow against thee: and in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure, — when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies,- oh, then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance, -
If I should be where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence, — wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together: and that I, so long
A worshiper of Nature, hither came
Unwearied in that service; rather say
With warmer love -oh, with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!
SHE DWELT AMONG THE UNTRODDEN WAYS
S"
HE dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove;
A maid whom there were none to praise,
And very few to love:
A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye! -
Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and oh,
The difference to me!


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WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
16205
THREE YEARS SHE GREW IN SUN AND SHOWER
T*
THREE years she grew in sun and shower;
Then Nature said, "A lovelier flower
On earth was never sown:
This child I to myself will take;
She shall be mine, and I will make
A lady of my own.
C
“Myself will to my darling be
Both law and impulse; and with me
The girl, in rock and plain,
In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,
Shall feel an overseeing power
To kindle or restrain.
“She shall be sportive as the fawn,
That wild with glee across the lawn
Or up the mountain springs;
And hers shall be the breathing balm,
And hers the silence and the calm
Of mute insensate things.
« The floating clouds their state shall lend
To her; for her the willow bend;
Nor shall she fail to see
Even in the motions of the storm,
Grace that shall mold the maiden's form
By silent sympathy.
« The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her; and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place
Where rivulets dance their wayward round;
And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face.
“And vital feelings of delight
Shall rear her form to stately height,
Her virgin bosom swell:
Such thoughts to Lucy I will give,
While she and I together live
Here in this happy dell. ”
Thus Nature spake — the work was done;
How soon my Lucy's race was run!
She died, and left to me


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16206
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
This heath, this calm and quiet scene;
The memory of what has been,
And never more will be.
A SLUMBER DID MY SPIRIT SEAL
A
SLUMBER did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees:
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
A POET'S EPITAPH
A
RT thou a statist in the van
Of public conflicts trained and bred ? -
First learn to love one living man;
Then may'st thou think upon the dead.
A lawyer art thou ? — draw not nigh!
Go, carry to some fitter place
The keenness of that practiced eye,
The hardness of that sallow face.
Art thou a man of purple cheer?
A rosy man, right plump to see?
Approach; yet, doctor, not too near,
This grave no cushion is for thee.
Or art thou one of gallant pride,
A soldier and no man of chaff ?
Welcome! — but lay thy sword aside,
And lean upon a peasant's staff.
Physician art thou? one all eyes,
Philosopher! a fingering slave,
One that would peep and botanize
Upon his mother's grave?
Wrapt closely in thy sensual fleece,
O turn aside; and take, I pray,


## p. 16207 (#553) ##########################################

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
16207
That he below may rest in peace, -
Thy ever-dwindling soul away!
A moralist perchance appears;
Led, Heaven knows how! to this poor sod:
And he has neither eyes nor ears;
Himself his world, and his own God;
One to whose smooth-rubbed soul can cling
Nor form nor feeling, great or small;
A reasoning, self-sufficing thing,
An intellectual All-in-all!
Shut close the door; press down the latch;
Sleep in thy intellectual crust;
Nor lose ten tickings of thy watch
Near this unprofitable dust.
But who is he, with modest looks,
And clad in homely russet brown?
He murmurs near the running brooks
A music sweeter than their own.
He is retired as noontide dew,
Or fountain in a noonday grove;
And you must love him, ere to you
He will seem worthy of your love.
The outward shows of sky and earth,
Of hill and valley, he has viewed;
And impulses of deeper birth
Have come to him in solitude.
In common things that round us lie,
Some random truths he can impart:
The harvest of a quiet eye
That broods and sleeps on his own heart.
But he is weak: both man and boy,
Hath been an idler in the land;
Contented if he might enjoy
The things which others understand.
Come hither in thy hour of strength;
Come, weak as is a breaking wave!
Here stretch thy body at full length;
Or build thy house upon this grave.


## p. 16208 (#554) ##########################################

16208
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
THE FOUNTAIN
A CONVERSATION
W*
E TALKED with open heart, and tongue
Affectionate and true:
A pair of friends, though I was young,
And Matthew seventy-two.
We lay beneath a spreading oak,
Beside a mossy seat;
And from the turf a fountain broke
And gurgled at our feet.
“Now, Matthew! ” said I, “let us match
This water's pleasant tune
With some old border-song or catch
That suits a summer's noon;
«Or of the church clock and the chimes
Sing here beneath the shade,
That half-mad thing of witty rhymes
Which you last April made! ”
In silence Matthew lay, and eyed
The spring beneath the tree;
And thus the dear old man replied, -
The gray-haired man of glee:-
“No check, no stay, this streamlet fears;
How merrily it goes!
'Twill murmur on a thousand years,
And flow as now it flows.
And here, on this delightful day,
I cannot choose but think
How oft, a vigorous man, I lay
Beside this fountain's brink.
My eyes are dim with childish tears,
My heart is idly stirred,
For the same sound is in my ears
Which in those days I heard.
« Thus fares it still in our decay;
And yet the wiser mind
Mourns less for what age takes away
Than what it leaves behind.


## p. 16209 (#555) ##########################################

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
16209
«The blackbird amid leafy trees,
The lark above the hill,
Let loose their carols when they please,
Are quiet when they will.
« With Nature never do they wage
A foolish strife; they see
A happy youth, and their old age
Is beautiful and free:
“But we are pressed by heavy laws;
And often, glad no more,
We wear a face of joy, because
We have been glad of yore.
“If there be one who need bemoan
His kindred laid in earth,
The household hearts that were his own,
It is the man of mirth.
“My days, my friend, are almost gone,
My life has been approved,
And many love me; but by none
Am I enough beloved. ”.
«Now both himself and me he wrongs,
The man who thus complains:
I live and sing my idle songs
Upon these happy plains;
“And, Matthew, for thy children dead
I'll be a son to thee! »
At this he grasped my hand, and said,
“Alas! that cannot be. ”
We rose up from the fountain-side;
And down the smooth descent
Of the green sheep-track did we glide;
And through the wood we went:
And ere we came to Leonard's rock,
He sang those witty rhymes
About the crazy old church clock,
And the bewildered chimes.
XXVII-1014


## p. 16210 (#556) ##########################################

16210
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
RESOLUTION AND INDEPENDENCE
T**
HERE was a roaring in the wind all night;
The rain came heavily and fell in floods;
But now the sun is rising calm and bright;
The birds are singing in the distant woods;
Over his own sweet voice the stock-dove broods;
The jay makes answer as the magpie chatters;
And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.
All things that love the sun are out of doors;
The sky rejoices in the morning's birth;
The grass is bright with raindrops; — on the moors
The hare is running races in her mirth;
And with her feet she from the plashy earth
Raises a mist, that, glittering in the sun,
Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run.
I was a traveler then upon the moor:
I saw the hare that raced about with joy;
I heard the woods and distant waters roar;
Or heard them not, as happy as a boy:
The pleasant season did my heart employ:
My old remembrances went from me wholly,
And all the ways of men, so vain and melancholy.
But as it sometimes chanceth, from the might
Of joy in minds that can no further go,
As high as we have mounted in delight
In our dejection do we sink as low:
To me that morning did it happen so;
And fears and fancies thick upon me came;
Dim sadness — and blind thoughts I knew not, nor could
name.
I heard the skylark warbling in the sky;
And I bethought me of the playful hare:
Even such a happy child of earth am I;
Even as these blissful creatures do I fare;
Far from the world I walk, and from all care:
But there may come another day to me,-
Solitude, pain of heart, distress, and poverty.
My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought,
As if life's business were a summer mood;


## p. 16211 (#557) ##########################################

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
16211
As if all needful things would come unsought
To genial faith, still rich in genial good:
But how can he expect that others should
Build for him, sow for him, and at his call
Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all ?
I thought of Chatterton, the marvelous boy,
The sleepless soul that perished in his pride;
Of him who walked in glory and in joy
Following his plow, along the mountain-side.
By our own spirits are we deified:
We poets in our youth begin in gladness;
But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.
Now, whether it were by peculiar grace,
A leading from above, a something given,
Yet it befell that in this lonely place,
When I with these untoward thoughts had striven,
Beside a pool bare to the eye of heaven
I saw a man before me unawares;
The oldest man he seemed that ever wore gray hairs.
As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie
Couched on the bald top of an eminence:
Wonder to all who do the same espy,
By what means it could thither come, and whence;
So that it seems a thing endued with sense:
Like a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a shelf
Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun itself;-
Such seemed this man, not all alive nor dead,
Nor all asleep - in his extreme old age:
His body was bent double, feet and head
Coming together in life's pilgrimage:
As if some dire constraint of pain, or rage
Of sickness felt by him in times long past,
A more than human weight upon his frame had cast.
Himself he propped, limbs, body, and pale face,
Upon a long gray staff of shaven wood;
And still as I drew near with gentle pace,
Upon the margin of that moorish food
Motionless as a cloud the old man stood,
That heareth not the loud winds when they call,
And moveth all together, if it move at all


## p. 16212 (#558) ##########################################

16212
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
At length, himself unsettling, he the pond
Stirred with his staff, and fixedly did look
Upon the muddy water, which he conned,
As if he had been reading in a book:
And now a stranger's privilege I took;
And drawing to his side, to him did say,
(This morning gives us promise of a glorious day. ”
A gentle answer did the old man make,
In courteous speech which forth he slowly drew;
And him with further words I thus bespake, -
«What occupation do you there pursue ?
This is a lonesome place for one like you. "
Ere he replied, a flash of mild surprise
Broke from the sable orbs of his yet-vivid eyes;
His words came feebly, from a feeble chest,
But each in solemn order followed each,
With something of a lofty utterance drest
Choice word and measured phrase, above the reach
Of ordinary men; a stately speech:
Such as grave livers do in Scotland use,-
Religious men, who give to God and man their dues.
He told that to these waters he had come
To gather leeches, being old and poor;-
Employment hazardous and wearisome! -
And he had many hardships to endure:
From pond to pond he roamed, from moor to moor;
Housing, with God's good help, by choice or chance:
And in this way he gained an honest maintenance.
The old man still stood talking by my side;
But now his voice to me was like a stream
Scarce heard; nor word from word could I divide;
And the whole body of the man did seem
Like one whom I had met with in a dream;
Or like a man from some far region sent,
To give me human strength, by apt admonishment.
My former thoughts returned: the fear that kills;
And hope that is unwilling to be fed;
Cold, pain, and labor, and all fleshly ills;
And mighty poets in their misery dead.
Perplexed, and longing to be comforted,


## p. 16213 (#559) ##########################################

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
16213
My question eagerly did I renew,
« How is it that you live, and what is it you do ? ”
He with a smile did then his words repeat;
And said that gathering leeches, far and wide
He traveled; stirring thus about his feet
The waters of the pools where they abide.
« Once I could meet with them on every side;
But they have dwindled long by slow decay;
Yet still I persevere, and find them where I may. ”
While he was talking thus, the lonely place,
The old man's shape and speech — all troubled me:
In my mind's eye I seemed to see him pace
About the weary moors continually,
Wandering about alone and silently.
While I these thoughts within myself pursued,
He, having made a pause, the same discourse renewed.
And soon with this he other matter blended,
Cheerfully uttered, with demeanor kind,
But stately in the main; and when he ended,
I could have laughed myself to scorn to find
In that decrepit man so firm a mind.
« God,” said I, «be my help and stay secure;
I'll think of the leech-gatherer on the lonely moor! ”
THE SPARROW'S NEST
B'
EHOLD, within the leafy shade,
Those bright blue eggs together laid!
On me the chance-discovered sight
Gleamed like a vision of delight.
I started - seeming to espy
The home and sheltered bed,
The sparrow's dwelling, which, hard by
My father's house, in wet or dry
My sister Emmeline and I
Together visited.
She looked at it and seemed to fear it;
Dreading, though wishing, to be near it:
Such heart was in her, being then
A little prattler among men.


## p. 16214 (#560) ##########################################

16214
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
.
The blessing of my later years
Was with me when a boy:
She gave me eyes, she gave me ears;
And humble cares, and delicate fears;
A heart, the fountain of sweet tears;
And love, and thought, and joy.
MY HEART LEAPS UP WHEN I BEHOLD
M
Y HEART leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
COMPOSED UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE
E
ARTH has not anything to show more fair;
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This city now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; — silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendor, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
IT IS A BEAUTEOUS EVENING, CALM AND FREE
T is a beauteous evening, calm and free:
The holy time is quiet as a nun
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquillity;
I


## p. 16215 (#561) ##########################################

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
16215
The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the sea :
Listen! the mighty Being is awake,
And doth with his eternal motion make
A sound like thunder - everlastingly.
Dear child! dear girl! that walkest with me here,
If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,
Thy nature is not therefore less divine:
Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year;
And worship'st at the Temple's inner shrine,
God being with thee when we know it not.
TO TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE
Tº
MOUSSAINT, the most unhappy man of men!
Whether the whistling rustic tend his plow
Within thy hearing, or thy head be now
Pillowed in some deep dungeon's earless den;-
O miserable chieftain! where and when
Wilt thou find patience ? Yet die not; do thou
Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow:
Though fallen thyself, never to rise again,
Live, and take comfort. Thou hast left behind
Powers that will work for thee,- air, earth, and skies;
There's not a breathing of the common wind
That will forget thee; thou hast great allies:
Thy friends are exultations, agonies,
And love, and man's unconquerable mind.
LONDON, 1802
M
ILTON! thou shouldst be living at this hour,-
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters; altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart;
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.


## p. 16216 (#562) ##########################################

16216
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
IT IS NOT TO BE THOUGHT OF
1
T is not to be thought of that the flood
Of British freedom, which, to the open sea
Of the world's praise, from dark antiquity
Hath flowed, “with pomp of waters, unwithstood,”
Roused though it be full often to a mood
Which spurns the check of salutary bands, –
That this most famous stream in bogs and sands
Should perish, and to evil and to good
Be lost for ever. In our halls is hung
Armory of the invincible knights of old:
We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
That Shakespeare spake, the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held. — In everything we are sprung
Of earth's first blood, have titles manifold.
TO HARTLEY COLERIDGE
Six YEARS OLD
O
THOU! whose fancies from afar are brought;
Who of thy words dost make a mock apparel,
And fittest to unutterable thought
The breeze-like motion and the self-born carol;
Thou faery voyager! that dost float
In such clear water, that thy boat
May rather seem
To brood on air than on an earthly stream;
Suspended in a stream as clear as sky,
Where earth and heaven do make one imagery;
O blessed vision! happy child !
Thou art so exquisitely wild,
I think of thee with many fears
For what may be thy lot in future years.
I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest,
Lord of thy house and hospitality:
And Grief, uneasy lover! never rest
But when she sate within the touch of thee.
O too industrious folly!
O vain and causeless melancholy!
Nature will either end thee quite;
Or, lengthening out thy season of delight,
Preserve for thee, by individual right,
A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks.


## p. 16217 (#563) ##########################################

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
16217
What hast thou to do with sorrow,
Or the injuries of to-morrow ?
Thou art a dewdrop, which the morn brings forth,
Ill fitted to sustain unkindly shocks,
Or to be trailed along the soiling earth;
A gem that glitters while it lives,
And no forewarning gives;
But at the touch of wrong, without a strife
Slips in a moment out of life.
SHE WAS A PHANTOM OF DELIGHT
SF
He was a phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely apparition, sent
To be a moment's ornament;
Her eyes as stars of twilight fair;
Like twilight's, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful dawn:
A dancing shape, an image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and waylay.
I saw her upon nearer view,
A spirit, yet a woman too!
Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin liberty:
A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet:
A creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.
©
And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine:
A being breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveler between life and death;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
A perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a spirit still, and bright
With something of angelic light.


## p. 16218 (#564) ##########################################

162 18
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
THE SOLITARY REAPER
B
EHOLD her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
Oh, listen! for the vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.
No nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travelers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from the cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.
Will no one tell me what she sings? -
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day ?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?
Whate'er the theme, the maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;-
I listened, motionless and still;
And as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore
Long after it was heard no more.


## p. 16219 (#565) ##########################################

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
16219
TO THE CUCKOO
O
BLITHE new-comer! I have heard,
I hear thee and rejoice.
O cuckoo! shall I call thee bird,
Or but a wandering voice?
While I am lying on the grass
Thy twofold shout I hear;
From hill to hill it seems to pass,
At once far off and near.
Though babbling only to the vale,
Of sunshine and of flowers,
Thou bringest unto me a talė
Of visionary hours.
Thrice welcome, darling of the spring !
Even yet thou art to me
No bird, but an invisible thing,
A voice, a mystery;
The same whom in my schoolboy days
I listened to; that cry
Which made me look a thousand ways
In bush, and tree, and sky.
To seek thee did I often rove
Through woods and on the green:
And thou wert still a hope, a love;
Still longed for, never seen. ,
And I can listen to thee yet;
Can lie upon the plain
And listen, till I do beget
That golden time again.
O blessed bird! the earth we pace
Again appears to be
An unsubstantial, faery place;
That is fit home for thee!


## p. 16220 (#566) ##########################################

16220
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD
I
WANDERED lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills:
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company.
I gazed — and gazed — but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
TO A YOUNG LADY
WHO HAD
BEEN REPROACHED FOR TAKING LONG WALKS IN THE
COUNTRY
D
EAR child of nature, let them rail!
There is a nest in a green dale,
A harbor and a hold,
Where thou, a wife and friend, shalt see
Thy own heart-stirring days, and be
A light to young and old.
There, healthy as a shepherd boy,
And treading among Aowers of joy ·
Which at no season fade,


## p. 16221 (#567) ##########################################

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
162 21
Thou, while thy babes around thee cling,
Shalt show us how divine a thing
A woman may be made.
Thy thoughts and feelings shall not die,
Nor leave thee, when gray hairs are nigh,
A melancholy slave;
But an old age serene and bright,
And lovely as a Lapland night,
Shall lead thee to thy grave.
THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US
HE world is much with us,
T" "Getting and"spending
. we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The sea that bares her bosom to the moon,-
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are upgathered now like sleeping flowers, -
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. — Great God! I'd rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn,
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn:
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
ODE TO DUTY
STER
TERN daughter of the Voice of God!
O Duty! if that name thou love
Who art a light to guide, a rod
To check the erring, and reprove;
Thou who art victory and law
When empty terrors overawe;
From vain temptations dost set free;
And calm'st the weary strife of frail humanity!
There are who ask not if thine eye
Be on them; who, in love and truth,
Where no misgiving is, rely
Upon the genial sense of youth;


## p. 16222 (#568) ##########################################

162 2 2
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Glad hearts! without reproach or blot
Who do thy work, and know it not:
Oh! if through confidence misplaced
They fail, thy saving arms, dread Power! around them cast.
Serene will be our days and bright,
And happy will our nature be,
When love is an unerring light,
And joy its own security.
And they a blissful course may hold
Even now, who, not unwisely bold,
Live in the spirit of this creed;
Yet seek thy firm support, according to their need.
I, loving freedom, and untried;
No sport of every, random gust,
Yet being to myself a guide, -
Too blindly have reposed my trust;
And oft, when in my heart was heard
Thy timely mandate, I deferred
The task, in smoother walks to stray;
But thee I now would serve more strictly, if I may.
Through no disturbance of my soul,
Or strong compunction in me wrought,
I supplicate for thy control;
But in the quietness of thought:
Me this unchartered freedom tires;
I feel the weight of chance desires;
My hopes no more must change their name,
I long for a repose that ever is the same.
Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear
The Godhead's most benignant grace;
Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face:
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds,
And fragrance in thy footing treads;
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;
And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and
strong
To humbler functions, awful Power!
I call thee: I myself commend
Unto thy guidance from this hour;
Oh, let my weakness have an end!


## p. 16223 (#569) ##########################################

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
16223
Give unto me, made lowly wise,
The spirit of self-sacrifice;
The confidence of reason give;
And in the light of truth thy bondman let me live!
INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF
EARLY CHILDHOOD
I
THERE
HERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Appareled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore:
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
II
The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the rose,
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare,
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth.
III
Now while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief;
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;-
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong:
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;


## p. 16224 (#570) ##########################################

16224
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Land and sea
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every beast keep holiday ;-
Thou child of joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy
Shepherd-boy!
IV
Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,
My head hath its coronal,
The fullness of your bliss, I feel -- I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May morning,
And the children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm;
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear! -
But there's a tree, - of many, one,-
A single field which I have looked upon:
Both of them speak of something that is gone;
The pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream ?
V
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy,


## p. 16225 (#571) ##########################################

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
16225
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows.
He sees it in his joy;
The youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
VI
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And even with something of a mother's mind,
And no unworthy aim,
The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her inmate man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.
VII
Behold the child among his new-born blisses,
A six-years' darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly learned art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral;
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his “humorous stage”
With all the persons, down to palsied age,
That life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.
XXVII–1015


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16226
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
VIII
Thou whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul's immensity;
Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage; thou eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted forever by the eternal inind, -
Mighty prophet! seer blest!
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy immortality
Broods like the day, a 'master o'er a slave,
A presence which is not to be put by;
Thou little child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height, -
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
IX
O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest, –
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast;
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise:
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,
High instincts before which our mortal nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:


## p. 16227 (#573) ##########################################

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
16227
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing. -
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal silence: truths that wake,
To perish never;
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor,
Nor man nor boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither;
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
X
Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound!
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind:
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering :
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.


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16228
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
XI
And oh, ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your inight;
I only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they:
The innocent brightness of a new-born day
Is lovely yet;
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober coloring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality:
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
TO THE SMALL CELANDINE
PA
ANSIES, lilies, kingcups, daisies,
Let them live upon their praises;
Long as there's a sun that sets,
Primroses will have their glory;
Long as there are violets,
They will have a place in story:
There's a flower that shall be mine,-
'Tis the little Celandine.
Eyes of some men travel far
For the finding of a star;
Up and down the heavens they go,
Men that keep a mighty rout!
I'm as great as they, I trow,
Since the lay I found thee out,
Little Flower! —I'll make a stir,
Like a sage astronomer.
Modest, yet withal an Elf
Bold, and lavish of thyself;
Since we needs must first have met,
I have seen thee, high and low,
Thirty years or more, and yet
'Twas a face I did not know;


## p. 16229 (#575) ##########################################

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
16229
Thou hast now, go where I may,
Fifty greetings in a day.
Ere a leaf is on a bush,
In the time before the thrush
Has a thought about her nest,
Thou wilt come with half a call,
Spreading out thy glossy breast
Like a careless Prodigal;
Telling tales about the sun,
When we've little warmth, or none.
Poets, vain men in their mood!
Travel with the multitude:
Never heed them, -I aver
That they all are wanton wooers;
But the thrifty cottager,
Who stirs little out of doors,
Joys to spy thee near her home:
Spring is coming, thou art come!
Comfort have thou of thy merit,
Kindly, unassuming Spirit!
Careless of thy neighborhood,
Thou dost show thy pleasant face
On the moor, and in the wood,
In the lane; – there's not a place,
Howsoever mean it be,
But 'tis good enough for thee.
Ill befall the yellow flowers,
Children of the flaring hours!
Buttercups, that will be seen,
Whether we will see or no;
Others, too, of lofty mien:
They have done as worldlings do, -
Taken praise that should be thine,
Little, humble Celandine!
Prophet of delight and mirth,
Ill-requited upon earth;
Herald of a mighty band,
Of a joyous train ensuing;
Serving at my heart's command,
Tasks that are no tasks renewing,–
I will sing, as doth behove,
Hymns in praise of what I love!


## p. 16230 (#576) ##########################################

16230
SIR THOMAS WYATT
(1503-1542)
)
(
IR THOMAS WYATT, the elder friend of the poet Surrey, and
one of the two chief lanternes of light to all others that
have since employed their pennes upon English poesie,”
was one of the most attractive figures at the court of Henry VIII.
“Let my friend bring me into court, but let my merit and my service
keep me there,” he wrote; and although his rash courage led him, as
he warned his son, “into a thousand dangers, and hazards, enmities,
hatreds, prisonments, despites, and indignations,” yet he emerged
from them all with untarnished integrity,
and the restored confidence of the King.