THE PRELUDE
BOOK SECOND
SCHOOL-TIME (continued)

          THUS far, O Friend! have we, though leaving much
          Unvisited, endeavoured to retrace
          The simple ways in which my childhood walked;
          Those chiefly that first led me to the love
          Of rivers, woods, and fields. The passion yet
          Was in its birth, sustained as might befall
          By nourishment that came unsought; for still
          From week to week, from month to month, we lived
          A round of tumult. Duly were our games
          Prolonged in summer till the daylight failed:               10
          No chair remained before the doors; the bench
          And threshold steps were empty; fast asleep
          The labourer, and the old man who had sate
          A later lingerer; yet the revelry
          Continued and the loud uproar: at last,
          When all the ground was dark, and twinkling stars
          Edged the black clouds, home and to bed we went,
          Feverish with weary joints and beating minds.
          Ah! is there one who ever has been young,
          Nor needs a warning voice to tame the pride                 20
          Of intellect and virtue's self-esteem?
          One is there, though the wisest and the best
          Of all mankind, who covets not at times
          Union that cannot be;--who would not give
          If so he might, to duty and to truth
          The eagerness of infantine desire?
          A tranquillising spirit presses now
          On my corporeal frame, so wide appears
          The vacancy between me and those days
          Which yet have such self-presence in my mind,               30
          That, musing on them, often do I seem
          Two consciousnesses, conscious of myself
          And of some other Being. A rude mass
          Of native rock, left midway in the square
          Of our small market village, was the goal
          Or centre of these sports; and when, returned
          After long absence, thither I repaired,
          Gone was the old grey stone, and in its place
          A smart Assembly-room usurped the ground
          That had been ours. There let the fiddle scream,            40
          And be ye happy! Yet, my Friends! I know
          That more than one of you will think with me
          Of those soft starry nights, and that old Dame
          From whom the stone was named, who there had sate,
          And watched her table with its huckster's wares
          Assiduous, through the length of sixty years.

            We ran a boisterous course; the year span round
          With giddy motion. But the time approached
          That brought with it a regular desire
          For calmer pleasures, when the winning forms                50
          Of Nature were collaterally attached
          To every scheme of holiday delight
          And every boyish sport, less grateful else
          And languidly pursued.
                                  When summer came,
          Our pastime was, on bright half-holidays,
          To sweep along the plain of Windermere
          With rival oars; and the selected bourne
          Was now an Island musical with birds
          That sang and ceased not; now a Sister Isle
          Beneath the oaks' umbrageous covert, sown                   60
          With lilies of the valley like a field;
          And now a third small Island, where survived
          In solitude the ruins of a shrine
          Once to Our Lady dedicate, and served
          Daily with chaunted rites. In such a race
          So ended, disappointment could be none,
          Uneasiness, or pain, or jealousy:
          We rested in the shade, all pleased alike,
          Conquered and conqueror. Thus the pride of strength,
          And the vain-glory of superior skill,                       70
          Were tempered; thus was gradually produced
          A quiet independence of the heart;
          And to my Friend who knows me I may add,
          Fearless of blame, that hence for future days
          Ensued a diffidence and modesty,
          And I was taught to feel, perhaps too much,
          The self-sufficing power of Solitude.

            Our daily meals were frugal, Sabine fare!
          More than we wished we knew the blessing then
          Of vigorous hunger--hence corporeal strength                80
          Unsapped by delicate viands; for, exclude
          A little weekly stipend, and we lived
          Through three divisions of the quartered year
          In penniless poverty. But now to school
          From the half-yearly holidays returned,
          We came with weightier purses, that sufficed
          To furnish treats more costly than the Dame
          Of the old grey stone, from her scant board, supplied.
          Hence rustic dinners on the cool green ground,
          Or in the woods, or by a river side                         90
          Or shady fountains, while among the leaves
          Soft airs were stirring, and the mid-day sun
          Unfelt shone brightly round us in our joy.
          Nor is my aim neglected if I tell
          How sometimes, in the length of those half-years,
          We from our funds drew largely;--proud to curb,
          And eager to spur on, the galloping steed;
          And with the courteous inn-keeper, whose stud
          Supplied our want, we haply might employ
          Sly subterfuge, if the adventure's bound                   100
          Were distant: some famed temple where of yore
          The Druids worshipped, or the antique walls
          Of that large abbey, where within the Vale
          Of Nightshade, to St. Mary's honour built,
          Stands yet a mouldering pile with fractured arch,
          Belfry, and images, and living trees;
          A holy scene!--Along the smooth green turf
          Our horses grazed. To more than inland peace,
          Left by the west wind sweeping overhead
          From a tumultuous ocean, trees and towers                  110
          In that sequestered valley may be seen,
          Both silent and both motionless alike;
          Such the deep shelter that is there, and such
          The safeguard for repose and quietness.

            Our steeds remounted and the summons given,
          With whip and spur we through the chauntry flew
          In uncouth race, and left the cross-legged knight,
          And the stone-abbot, and that single wren
          Which one day sang so sweetly in the nave
          Of the old church, that--though from recent showers        120
          The earth was comfortless, and, touched by faint
          Internal breezes, sobbings of the place
          And respirations, from the roofless walls
          The shuddering ivy dripped large drops--yet still
          So sweetly 'mid the gloom the invisible bird
          Sang to herself, that there I could have made
          My dwelling-place, and lived for ever there
          To hear such music. Through the walls we flew
          And down the valley, and, a circuit made
          In wantonness of heart, through rough and smooth           130
          We scampered homewards. Oh, ye rocks and streams,
          And that still spirit shed from evening air!
          Even in this joyous time I sometimes felt
          Your presence, when with slackened step we breathed
          Along the sides of the steep hills, or when
          Lighted by gleams of moonlight from the sea
          We beat with thundering hoofs the level sand.

            Midway on long Winander's eastern shore,
          Within the crescent of pleasant bay,
          A tavern stood; no homely-featured house,                  140
          Primeval like its neighbouring cottages,
          But 'twas a splendid place, the door beset
          With chaises, grooms, and liveries, and within
          Decanters, glasses, and the blood-red wine.
          In ancient times, and ere the Hall was built
          On the large island, had this dwelling been
          More worthy of a poet's love, a hut,
          Proud of its own bright fire and sycamore shade.
          But--though the rhymes were gone that once inscribed
          The threshold, and large golden characters,                150
          Spread o'er the spangled sign-board, had dislodged
          The old Lion and usurped his place, in slight
          And mockery of the rustic painter's hand--
          Yet, to this hour, the spot to me is dear
          With all its foolish pomp. The garden lay
          Upon a slope surmounted by a plain
          Of a small bowling-green; beneath us stood
          A grove, with gleams of water through the trees
          And over the tree-tops; nor did we want
          Refreshment, strawberries and mellow cream.                160
          There, while through half an afternoon we played
          On the smooth platform, whether skill prevailed
          Or happy blunder triumphed, bursts of glee
          Made all the mountains ring. But, ere night-fall,
          When in our pinnace we returned at leisure
          Over the shadowy lake, and to the beach
          Of some small island steered our course with one,
          The Minstrel of the Troop, and left him there,
          And rowed off gently, while he blew his flute
          Alone upon the rock--oh, then, the calm                    170
          And dead still water lay upon my mind
          Even with a weight of pleasure, and the sky,
          Never before so beautiful, sank down
          Into my heart, and held me like a dream!
          Thus were my sympathies enlarged, and thus
          Daily the common range of visible things
          Grew dear to me: already I began
          To love the sun; a boy I loved the sun,
          Not as I since have loved him, as a pledge
          And surety of our earthly life, a light                    180
          Which we behold and feel we are alive;
          Nor for his bounty to so many worlds--
          But for this cause, that I had seen him lay
          His beauty on the morning hills, had seen
          The western mountain touch his setting orb,
          In many a thoughtless hour, when, from excess
          Of happiness, my blood appeared to flow
          For its own pleasure, and I breathed with joy.
          And, from like feelings, humble though intense,
          To patriotic and domestic love                             190
          Analogous, the moon to me was dear;
          For I could dream away my purposes,
          Standing to gaze upon her while she hung
          Midway between the hills, as if she knew
          No other region, but belonged to thee,
          Yea, appertained by a peculiar right
          To thee and thy grey huts, thou one dear Vale!

            Those incidental charms which first attached
          My heart to rural objects, day by day
          Grew weaker, and I hasten on to tell                       200
          How Nature, intervenient till this time
          And secondary, now at length was sought
          For her own sake. But who shall parcel out
          His intellect by geometric rules,
          Split like a province into round and square?
          Who knows the individual hour in which
          His habits were first sown, even as a seed?
          Who that shall point as with a wand and say
          "This portion of the river of my mind
          Came from yon fountain?" Thou, my Friend! art one          210
          More deeply read in thy own thoughts; to thee
          Science appears but what in truth she is,
          Not as our glory and our absolute boast,
          But as a succedaneum, and a prop
          To our infirmity. No officious slave
          Art thou of that false secondary power
          By which we multiply distinctions, then
          Deem that our puny boundaries are things
          That we perceive, and not that we have made.
          To thee, unblinded by these formal arts,                   220
          The unity of all hath been revealed,
          And thou wilt doubt, with me less aptly skilled
          Than many are to range the faculties
          In scale and order, class the cabinet
          Of their sensations, and in voluble phrase
          Run through the history and birth of each
          As of a single independent thing.
          Hard task, vain hope, to analyse the mind,
          If each most obvious and particular thought,
          Not in a mystical and idle sense,                          230
          But in the words of Reason deeply weighed,
          Hath no beginning.
                              Blest the infant Babe,
          (For with my best conjecture I would trace
          Our Being's earthly progress,) blest the Babe,
          Nursed in his Mother's arms, who sinks to sleep
          Rocked on his Mother's breast; who with his soul
          Drinks in the feelings of his Mother's eye!
          For him, in one dear Presence, there exists
          A virtue which irradiates and exalts
          Objects through widest intercourse of sense.               240
          No outcast he, bewildered and depressed:
          Along his infant veins are interfused
          The gravitation and the filial bond
          Of nature that connect him with the world.
          Is there a flower, to which he points with hand
          Too weak to gather it, already love
          Drawn from love's purest earthly fount for him
          Hath beautified that flower; already shades
          Of pity cast from inward tenderness
          Do fall around him upon aught that bears                   250
          Unsightly marks of violence or harm.
          Emphatically such a Being lives,
          Frail creature as he is, helpless as frail,
          An inmate of this active universe:
          For, feeling has to him imparted power
          That through the growing faculties of sense
          Doth like an agent of the one great Mind
          Create, creator and receiver both,
          Working but in alliance with the works
          Which it beholds.--Such, verily, is the first              260
          Poetic spirit of our human life,
          By uniform control of after years,
          In most, abated or suppressed; in some,
          Through every change of growth and of decay,
          Pre-eminent till death.
                                   From early days,
          Beginning not long after that first time
          In which, a Babe, by intercourse of touch
          I held mute dialogues with my Mother's heart,
          I have endeavoured to display the means
          Whereby this infant sensibility,                           270
          Great birthright of our being, was in me
          Augmented and sustained. Yet is a path
          More difficult before me; and I fear
          That in its broken windings we shall need
          The chamois' sinews, and the eagle's wing:
          For now a trouble came into my mind
          From unknown causes. I was left alone
          Seeking the visible world, nor knowing why.
          The props of my affections were removed,
          And yet the building stood, as if sustained                280
          By its own spirit! All that I beheld
          Was dear, and hence to finer influxes
          The mind lay open to a more exact
          And close communion. Many are our joys
          In youth, but oh! what happiness to live
          When every hour brings palpable access
          Of knowledge, when all knowledge is delight,
          And sorrow is not there! The seasons came,
          And every season wheresoe'er I moved
          Unfolded transitory qualities,                             290
          Which, but for this most watchful power of love,
          Had been neglected; left a register
          Of permanent relations, else unknown.
          Hence life, and change, and beauty, solitude
          More active ever than "best society"--
          Society made sweet as solitude
          By silent inobtrusive sympathies,
          And gentle agitations of the mind
          From manifold distinctions, difference
          Perceived in things, where, to the unwatchful eye,         300
          No difference is, and hence, from the same source,
          Sublimer joy; for I would walk alone,
          Under the quiet stars, and at that time
          Have felt whate'er there is of power in sound
          To breathe an elevated mood, by form
          Or image unprofaned; and I would stand,
          If the night blackened with a coming storm,
          Beneath some rock, listening to notes that are
          The ghostly language of the ancient earth,
          Or make their dim abode in distant winds.                  310
          Thence did I drink the visionary power;
          And deem not profitless those fleeting moods
          Of shadowy exultation: not for this,
          That they are kindred to our purer mind
          And intellectual life; but that the soul,
          Remembering how she felt, but what she felt
          Remembering not, retains an obscure sense
          Of possible sublimity, whereto
          With growing faculties she doth aspire,
          With faculties still growing, feeling still                320
          That whatsoever point they gain, they yet
          Have something to pursue.
                                     And not alone,
          'Mid gloom and tumult, but no less 'mid fair
          And tranquil scenes, that universal power
          And fitness in the latent qualities
          And essences of things, by which the mind
          Is moved with feelings of delight, to me
          Came strengthened with a superadded soul,
          A virtue not its own. My morning walks
          Were early;--oft before the hours of school                330
          I travelled round our little lake, five miles
          Of pleasant wandering. Happy time! more dear
          For this, that one was by my side, a Friend,
          Then passionately loved; with heart how full
          Would he peruse these lines! For many years
          Have since flowed in between us, and, our minds
          Both silent to each other, at this time
          We live as if those hours had never been.
          Nor seldom did I lift our cottage latch
          Far earlier, ere one smoke-wreath had risen                340
          From human dwelling, or the vernal thrush
          Was audible; and sate among the woods
          Alone upon some jutting eminence,
          At the first gleam of dawn-light, when the Vale,
          Yet slumbering, lay in utter solitude.
          How shall I seek the origin? where find
          Faith in the marvellous things which then I felt?
          Oft in these moments such a holy calm
          Would overspread my soul, that bodily eyes
          Were utterly forgotten, and what I saw                     350
          Appeared like something in myself, a dream,
          A prospect in the mind.
                                  'Twere long to tell
          What spring and autumn, what the winter snows,
          And what the summer shade, what day and night,
          Evening and morning, sleep and waking, thought
          From sources inexhaustible, poured forth
          To feed the spirit of religious love
          In which I walked with Nature. But let this
          Be not forgotten, that I still retained
          My first creative sensibility;                             360
          That by the regular action of the world
          My soul was unsubdued. A plastic power
          Abode with me; a forming hand, at times
          Rebellious, acting in a devious mood;
          A local spirit of his own, at war
          With general tendency, but, for the most,
          Subservient strictly to external things
          With which it communed. An auxiliar light
          Came from my mind, which on the setting sun
          Bestowed new splendour; the melodious birds,               370
          The fluttering breezes, fountains that run on
          Murmuring so sweetly in themselves, obeyed
          A like dominion, and the midnight storm
          Grew darker in the presence of my eye:
          Hence my obeisance, my devotion hence,
          And hence my transport.
                                   Nor should this, perchance,
          Pass unrecorded, that I still had loved
          The exercise and produce of a toil,
          Than analytic industry to me
          More pleasing, and whose character I deem                  380
          Is more poetic as resembling more
          Creative agency. The song would speak
          Of that interminable building reared
          By observation of affinities
          In objects where no brotherhood exists
          To passive minds. My seventeenth year was come
          And, whether from this habit rooted now
          So deeply in my mind, or from excess
          In the great social principle of life
          Coercing all things into sympathy,                         390
          To unorganic natures were transferred
          My own enjoyments; or the power of truth
          Coming in revelation, did converse
          With things that really are; I, at this time,
          Saw blessings spread around me like a sea.
          Thus while the days flew by, and years passed on,
          From Nature and her overflowing soul,
          I had received so much, that all my thoughts
          Were steeped in feeling; I was only then
          Contented, when with bliss ineffable                       400
          I felt the sentiment of Being spread
          O'er all that moves and all that seemeth still;
          O'er all that, lost beyond the reach of thought
          And human knowledge, to the human eye
          Invisible, yet liveth to the heart;
          O'er all that leaps and runs, and shouts and sings,
          Or beats the gladsome air; o'er all that glides
          Beneath the wave, yea, in the wave itself,
          And mighty depth of waters. Wonder not
          If high the transport, great the joy I felt,               410
          Communing in this sort through earth and heaven
          With every form of creature, as it looked
          Towards the Uncreated with a countenance
          Of adoration, with an eye of love.
          One song they sang, and it was audible,
          Most audible, then, when the fleshly ear,
          O'ercome by humblest prelude of that strain
          Forgot her functions, and slept undisturbed.

            If this be error, and another faith
          Find easier access to the pious mind,                      420
          Yet were I grossly destitute of all
          Those human sentiments that make this earth
          So dear, if I should fail with grateful voice
          To speak of you, ye mountains, and ye lakes
          And sounding cataracts, ye mists and winds
          That dwell among the hills where I was born.
          If in my youth I have been pure in heart,
          If, mingling with the world, I am content
          With my own modest pleasures, and have lived
          With God and Nature communing, removed                     430
          From little enmities and low desires--
          The gift is yours; if in these times of fear,
          This melancholy waste of hopes o'erthrown,
          If, 'mid indifference and apathy,
          And wicked exultation when good men
          On every side fall off, we know not how,
          To selfishness, disguised in gentle names
          Of peace and quiet and domestic love
          Yet mingled not unwillingly with sneers
          On visionary minds; if, in this time                       440
          Of dereliction and dismay, I yet
          Despair not of our nature, but retain
          A more than Roman confidence, a faith
          That fails not, in all sorrow my support,
          The blessing of my life--the gift is yours,
          Ye winds and sounding cataracts! 'tis yours,
          Ye mountains! thine, O Nature! Thou hast fed
          My lofty speculations; and in thee,
          For this uneasy heart of ours, I find
          A never-failing principle of joy                           450
          And purest passion.
                               Thou, my Friend! wert reared
          In the great city, 'mid far other scenes;
          But we, by different roads, at length have gained
          The selfsame bourne. And for this cause to thee
          I speak, unapprehensive of contempt,
          The insinuated scoff of coward tongues,
          And all that silent language which so oft
          In conversation between man and man
          Blots from the human countenance all trace
          Of beauty and of love. For thou hast sought                460
          The truth in solitude, and, since the days
          That gave thee liberty, full long desired,
          To serve in Nature's temple, thou hast been
          The most assiduous of her ministers;
          In many things my brother, chiefly here
          In this our deep devotion.
                                      Fare thee well!
          Health and the quiet of a healthful mind
          Attend thee! seeking oft the haunts of men,
          And yet more often living with thyself,
          And for thyself, so haply shall thy days                   470
          Be many, and a blessing to mankind.

THE PRELUDE
BOOK THIRD
RESIDENCE AT CAMBRIDGE

          It was a dreary morning when the wheels
          Rolled over a wide plain o'erhung with clouds,
          And nothing cheered our way till first we saw
          The long-roofed chapel of King's College lift
          Turrets and pinnacles in answering files,
          Extended high above a dusky grove.

            Advancing, we espied upon the road
          A student clothed in gown and tasselled cap,
          Striding along as if o'ertasked by Time,
          Or covetous of exercise and air;                            10
          He passed--nor was I master of my eyes
          Till he was left an arrow's flight behind.
          As near and nearer to the spot we drew,
          It seemed to suck us in with an eddy's force.
          Onward we drove beneath the Castle; caught,
          While crossing Magdalene Bridge, a glimpse of Cam;
          And at the "Hoop" alighted, famous Inn.

            My spirit was up, my thoughts were full of hope;
          Some friends I had, acquaintances who there
          Seemed friends, poor simple schoolboys, now hung round      20
          With honour and importance: in a world
          Of welcome faces up and down I roved;
          Questions, directions, warnings and advice,
          Flowed in upon me, from all sides; fresh day
          Of pride and pleasure! to myself I seemed
          A man of business and expense, and went
          From shop to shop about my own affairs,
          To Tutor or to Tailor, as befell,
          From street to street with loose and careless mind.

            I was the Dreamer, they the Dream; I roamed               30
          Delighted through the motley spectacle;
          Gowns grave, or gaudy, doctors, students, streets,
          Courts, cloisters, flocks of churches, gateways, towers:
          Migration strange for a stripling of the hills,
          A northern villager.
                                As if the change
          Had waited on some Fairy's wand, at once
          Behold me rich in monies, and attired
          In splendid garb, with hose of silk, and hair
          Powdered like rimy trees, when frost is keen.
          My lordly dressing-gown, I pass it by,                      40
          With other signs of manhood that supplied
          The lack of beard.--The weeks went roundly on,
          With invitations, suppers, wine and fruit,
          Smooth housekeeping within, and all without
          Liberal, and suiting gentleman's array.

            The Evangelist St. John my patron was:
          Three Gothic courts are his, and in the first
          Was my abiding-place, a nook obscure;
          Right underneath, the College kitchens made
          A humming sound, less tuneable than bees,                   50
          But hardly less industrious; with shrill notes
          Of sharp command and scolding intermixed.
          Near me hung Trinity's loquacious clock,
          Who never let the quarters, night or day,
          Slip by him unproclaimed, and told the hours
          Twice over with a male and female voice.
          Her pealing organ was my neighbour too;
          And from my pillow, looking forth by light
          Of moon or favouring stars, I could behold
          The antechapel where the statue stood                       60
          Of Newton with his prism and silent face,
          The marble index of a mind for ever
          Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.

            Of College labours, of the Lecturer's room
          All studded round, as thick as chairs could stand,
          With loyal students, faithful to their books,
          Half-and-half idlers, hardy recusants,
          And honest dunces--of important days,
          Examinations, when the man was weighed
          As in a balance! of excessive hopes,                        70
          Tremblings withal and commendable fears,
          Small jealousies, and triumphs good or bad--
          Let others that know more speak as they know.
          Such glory was but little sought by me,
          And little won. Yet from the first crude days
          Of settling time in this untried abode,
          I was disturbed at times by prudent thoughts,
          Wishing to hope without a hope, some fears
          About my future worldly maintenance,
          And, more than all, a strangeness in the mind,              80
          A feeling that I was not for that hour,
          Nor for that place. But wherefore be cast down?
          For (not to speak of Reason and her pure
          Reflective acts to fix the moral law
          Deep in the conscience, nor of Christian Hope,
          Bowing her head before her sister Faith
          As one far mightier), hither I had come,
          Bear witness Truth, endowed with holy powers
          And faculties, whether to work or feel.
          Oft when the dazzling show no longer new                    90
          Had ceased to dazzle, ofttimes did I quit
          My comrades, leave the crowd, buildings and groves,
          And as I paced alone the level fields
          Far from those lovely sights and sounds sublime
          With which I had been conversant, the mind
          Drooped not; but there into herself returning,
          With prompt rebound seemed fresh as heretofore.
          At least I more distinctly recognised
          Her native instincts: let me dare to speak
          A higher language, say that now I felt                     100
          What independent solaces were mine,
          To mitigate the injurious sway of place
          Or circumstance, how far soever changed
          In youth, or 'to' be changed in after years.
          As if awakened, summoned, roused, constrained,
          I looked for universal things; perused
          The common countenance of earth and sky:
          Earth, nowhere unembellished by some trace
          Of that first Paradise whence man was driven;
          And sky, whose beauty and bounty are expressed             110
          By the proud name she bears--the name of Heaven.
          I called on both to teach me what they might;
          Or, turning the mind in upon herself,
          Pored, watched, expected, listened, spread my thoughts
          And spread them with a wider creeping; felt
          Incumbencies more awful, visitings
          Of the Upholder of the tranquil soul,
          That tolerates the indignities of Time,
          And, from the centre of Eternity
          All finite motions overruling, lives                       120
          In glory immutable. But peace! enough
          Here to record that I was mounting now
          To such community with highest truth--
          A track pursuing, not untrod before,
          From strict analogies by thought supplied
          Or consciousnesses not to be subdued.
          To every natural form, rock, fruits, or flower,
          Even the loose stones that cover the highway,
          I gave a moral life: I saw them feel,
          Or linked them to some feeling: the great mass             130
          Lay bedded in a quickening soul, and all
          That I beheld respired with inward meaning.
          Add that whate'er of Terror or of Love
          Or Beauty, Nature's daily face put on
          From transitory passion, unto this
          I was as sensitive as waters are
          To the sky's influence in a kindred mood
          Of passion; was obedient as a lute
          That waits upon the touches of the wind.
          Unknown, unthought of, yet I was most rich--               140
          I had a world about me--'twas my own;
          I made it, for it only lived to me,
          And to the God who sees into the heart.
          Such sympathies, though rarely, were betrayed
          By outward gestures and by visible looks:
          Some called it madness--so indeed it was,
          If child-like fruitfulness in passing joy,
          If steady moods of thoughtfulness matured
          To inspiration, sort with such a name;
          If prophecy be madness; if things viewed                   150
          By poets in old time, and higher up
          By the first men, earth's first inhabitants,
          May in these tutored days no more be seen
          With undisordered sight. But leaving this,
          It was no madness, for the bodily eye
          Amid my strongest workings evermore
          Was searching out the lines of difference
          As they lie hid in all external forms,
          Near or remote, minute or vast; an eye
          Which, from a tree, a stone, a withered leaf,              160
          To the broad ocean and the azure heavens
          Spangled with kindred multitudes of stars,
          Could find no surface where its power might sleep;
          Which spake perpetual logic to my soul,
          And by an unrelenting agency
          Did bind my feelings even as in a chain.

            And here, O Friend! have I retraced my life
          Up to an eminence, and told a tale
          Of matters which not falsely may be called
          The glory of my youth. Of genius, power,                   170
          Creation and divinity itself
          I have been speaking, for my theme has been
          What passed within me. Not of outward things
          Done visibly for other minds, words, signs,
          Symbols or actions, but of my own heart
          Have I been speaking, and my youthful mind.
          O Heavens! how awful is the might of souls,
          And what they do within themselves while yet
          The yoke of earth is new to them, the world
          Nothing but a wild field where they were sown.             180
          This is, in truth, heroic argument,
          This genuine prowess, which I wished to touch
          With hand however weak, but in the main
          It lies far hidden from the reach of words.
          Points have we all of us within our souls
          Where all stand single; this I feel, and make
          Breathings for incommunicable powers;
          But is not each a memory to himself,
          And, therefore, now that we must quit this theme,
          I am not heartless, for there's not a man                  190
          That lives who hath not known his god-like hours,
          And feels not what an empire we inherit
          As natural beings in the strength of Nature.

            No more: for now into a populous plain
          We must descend. A Traveller I am,
          Whose tale is only of himself; even so,
          So be it, if the pure of heart be prompt
          To follow, and if thou, my honoured Friend!
          Who in these thoughts art ever at my side,
          Support, as heretofore, my fainting steps.                 200

            It hath been told, that when the first delight
          That flashed upon me from this novel show
          Had failed, the mind returned into herself;
          Yet true it is, that I had made a change
          In climate, and my nature's outward coat
          Changed also slowly and insensibly.
          Full oft the quiet and exalted thoughts
          Of loneliness gave way to empty noise
          And superficial pastimes; now and then
          Forced labour, and more frequently forced hopes;           210
          And, worst of all, a treasonable growth
          Of indecisive judgments, that impaired
          And shook the mind's simplicity.--And yet
          This was a gladsome time. Could I behold--
          Who, less insensible than sodden clay
          In a sea-river's bed at ebb of tide,
          Could have beheld,--with undelighted heart,
          So many happy youths, so wide and fair
          A congregation in its budding-time
          Of health, and hope, and beauty, all at once               220
          So many divers samples from the growth
          Of life's sweet season--could have seen unmoved
          That miscellaneous garland of wild flowers
          Decking the matron temples of a place
          So famous through the world? To me, at least,
          It was a goodly prospect: for, in sooth,
          Though I had learnt betimes to stand unpropped,
          And independent musings pleased me so
          That spells seemed on me when I was alone,
          Yet could I only cleave to solitude                        230
          In lonely places; if a throng was near
          That way I leaned by nature; for my heart
          Was social, and loved idleness and joy.

            Not seeking those who might participate
          My deeper pleasures (nay, I had not once,
          Though not unused to mutter lonesome songs,
          Even with myself divided such delight,
          Or looked that way for aught that might be clothed
          In human language), easily I passed
          From the remembrances of better things,                    240
          And slipped into the ordinary works
          Of careless youth, unburthened, unalarmed.
          'Caverns' there were within my mind which sun
          Could never penetrate, yet did there not
          Want store of leafy 'arbours' where the light
          Might enter in at will. Companionships,
          Friendships, acquaintances, were welcome all.
          We sauntered, played, or rioted; we talked
          Unprofitable talk at morning hours;
          Drifted about along the streets and walks,                 250
          Read lazily in trivial books, went forth
          To gallop through the country in blind zeal
          Of senseless horsemanship, or on the breast
          Of Cam sailed boisterously, and let the stars
          Come forth, perhaps without one quiet thought.

            Such was the tenor of the second act
          In this new life. Imagination slept,
          And yet not utterly. I could not print
          Ground where the grass had yielded to the steps
          Of generations of illustrious men,                         260
          Unmoved. I could not always lightly pass
          Through the same gateways, sleep where they had slept,
          Wake where they waked, range that inclosure old,
          That garden of great intellects, undisturbed.
          Place also by the side of this dark sense
          Of noble feeling, that those spiritual men,
          Even the great Newton's own ethereal self,
          Seemed humbled in these precincts thence to be
          The more endeared. Their several memories here
          (Even like their persons in their portraits clothed        270
          With the accustomed garb of daily life)
          Put on a lowly and a touching grace
          Of more distinct humanity, that left
          All genuine admiration unimpaired.

            Beside the pleasant Mill of Trompington
          I laughed with Chaucer in the hawthorn shade;
          Heard him, while birds were warbling, tell his tales
          Of amorous passion. And that gentle Bard,
          Chosen by the Muses for their Page of State--
          Sweet Spenser, moving through his clouded heaven           280
          With the moon's beauty and the moon's soft pace,
          I called him Brother, Englishman, and Friend!
          Yea, our blind Poet, who in his later day,
          Stood almost single; uttering odious truth--
          Darkness before, and danger's voice behind,
          Soul awful--if the earth has ever lodged
          An awful soul--I seemed to see him here
          Familiarly, and in his scholar's dress
          Bounding before me, yet a stripling youth--
          A boy, no better, with his rosy cheeks                     290
          Angelical, keen eye, courageous look,
          And conscious step of purity and pride.
          Among the band of my compeers was one
          Whom chance had stationed in the very room
          Honoured by Milton's name. O temperate Bard!
          Be it confest that, for the first time, seated
          Within thy innocent lodge and oratory,
          One of a festive circle, I poured out
          Libations, to thy memory drank, till pride
          And gratitude grew dizzy in a brain                        300
          Never excited by the fumes of wine
          Before that hour, or since. Then, forth I ran
          From the assembly; through a length of streets,
          Ran, ostrich-like, to reach our chapel door
          In not a desperate or opprobrious time,
          Albeit long after the importunate bell
          Had stopped, with wearisome Cassandra voice
          No longer haunting the dark winter night.
          Call back, O Friend! a moment to thy mind,
          The place itself and fashion of the rites.                 310
          With careless ostentation shouldering up
          My surplice, through the inferior throng I clove
          Of the plain Burghers, who in audience stood
          On the last skirts of their permitted ground,
          Under the pealing organ. Empty thoughts!
          I am ashamed of them: and that great Bard,
          And thou, O Friend! who in thy ample mind
          Hast placed me high above my best deserts,
          Ye will forgive the weakness of that hour,
          In some of its unworthy vanities,                          320
          Brother to many more.
                                In this mixed sort
          The months passed on, remissly, not given up
          To wilful alienation from the right,
          Or walks of open scandal, but in vague
          And loose indifference, easy likings, aims
          Of a low pitch--duty and zeal dismissed,
          Yet Nature, or a happy course of things
          Not doing in their stead the needful work.
          The memory languidly revolved, the heart
          Reposed in noontide rest, the inner pulse                  330
          Of contemplation almost failed to beat.
          Such life might not inaptly be compared
          To a floating island, an amphibious spot
          Unsound, of spongy texture, yet withal
          Not wanting a fair face of water weeds
          And pleasant flowers. The thirst of living praise,
          Fit reverence for the glorious Dead, the sight
          Of those long vistas, sacred catacombs,
          Where mighty 'minds' lie visibly entombed,
          Have often stirred the heart of youth, and bred            340
          A fervent love of rigorous discipline.--
          Alas! such high emotion touched not me.
          Look was there none within these walls to shame
          My easy spirits, and discountenance
          Their light composure, far less to instil
          A calm resolve of mind, firmly addressed
          To puissant efforts. Nor was this the blame
          Of others but my own; I should, in truth,
          As far as doth concern my single self,
          Misdeem most widely, lodging it elsewhere:                 350
          For I, bred up, 'mid Nature's luxuries,
          Was a spoiled child, and, rumbling like the wind,
          As I had done in daily intercourse
          With those crystalline rivers, solemn heights,
          And mountains, ranging like a fowl of the air,
          I was ill-tutored for captivity;
          To quit my pleasure, and, from month to month,
          Take up a station calmly on the perch
          Of sedentary peace. Those lovely forms
          Had also left less space within my mind,                   360
          Which, wrought upon instinctively, had found
          A freshness in those objects of her love,
          A winning power, beyond all other power.
          Not that I slighted books,--that were to lack
          All sense,--but other passions in me ruled,
          Passions more fervent, making me less prompt
          To in-door study than was wise or well,
          Or suited to those years. Yet I, though used
          In magisterial liberty to rove,
          Culling such flowers of learning as might tempt            370
          A random choice, could shadow forth a place
          (If now I yield not to a flattering dream)
          Whose studious aspect should have bent me down
          To instantaneous service; should at once
          Have made me pay to science and to arts
          And written lore, acknowledged my liege lord,
          A homage frankly offered up, like that
          Which I had paid to Nature. Toil and pains
          In this recess, by thoughtful Fancy built,
          Should spread from heart to heart; and stately groves,     380
          Majestic edifices, should not want
          A corresponding dignity within.
          The congregating temper that pervades
          Our unripe years, not wasted, should be taught
          To minister to works of high attempt--
          Works which the enthusiast would perform with love.
          Youth should be awed, religiously possessed
          With a conviction of the power that waits
          On knowledge, when sincerely sought and prized
          For its own sake, on glory and on praise                   390
          If but by labour won, and fit to endure
          The passing day; should learn to put aside
          Her trappings here, should strip them off abashed
          Before antiquity and stedfast truth
          And strong book-mindedness; and over all
          A healthy sound simplicity should reign,
          A seemly plainness, name it what you will,
          Republican or pious.
                                If these thoughts
          Are a gratuitous emblazonry
          That mocks the recreant age 'we' live in, then             400
          Be Folly and False-seeming free to affect
          Whatever formal gait of discipline
          Shall raise them highest in their own esteem--
          Let them parade among the Schools at will,
          But spare the House of God. Was ever known
          The witless shepherd who persists to drive
          A flock that thirsts not to a pool disliked?
          A weight must surely hang on days begun
          And ended with such mockery. Be wise,
          Ye Presidents and Deans, and, till the spirit              410
          Of ancient times revive, and youth be trained
          At home in pious service, to your bells
          Give seasonable rest, for 'tis a sound
          Hollow as ever vexed the tranquil air;
          And your officious doings bring disgrace
          On the plain steeples of our English Church,
          Whose worship, 'mid remotest village trees,
          Suffers for this. Even Science, too, at hand
          In daily sight of this irreverence,
          Is smitten thence with an unnatural taint,                 420
          Loses her just authority, falls beneath
          Collateral suspicion, else unknown.
          This truth escaped me not, and I confess,
          That having 'mid my native hills given loose
          To a schoolboy's vision, I had raised a pile
          Upon the basis of the coming time,
          That fell in ruins round me. Oh, what joy
          To see a sanctuary for our country's youth
          Informed with such a spirit as might be
          Its own protection; a primeval grove,                      430
          Where, though the shades with cheerfulness were filled,
          Nor indigent of songs warbled from crowds
          In under-coverts, yet the countenance
          Of the whole place should bear a stamp of awe;
          A habitation sober and demure
          For ruminating creatures; a domain
          For quiet things to wander in; a haunt
          In which the heron should delight to feed
          By the shy rivers, and the pelican
          Upon the cypress spire in lonely thought                   440
          Might sit and sun himself.--Alas! Alas!
          In vain for such solemnity I looked;
          Mine eyes were crossed by butterflies, ears vexed
          By chattering popinjays; the inner heart
          Seemed trivial, and the impresses without
          Of a too gaudy region.
                                  Different sight
          Those venerable Doctors saw of old,
          When all who dwelt within these famous walls
          Led in abstemiousness a studious life;
          When, in forlorn and naked chambers cooped                 450
          And crowded, o'er the ponderous books they hung
          Like caterpillars eating out their way
          In silence, or with keen devouring noise
          Not to be tracked or fathered. Princes then
          At matins froze, and couched at curfew-time,
          Trained up through piety and zeal to prize
          Spare diet, patient labour, and plain weeds.
          O seat of Arts! renowned throughout the world!
          Far different service in those homely days
          The Muses' modest nurslings underwent                      460
          From their first childhood: in that glorious time
          When Learning, like a stranger come from far,
          Sounding through Christian lands her trumpet, roused
          Peasant and king; when boys and youths, the growth
          Of ragged villages and crazy huts,
          Forsook their homes, and, errant in the quest
          Of Patron, famous school or friendly nook,
          Where, pensioned, they in shelter might sit down,
          From town to town and through wide scattered realms
          Journeyed with ponderous folios in their hands;            470
          And often, starting from some covert place,
          Saluted the chance comer on the road,
          Crying, "An obolus, a penny give
          To a poor scholar!"--when illustrious men,
          Lovers of truth, by penury constrained,
          Bucer, Erasmus, or Melancthon, read
          Before the doors or windows of their cells
          By moonshine through mere lack of taper light.

            But peace to vain regrets! We see but darkly
          Even when we look behind us, and best things               480
          Are not so pure by nature that they needs
          Must keep to all, as fondly all believe,
          Their highest promise. If the mariner,
          When at reluctant distance he hath passed
          Some tempting island, could but know the ills
          That must have fallen upon him had he brought
          His bark to land upon the wished-for shore,
          Good cause would oft be his to thank the surf
          Whose white belt scared him thence, or wind that blew
          Inexorably adverse: for myself                             490
          I grieve not; happy is the gowned youth,
          Who only misses what I missed, who falls
          No lower than I fell.
                                 I did not love,
          Judging not ill perhaps, the timid course
          Of our scholastic studies; could have wished
          To see the river flow with ampler range
          And freer pace; but more, far more, I grieved
          To see displayed among an eager few,
          Who in the field of contest persevered,
          Passions unworthy of youth's generous heart                500
          And mounting spirit, pitiably repaid,
          When so disturbed, whatever palms are won.
          From these I turned to travel with the shoal
          Of more unthinking natures, easy minds
          And pillowy; yet not wanting love that makes
          The day pass lightly on, when foresight sleeps,
          And wisdom and the pledges interchanged
          With our own inner being are forgot.

            Yet was this deep vacation not given up
          To utter waste. Hitherto I had stood                       510
          In my own mind remote from social life,
          (At least from what we commonly so name,)
          Like a lone shepherd on a promontory
          Who lacking occupation looks far forth
          Into the boundless sea, and rather makes
          Than finds what he beholds. And sure it is,
          That this first transit from the smooth delights
          And wild outlandish walks of simple youth
          To something that resembles an approach
          Towards human business, to a privileged world              520
          Within a world, a midway residence
          With all its intervenient imagery,
          Did better suit my visionary mind,
          Far better, than to have been bolted forth,
          Thrust out abruptly into Fortune's way
          Among the conflicts of substantial life;
          By a more just gradation did lead on
          To higher things; more naturally matured,
          For permanent possession, better fruits,
          Whether of truth or virtue, to ensue.                      530
          In serious mood, but oftener, I confess,
          With playful zest of fancy, did we note
          (How could we less?) the manners and the ways
          Of those who lived distinguished by the badge
          Of good or ill report; or those with whom
          By frame of Academic discipline
          We were perforce connected, men whose sway
          And known authority of office served
          To set our minds on edge, and did no more.
          Nor wanted we rich pastime of this kind,                   540
          Found everywhere, but chiefly in the ring
          Of the grave Elders, men unscoured, grotesque
          In character, tricked out like aged trees
          Which through the lapse of their infirmity
          Give ready place to any random seed
          That chooses to be reared upon their trunks.

            Here on my view, confronting vividly
          Those shepherd swains whom I had lately left
          Appeared a different aspect of old age;
          How different! yet both distinctly marked,                 550
          Objects embossed to catch the general eye,
          Or portraitures for special use designed,
          As some might seem, so aptly do they serve
          To illustrate Nature's book of rudiments--
          That book upheld as with maternal care
          When she would enter on her tender scheme
          Of teaching comprehension with delight,
          And mingling playful with pathetic thoughts.

            The surfaces of artificial life
          And manners finely wrought, the delicate race              560
          Of colours, lurking, gleaming up and down
          Through that state arras woven with silk and gold;
          This wily interchange of snaky hues,
          Willingly or unwillingly revealed,
          I neither knew nor cared for; and as such
          Were wanting here, I took what might be found
          Of less elaborate fabric. At this day
          I smile, in many a mountain solitude
          Conjuring up scenes as obsolete in freaks
          Of character, in points of wit as broad,                   570
          As aught by wooden images performed
          For entertainment of the gaping crowd
          At wake or fair. And oftentimes do flit
          Remembrances before me of old men--
          Old humourists, who have been long in their graves,
          And having almost in my mind put off
          Their human names, have into phantoms passed
          Of texture midway between life and books.

            I play the loiterer: 'tis enough to note
          That here in dwarf proportions were expressed              580
          The limbs of the great world; its eager strifes
          Collaterally pourtrayed, as in mock fight,
          A tournament of blows, some hardly dealt
          Though short of mortal combat; and whate'er
          Might in this pageant be supposed to hit
          An artless rustic's notice, this way less,
          More that way, was not wasted upon me--
          And yet the spectacle may well demand
          A more substantial name, no mimic show,
          Itself a living part of a live whole,                      590
          A creek in the vast sea; for, all degrees
          And shapes of spurious fame and short-lived praise
          Here sate in state, and fed with daily alms
          Retainers won away from solid good;
          And here was Labour, his own bond-slave; Hope,
          That never set the pains against the prize;
          Idleness halting with his weary clog,
          And poor misguided Shame, and witless Fear,
          And simple Pleasure foraging for Death;
          Honour misplaced, and Dignity astray;                      600
          Feuds, factions, flatteries, enmity, and guile,
          Murmuring submission, and bald government,
          (The idol weak as the idolater),
          And Decency and Custom starving Truth,
          And blind Authority beating with his staff
          The child that might have led him; Emptiness
          Followed as of good omen, and meek Worth
          Left to herself unheard of and unknown.

            Of these and other kindred notices
          I cannot say what portion is in truth                      610
          The naked recollection of that time,
          And what may rather have been called to life
          By after-meditation. But delight
          That, in an easy temper lulled asleep,
          Is still with Innocence its own reward,
          This was not wanting. Carelessly I roamed
          As through a wide museum from whose stores
          A casual rarity is singled out
          And has its brief perusal, then gives way
          To others, all supplanted in their turn;                   620
          Till 'mid this crowded neighbourhood of things
          That are by nature most unneighbourly,
          The head turns round and cannot right itself;
          And though an aching and a barren sense
          Of gay confusion still be uppermost,
          With few wise longings and but little love,
          Yet to the memory something cleaves at last,
          Whence profit may be drawn in times to come.

            Thus in submissive idleness, my Friend!
          The labouring time of autumn, winter, spring,              630
          Eight months! rolled pleasingly away; the ninth
          Came and returned me to my native hills.

THE PRELUDE
BOOK FOURTH
SUMMER VACATION

          Bright was the summer's noon when quickening steps
          Followed each other till a dreary moor
          Was crossed, a bare ridge clomb, upon whose top
          Standing alone, as from a rampart's edge,
          I overlooked the bed of Windermere,
          Like a vast river, stretching in the sun.
          With exultation, at my feet I saw
          Lake, islands, promontories, gleaming bays,
          A universe of Nature's fairest forms
          Proudly revealed with instantaneous burst,                  10
          Magnificent, and beautiful, and gay.
          I bounded down the hill shouting amain
          For the old Ferryman; to the shout the rocks
          Replied, and when the Charon of the flood
          Had staid his oars, and touched the jutting pier,
          I did not step into the well-known boat
          Without a cordial greeting. Thence with speed
          Up the familiar hill I took my way
          Towards that sweet Valley where I had been reared;
          'Twas but a short hour's walk, ere veering round            20
          I saw the snow-white church upon her hill
          Sit like a throned Lady, sending out
          A gracious look all over her domain.
          Yon azure smoke betrays the lurking town;
          With eager footsteps I advance and reach
          The cottage threshold where my journey closed.
          Glad welcome had I, with some tears, perhaps,
          From my old Dame, so kind and motherly,
          While she perused me with a parent's pride.
          The thoughts of gratitude shall fall like dew               30
          Upon thy grave, good creature! While my heart
          Can beat never will I forget thy name.
          Heaven's blessing be upon thee where thou liest
          After thy innocent and busy stir
          In narrow cares, thy little daily growth
          Of calm enjoyments, after eighty years,
          And more than eighty, of untroubled life;
          Childless, yet by the strangers to thy blood
          Honoured with little less than filial love.
          What joy was mine to see thee once again,                   40
          Thee and thy dwelling, and a crowd of things
          About its narrow precincts all beloved,
          And many of them seeming yet my own!
          Why should I speak of what a thousand hearts
          Have felt, and every man alive can guess?
          The rooms, the court, the garden were not left
          Long unsaluted, nor the sunny seat
          Round the stone table under the dark pine,
          Friendly to studious or to festive hours;
          Nor that unruly child of mountain birth,                    50
          The famous brook, who, soon as he was boxed
          Within our garden, found himself at once,
          As if by trick insidious and unkind,
          Stripped of his voice and left to dimple down
          (Without an effort and without a will)
          A channel paved by man's officious care.
          I looked at him and smiled, and smiled again,
          And in the press of twenty thousand thoughts,
          "Ha," quoth I, "pretty prisoner, are you there!"
          Well might sarcastic Fancy then have whispered,             60
          "An emblem here behold of thy own life;
          In its late course of even days with all
          Their smooth enthralment;" but the heart was full,
          Too full for that reproach. My aged Dame
          Walked proudly at my side: she guided me;
          I willing, nay--nay, wishing to be led.
          --The face of every neighbour whom I met
          Was like a volume to me; some were hailed
          Upon the road, some busy at their work,
          Unceremonious greetings interchanged                        70
          With half the length of a long field between.
          Among my schoolfellows I scattered round
          Like recognitions, but with some constraint
          Attended, doubtless, with a little pride,
          But with more shame, for my habiliments,
          The transformation wrought by gay attire.
          Not less delighted did I take my place
          At our domestic table: and, dear Friend!
          In this endeavour simply to relate
          A Poet's history, may I leave untold                        80
          The thankfulness with which I laid me down
          In my accustomed bed, more welcome now
          Perhaps than if it had been more desired
          Or been more often thought of with regret;
          That lowly bed whence I had heard the wind
          Roar, and the rain beat hard; where I so oft
          Had lain awake on summer nights to watch
          The moon in splendour couched among the leaves
          Of a tall ash, that near our cottage stood;
          Had watched her with fixed eyes while to and fro            90
          In the dark summit of the waving tree
          She rocked with every impulse of the breeze.

            Among the favourites whom it pleased me well
          To see again, was one by ancient right
          Our inmate, a rough terrier of the hills;
          By birth and call of nature pre-ordained
          To hunt the badger and unearth the fox
          Among the impervious crags, but having been
          From youth our own adopted, he had passed
          Into a gentler service. And when first                     100
          The boyish spirit flagged, and day by day
          Along my veins I kindled with the stir,
          The fermentation, and the vernal heat
          Of poesy, affecting private shades
          Like a sick Lover, then this dog was used
          To watch me, an attendant and a friend,
          Obsequious to my steps early and late,
          Though often of such dilatory walk
          Tired, and uneasy at the halts I made.
          A hundred times when, roving high and low,                 110
          I have been harassed with the toil of verse,
          Much pains and little progress, and at once
          Some lovely Image in the song rose up
          Full-formed, like Venus rising from the sea;
          Then have I darted forwards to let loose
          My hand upon his back with stormy joy,
          Caressing him again and yet again.
          And when at evening on the public way
          I sauntered, like a river murmuring
          And talking to itself when all things else                 120
          Are still, the creature trotted on before;
          Such was his custom; but whene'er he met
          A passenger approaching, he would turn
          To give me timely notice, and straightway,
          Grateful for that admonishment, I hushed
          My voice, composed my gait, and, with the air
          And mien of one whose thoughts are free, advanced
          To give and take a greeting that might save
          My name from piteous rumours, such as wait
          On men suspected to be crazed in brain.                    130

            Those walks well worthy to be prized and loved--
          Regretted!--that word, too, was on my tongue,
          But they were richly laden with all good,
          And cannot be remembered but with thanks
          And gratitude, and perfect joy of heart--
          Those walks in all their freshness now came back
          Like a returning Spring. When first I made
          Once more the circuit of our little lake,
          If ever happiness hath lodged with man,
          That day consummate happiness was mine,                    140
          Wide-spreading, steady, calm, contemplative.
          The sun was set, or setting, when I left
          Our cottage door, and evening soon brought on
          A sober hour, not winning or serene,
          For cold and raw the air was, and untuned:
          But as a face we love is sweetest then
          When sorrow damps it, or, whatever look
          It chance to wear, is sweetest if the heart
          Have fulness in herself; even so with me
          It fared that evening. Gently did my soul                  150
          Put off her veil, and, self-transmuted, stood
          Naked, as in the presence of her God.
          While on I walked, a comfort seemed to touch
          A heart that had not been disconsolate:
          Strength came where weakness was not known to be,
          At least not felt; and restoration came
          Like an intruder knocking at the door
          Of unacknowledged weariness. I took
          The balance, and with firm hand weighed myself.
          --Of that external scene which round me lay,               160
          Little, in this abstraction, did I see;
          Remembered less; but I had inward hopes
          And swellings of the spirit, was rapt and soothed,
          Conversed with promises, had glimmering views
          How life pervades the undecaying mind;
          How the immortal soul with God-like power
          Informs, creates, and thaws the deepest sleep
          That time can lay upon her; how on earth,
          Man, if he do but live within the light
          Of high endeavours, daily spreads abroad                   170
          His being armed with strength that cannot fail.
          Nor was there want of milder thoughts, of love,
          Of innocence, and holiday repose;
          And more than pastoral quiet, 'mid the stir
          Of boldest projects, and a peaceful end
          At last, or glorious, by endurance won.
          Thus musing, in a wood I sate me down
          Alone, continuing there to muse: the slopes
          And heights meanwhile were slowly overspread
          With darkness, and before a rippling breeze                180
          The long lake lengthened out its hoary line,
          And in the sheltered coppice where I sate,
          Around me from among the hazel leaves,
          Now here, now there, moved by the straggling wind,
          Came ever and anon a breath-like sound,
          Quick as the pantings of the faithful dog,
          The off and on companion of my walk;
          And such, at times, believing them to be,
          I turned my head to look if he were there;
          Then into solemn thought I passed once more.               190

            A freshness also found I at this time
          In human Life, the daily life of those
          Whose occupations really I loved;
          The peaceful scene oft filled me with surprise
          Changed like a garden in the heat of spring
          After an eight-days' absence. For (to omit
          The things which were the same and yet appeared
          Far otherwise) amid this rural solitude,
          A narrow Vale where each was known to all,
          'Twas not indifferent to a youthful mind                   200
          To mark some sheltering bower or sunny nook
          Where an old man had used to sit alone,
          Now vacant; pale-faced babes whom I had left
          In arms, now rosy prattlers at the feet
          Of a pleased grandame tottering up and down;
          And growing girls whose beauty, filched away
          With all its pleasant promises, was gone
          To deck some slighted playmate's homely cheek.

            Yes, I had something of a subtler sense,
          And often looking round was moved to smiles                210
          Such as a delicate work of humour breeds;
          I read, without design, the opinions, thoughts,
          Of those plain-living people now observed
          With clearer knowledge; with another eye
          I saw the quiet woodman in the woods,
          The shepherd roam the hills. With new delight,
          This chiefly, did I note my grey-haired Dame;
          Saw her go forth to church or other work
          Of state equipped in monumental trim;
          Short velvet cloak, (her bonnet of the like),              220
          A mantle such as Spanish Cavaliers
          Wore in old times. Her smooth domestic life,
          Affectionate without disquietude,
          Her talk, her business, pleased me; and no less
          Her clear though shallow stream of piety
          That ran on Sabbath days a fresher course;
          With thoughts unfelt till now I saw her read
          Her Bible on hot Sunday afternoons,
          And loved the book, when she had dropped asleep
          And made of it a pillow for her head.                      230

            Nor less do I remember to have felt,
          Distinctly manifested at this time,
          A human-heartedness about my love
          For objects hitherto the absolute wealth
          Of my own private being and no more;
          Which I had loved, even as a blessed spirit
          Or Angel, if he were to dwell on earth,
          Might love in individual happiness.
          But now there opened on me other thoughts
          Of change, congratulation or regret,                       240
          A pensive feeling! It spread far and wide;
          The trees, the mountains shared it, and the brooks,
          The stars of Heaven, now seen in their old haunts--
          White Sirius glittering o'er the southern crags,
          Orion with his belt, and those fair Seven,
          Acquaintances of every little child,
          And Jupiter, my own beloved star!
          Whatever shadings of mortality,
          Whatever imports from the world of death
          Had come among these objects heretofore,                   250
          Were, in the main, of mood less tender: strong,
          Deep, gloomy were they, and severe; the scatterings
          Of awe or tremulous dread, that had given way
          In later youth to yearnings of a love
          Enthusiastic, to delight and hope.

            As one who hangs down-bending from the side
          Of a slow-moving boat, upon the breast
          Of a still water, solacing himself
          With such discoveries as his eye can make
          Beneath him in the bottom of the deep,                     260
          Sees many beauteous sights--weeds, fishes, flowers,
          Grots, pebbles, roots of trees, and fancies more,
          Yet often is perplexed, and cannot part
          The shadow from the substance, rocks and sky,
          Mountains and clouds, reflected in the depth
          Of the clear flood, from things which there abide
          In their true dwelling; now is crossed by gleam
          Of his own image, by a sunbeam now,
          And wavering motions sent he knows not whence,
          Impediments that make his task more sweet;                 270
          Such pleasant office have we long pursued
          Incumbent o'er the surface of past time
          With like success, nor often have appeared
          Shapes fairer or less doubtfully discerned
          Than these to which the Tale, indulgent Friend!
          Would now direct thy notice. Yet in spite
          Of pleasure won, and knowledge not withheld,
          There was an inner falling off--I loved,
          Loved deeply all that had been loved before,
          More deeply even than ever: but a swarm                    280
          Of heady schemes jostling each other, gawds
          And feast and dance, and public revelry,
          And sports and games (too grateful in themselves,
          Yet in themselves less grateful, I believe,
          Than as they were a badge glossy and fresh
          Of manliness and freedom) all conspired
          To lure my mind from firm habitual quest
          Of feeding pleasures, to depress the zeal
          And damp those yearnings which had once been mine--
          A wild, unworldly-minded youth, given up                   290
          To his own eager thoughts. It would demand
          Some skill, and longer time than may be spared
          To paint these vanities, and how they wrought
          In haunts where they, till now, had been unknown.
          It seemed the very garments that I wore
          Preyed on my strength, and stopped the quiet stream
          Of self-forgetfulness.
                                  Yes, that heartless chase
          Of trivial pleasures was a poor exchange
          For books and nature at that early age.
          'Tis true, some casual knowledge might be gained           300
          Of character or life; but at that time,
          Of manners put to school I took small note,
          And all my deeper passions lay elsewhere.
          Far better had it been to exalt the mind
          By solitary study, to uphold
          Intense desire through meditative peace;
          And yet, for chastisement of these regrets,
          The memory of one particular hour
          Doth here rise up against me. 'Mid a throng
          Of maids and youths, old men, and matrons staid,           310
          A medley of all tempers, I had passed
          The night in dancing, gaiety, and mirth,
          With din of instruments and shuffling feet,
          And glancing forms, and tapers glittering,
          And unaimed prattle flying up and down;
          Spirits upon the stretch, and here and there
          Slight shocks of young love-liking interspersed,
          Whose transient pleasure mounted to the head,
          And tingled through the veins. Ere we retired,
          The cock had crowed, and now the eastern sky               320
          Was kindling, not unseen, from humble copse
          And open field, through which the pathway wound,
          And homeward led my steps. Magnificent
          The morning rose, in memorable pomp,
          Glorious as e'er I had beheld--in front,
          The sea lay laughing at a distance; near,
          The solid mountains shone, bright as the clouds,
          Grain-tinctured, drenched in empyrean light;
          And in the meadows and the lower grounds
          Was all the sweetness of a common dawn--                   330
          Dews, vapours, and the melody of birds,
          And labourers going forth to till the fields.
          Ah! need I say, dear Friend! that to the brim
          My heart was full; I made no vows, but vows
          Were then made for me; bond unknown to me
          Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly,
          A dedicated Spirit. On I walked
          In thankful blessedness, which yet survives.

            Strange rendezvous! My mind was at that time
          A parti-coloured show of grave and gay,                    340
          Solid and light, short-sighted and profound;
          Of inconsiderate habits and sedate,
          Consorting in one mansion unreproved.
          The worth I knew of powers that I possessed,
          Though slighted and too oft misused. Besides,
          That summer, swarming as it did with thoughts
          Transient and idle, lacked not intervals
          When Folly from the frown of fleeting Time
          Shrunk, and the mind experienced in herself
          Conformity as just as that of old                          350
          To the end and written spirit of God's works,
          Whether held forth in Nature or in Man,
          Through pregnant vision, separate or conjoined.

            When from our better selves we have too long
          Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,
          Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,
          How gracious, how benign, is Solitude;
          How potent a mere image of her sway;
          Most potent when impressed upon the mind
          With an appropriate human centre--hermit,                  360
          Deep in the bosom of the wilderness;
          Votary (in vast cathedral, where no foot
          Is treading, where no other face is seen)
          Kneeling at prayers; or watchman on the top
          Of lighthouse, beaten by Atlantic waves;
          Or as the soul of that great Power is met
          Sometimes embodied on a public road,
          When, for the night deserted, it assumes
          A character of quiet more profound
          Than pathless wastes.
                                 Once, when those summer months      370
          Were flown, and autumn brought its annual show
          Of oars with oars contending, sails with sails,
          Upon Winander's spacious breast, it chanced
          That--after I had left a flower-decked room
          (Whose in-door pastime, lighted up, survived
          To a late hour), and spirits overwrought
          Were making night do penance for a day
          Spent in a round of strenuous idleness--
          My homeward course led up a long ascent,
          Where the road's watery surface, to the top                380
          Of that sharp rising, glittered to the moon
          And bore the semblance of another stream
          Stealing with silent lapse to join the brook
          That murmured in the vale. All else was still;
          No living thing appeared in earth or air,
          And, save the flowing water's peaceful voice,
          Sound there was none--but, lo! an uncouth shape,
          Shown by a sudden turning of the road,
          So near that, slipping back into the shade
          Of a thick hawthorn, I could mark him well,                390
          Myself unseen. He was of stature tall,
          A span above man's common measure, tall,
          Stiff, lank, and upright; a more meagre man
          Was never seen before by night or day.
          Long were his arms, pallid his hands; his mouth
          Looked ghastly in the moonlight: from behind,
          A mile-stone propped him; I could also ken
          That he was clothed in military garb,
          Though faded, yet entire. Companionless,
          No dog attending, by no staff sustained,                   400
          He stood, and in his very dress appeared
          A desolation, a simplicity,
          To which the trappings of a gaudy world
          Make a strange back-ground. From his lips, ere long,
          Issued low muttered sounds, as if of pain
          Or some uneasy thought; yet still his form
          Kept the same awful steadiness--at his feet
          His shadow lay, and moved not. From self-blame
          Not wholly free, I watched him thus; at length
          Subduing my heart's specious cowardice,                    410
          I left the shady nook where I had stood
          And hailed him. Slowly from his resting-place
          He rose, and with a lean and wasted arm
          In measured gesture lifted to his head
          Returned my salutation; then resumed
          His station as before; and when I asked
          His history, the veteran, in reply,
          Was neither slow nor eager; but, unmoved,
          And with a quiet uncomplaining voice,
          A stately air of mild indifference,                        420
          He told in few plain words a soldier's tale--
          That in the Tropic Islands he had served,
          Whence he had landed scarcely three weeks past;
          That on his landing he had been dismissed,
          And now was travelling towards his native home.
          This heard, I said, in pity, "Come with me."
          He stooped, and straightway from the ground took up
          An oaken staff by me yet unobserved--
          A staff which must have dropped from his slack hand
          And lay till now neglected in the grass.                   430
          Though weak his step and cautious, he appeared
          To travel without pain, and I beheld,
          With an astonishment but ill suppressed,
          His ghostly figure moving at my side;
          Nor could I, while we journeyed thus, forbear
          To turn from present hardships to the past,
          And speak of war, battle, and pestilence,
          Sprinkling this talk with questions, better spared,
          On what he might himself have seen or felt.
          He all the while was in demeanour calm,                    440
          Concise in answer; solemn and sublime
          He might have seemed, but that in all he said
          There was a strange half-absence, as of one
          Knowing too well the importance of his theme,
          But feeling it no longer. Our discourse
          Soon ended, and together on we passed
          In silence through a wood gloomy and still.
          Up-turning, then, along an open field,
          We reached a cottage. At the door I knocked,
          And earnestly to charitable care                           450
          Commended him as a poor friendless man,
          Belated and by sickness overcome.
          Assured that now the traveller would repose
          In comfort, I entreated that henceforth
          He would not linger in the public ways,
          But ask for timely furtherance and help
          Such as his state required. At this reproof,
          With the same ghastly mildness in his look,
          He said, "My trust is in the God of Heaven,
          And in the eye of him who passes me!"                      460

            The cottage door was speedily unbarred,
          And now the soldier touched his hat once more
          With his lean hand, and in a faltering voice,
          Whose tone bespake reviving interests
          Till then unfelt, he thanked me; I returned
          The farewell blessing of the patient man,
          And so we parted. Back I cast a look,
          And lingered near the door a little space,
          Then sought with quiet heart my distant home.

THE PRELUDE
BOOK FIFTH
BOOKS

          WHEN Contemplation, like the night-calm felt
          Through earth and sky, spreads widely, and sends deep
          Into the soul its tranquillising power,
          Even then I sometimes grieve for thee, O Man,
          Earth's paramount Creature! not so much for woes
          That thou endurest; heavy though that weight be,
          Cloud-like it mounts, or touched with light divine
          Doth melt away; but for those palms achieved
          Through length of time, by patient exercise
          Of study and hard thought; there, there, it is              10
          That sadness finds its fuel. Hitherto,
          In progress through this Verse, my mind hath looked
          Upon the speaking face of earth and heaven
          As her prime teacher, intercourse with man
          Established by the sovereign Intellect,
          Who through that bodily image hath diffused,
          As might appear to the eye of fleeting time,
          A deathless spirit. Thou also, man! hast wrought,
          For commerce of thy nature with herself,
          Things that aspire to unconquerable life;                   20
          And yet we feel--we cannot choose but feel--
          That they must perish. Tremblings of the heart
          It gives, to think that our immortal being
          No more shall need such garments; and yet man,
          As long as he shall be the child of earth,
          Might almost "weep to have" what he may lose,
          Nor be himself extinguished, but survive,
          Abject, depressed, forlorn, disconsolate.
          A thought is with me sometimes, and I say,--
          Should the whole frame of earth by inward throes            30
          Be wrenched, or fire come down from far to scorch
          Her pleasant habitations, and dry up
          Old Ocean, in his bed left singed and bare,
          Yet would the living Presence still subsist
          Victorious, and composure would ensue,
          And kindlings like the morning--presage sure
          Of day returning and of life revived.
          But all the meditations of mankind,
          Yea, all the adamantine holds of truth
          By reason built, or passion, which itself                   40
          Is highest reason in a soul sublime;
          The consecrated works of Bard and Sage,
          Sensuous or intellectual, wrought by men,
          Twin labourers and heirs of the same hopes;
          Where would they be? Oh! why hath not the Mind
          Some element to stamp her image on
          In nature somewhat nearer to her own?
          Why, gifted with such powers to send abroad
          Her spirit, must it lodge in shrines so frail?

            One day, when from my lips a like complaint               50
          Had fallen in presence of a studious friend,
          He with a smile made answer, that in truth
          'Twas going far to seek disquietude;
          But on the front of his reproof confessed
          That he himself had oftentimes given way
          To kindred hauntings. Whereupon I told,
          That once in the stillness of a summer's noon,
          While I was seated in a rocky cave
          By the sea-side, perusing, so it chanced,
          The famous history of the errant knight                     60
          Recorded by Cervantes, these same thoughts
          Beset me, and to height unusual rose,
          While listlessly I sate, and, having closed
          The book, had turned my eyes toward the wide sea.
          On poetry and geometric truth,
          And their high privilege of lasting life,
          From all internal injury exempt,
          I mused; upon these chiefly: and at length,
          My senses yielding to the sultry air,
          Sleep seized me, and I passed into a dream.                 70
          I saw before me stretched a boundless plain
          Of sandy wilderness, all black and void,
          And as I looked around, distress and fear
          Came creeping over me, when at my side,
          Close at my side, an uncouth shape appeared
          Upon a dromedary, mounted high.
          He seemed an Arab of the Bedouin tribes:
          A lance he bore, and underneath one arm
          A stone, and in the opposite hand a shell
          Of a surpassing brightness. At the sight                    80
          Much I rejoiced, not doubting but a guide
          Was present, one who with unerring skill
          Would through the desert lead me; and while yet
          I looked and looked, self-questioned what this freight
          Which the new-comer carried through the waste
          Could mean, the Arab told me that the stone
          (To give it in the language of the dream)
          Was "Euclid's Elements," and "This," said he,
          "Is something of more worth;" and at the word
          Stretched forth the shell, so beautiful in shape,           90
          In colour so resplendent, with command
          That I should hold it to my ear. I did so,
          And heard that instant in an unknown tongue,
          Which yet I understood, articulate sounds,
          A loud prophetic blast of harmony;
          An Ode, in passion uttered, which foretold
          Destruction to the children of the earth
          By deluge, now at hand. No sooner ceased
          The song, than the Arab with calm look declared
          That all would come to pass of which the voice             100
          Had given forewarning, and that he himself
          Was going then to bury those two books:
          The one that held acquaintance with the stars,
          And wedded soul to soul in purest bond
          Of reason, undisturbed by space or time;
          The other that was a god, yea many gods,
          Had voices more than all the winds, with power
          To exhilarate the spirit, and to soothe,
          Through every clime, the heart of human kind.
          While this was uttering, strange as it may seem,           110
          I wondered not, although I plainly saw
          The one to be a stone, the other a shell;
          Nor doubted once but that they both were books,
          Having a perfect faith in all that passed.
          Far stronger, now, grew the desire I felt
          To cleave unto this man; but when I prayed
          To share his enterprise, he hurried on
          Reckless of me: I followed, not unseen,
          For oftentimes he cast a backward look,
          Grasping his twofold treasure.--Lance in rest,             120
          He rode, I keeping pace with him; and now
          He, to my fancy, had become the knight
          Whose tale Cervantes tells; yet not the knight,
          But was an Arab of the desert too;
          Of these was neither, and was both at once.
          His countenance, meanwhile, grew more disturbed;
          And, looking backwards when he looked, mine eyes
          Saw, over half the wilderness diffused,
          A bed of glittering light: I asked the cause:
          "It is," said he, "the waters of the deep                  130
          Gathering upon us;" quickening then the pace
          Of the unwieldy creature he bestrode,
          He left me: I called after him aloud;
          He heeded not; but, with his twofold charge
          Still in his grasp, before me, full in view,
          Went hurrying o'er the illimitable waste,
          With the fleet waters of a drowning world
          In chase of him; whereat I waked in terror,
          And saw the sea before me, and the book,
          In which I had been reading, at my side.                   140

            Full often, taking from the world of sleep
          This Arab phantom, which I thus beheld,
          This semi-Quixote, I to him have given
          A substance, fancied him a living man,
          A gentle dweller in the desert, crazed
          By love and feeling, and internal thought
          Protracted among endless solitudes;
          Have shaped him wandering upon this quest!
          Nor have I pitied him; but rather felt
          Reverence was due to a being thus employed;                150
          And thought that, in the blind and awful lair
          Of such a madness, reason did lie couched.
          Enow there are on earth to take in charge
          Their wives, their children, and their virgin loves,
          Or whatsoever else the heart holds dear;
          Enow to stir for these; yea, will I say,
          Contemplating in soberness the approach
          Of an event so dire, by signs in earth
          Or heaven made manifest, that I could share
          That maniac's fond anxiety, and go                         160
          Upon like errand. Oftentimes at least
          Me hath such strong entrancement overcome,
          When I have held a volume in my hand,
          Poor earthly casket of immortal verse,
          Shakespeare, or Milton, labourers divine!

            Great and benign, indeed, must be the power
          Of living nature, which could thus so long
          Detain me from the best of other guides
          And dearest helpers, left unthanked, unpraised,
          Even in the time of lisping infancy;                       170
          And later down, in prattling childhood even,
          While I was travelling back among those days,
          How could I ever play an ingrate's part?
          Once more should I have made those bowers resound,
          By intermingling strains of thankfulness
          With their own thoughtless melodies; at least
          It might have well beseemed me to repeat
          Some simply fashioned tale, to tell again,
          In slender accents of sweet verse, some tale
          That did bewitch me then, and soothes me now.              180
          O Friend! O Poet! brother of my soul,
          Think not that I could pass along untouched
          By these remembrances. Yet wherefore speak?
          Why call upon a few weak words to say
          What is already written in the hearts
          Of all that breathe?--what in the path of all
          Drops daily from the tongue of every child,
          Wherever man is found? The trickling tear
          Upon the cheek of listening Infancy
          Proclaims it, and the insuperable look                     190
          That drinks as if it never could be full.

            That portion of my story I shall leave
          There registered: whatever else of power
          Or pleasure sown, or fostered thus, may be
          Peculiar to myself, let that remain
          Where still it works, though hidden from all search
          Among the depths of time. Yet is it just
          That here, in memory of all books which lay
          Their sure foundations in the heart of man,
          Whether by native prose, or numerous verse,                200
          That in the name of all inspired souls--
          From Homer the great Thunderer, from the voice
          That roars along the bed of Jewish song,
          And that more varied and elaborate,
          Those trumpet-tones of harmony that shake
          Our shores in England,--from those loftiest notes
          Down to the low and wren-like warblings, made
          For cottagers and spinners at the wheel,
          And sun-burnt travellers resting their tired limbs,
          Stretched under wayside hedge-rows, ballad tunes,          210
          Food for the hungry ears of little ones,
          And of old men who have survived their joys--
          'Tis just that in behalf of these, the works,
          And of the men that framed them, whether known
          Or sleeping nameless in their scattered graves,
          That I should here assert their rights, attest
          Their honours, and should, once for all, pronounce
          Their benediction; speak of them as Powers
          For ever to be hallowed; only less,
          For what we are and what we may become,                    220
          Than Nature's self, which is the breath of God,
          Or His pure Word by miracle revealed.

            Rarely and with reluctance would I stoop
          To transitory themes; yet I rejoice,
          And, by these thoughts admonished, will pour out
          Thanks with uplifted heart, that I was reared
          Safe from an evil which these days have laid
          Upon the children of the land, a pest
          That might have dried me up, body and soul.
          This verse is dedicate to Nature's self,                   230
          And things that teach as Nature teaches: then,
          Oh! where had been the Man, the Poet where,
          Where had we been, we two, beloved Friend!
          If in the season of unperilous choice,
          In lieu of wandering, as we did, through vales
          Rich with indigenous produce, open ground
          Of Fancy, happy pastures ranged at will,
          We had been followed, hourly watched, and noosed,
          Each in his several melancholy walk
          Stringed like a poor man's heifer at its feed,             240
          Led through the lanes in forlorn servitude;
          Or rather like a stalled ox debarred
          From touch of growing grass, that may not taste
          A flower till it have yielded up its sweets
          A prelibation to the mower's scythe.

            Behold the parent hen amid her brood,
          Though fledged and feathered, and well pleased to part
          And straggle from her presence, still a brood,
          And she herself from the maternal bond
          Still undischarged; yet doth she little more               250
          Than move with them in tenderness and love,
          A centre to the circle which they make;
          And now and then, alike from need of theirs
          And call of her own natural appetites,
          She scratches, ransacks up the earth for food,
          Which they partake at pleasure. Early died
          My honoured Mother, she who was the heart
          And hinge of all our learnings and our loves:
          She left us destitute, and, as we might,
          Trooping together. Little suits it me                      260
          To break upon the sabbath of her rest
          With any thought that looks at others' blame;
          Nor would I praise her but in perfect love.
          Hence am I checked: but let me boldly say,
          In gratitude, and for the sake of truth,
          Unheard by her, that she, not falsely taught,
          Fetching her goodness rather from times past,
          Than shaping novelties for times to come,
          Had no presumption, no such jealousy,
          Nor did by habit of her thoughts mistrust                  270
          Our nature, but had virtual faith that He
          Who fills the mother's breast with innocent milk,
          Doth also for our nobler part provide,
          Under His great correction and control,
          As innocent instincts, and as innocent food;
          Or draws, for minds that are left free to trust
          In the simplicities of opening life,
          Sweet honey out of spurned or dreaded weeds.
          This was her creed, and therefore she was pure
          From anxious fear of error or mishap,                      280
          And evil, overweeningly so called;
          Was not puffed up by false unnatural hopes,
          Nor selfish with unnecessary cares,
          Nor with impatience from the season asked
          More than its timely produce; rather loved
          The hours for what they are, than from regard
          Glanced on their promises in restless pride.
          Such was she--not from faculties more strong
          Than others have, but from the times, perhaps,
          And spot in which she lived, and through a grace           290
          Of modest meekness, simple-mindedness,
          A heart that found benignity and hope,
          Being itself benign.
                                My drift I fear
          Is scarcely obvious; but, that common sense
          May try this modern system by its fruits,
          Leave let me take to place before her sight
          A specimen pourtrayed with faithful hand.
          Full early trained to worship seemliness,
          This model of a child is never known
          To mix in quarrels; that were far beneath                  300
          Its dignity; with gifts he bubbles o'er
          As generous as a fountain; selfishness
          May not come near him, nor the little throng
          Of flitting pleasures tempt him from his path;
          The wandering beggars propagate his name,
          Dumb creatures find him tender as a nun,
          And natural or supernatural fear,
          Unless it leap upon him in a dream,
          Touches him not. To enhance the wonder, see
          How arch his notices, how nice his sense                   310
          Of the ridiculous; not blind is he
          To the broad follies of the licensed world,
          Yet innocent himself withal, though shrewd,
          And can read lectures upon innocence;
          A miracle of scientific lore,
          Ships he can guide across the pathless sea,
          And tell you all their cunning; he can read
          The inside of the earth, and spell the stars;
          He knows the policies of foreign lands;
          Can string you names of districts, cities, towns,          320
          The whole world over, tight as beads of dew
          Upon a gossamer thread; he sifts, he weighs;
          All things are put to question; he must live
          Knowing that he grows wiser every day
          Or else not live at all, and seeing too
          Each little drop of wisdom as it falls
          Into the dimpling cistern of his heart:
          For this unnatural growth the trainer blame,
          Pity the tree.--Poor human vanity,
          Wert thou extinguished, little would be left               330
          Which he could truly love; but how escape?
          For, ever as a thought of purer birth
          Rises to lead him toward a better clime,
          Some intermeddler still is on the watch
          To drive him back, and pound him, like a stray,
          Within the pinfold of his own conceit.
          Meanwhile old grandame earth is grieved to find
          The playthings, which her love designed for him,
          Unthought of: in their woodland beds the flowers
          Weep, and the river sides are all forlorn.                 340
          Oh! give us once again the wishing-cap
          Of Fortunatus, and the invisible coat
          Of Jack the Giant-killer, Robin Hood,
          And Sabra in the forest with St. George!
          The child, whose love is here, at least, doth reap
          One precious gain, that he forgets himself.

            These mighty workmen of our later age,
          Who, with a broad highway, have overbridged
          The froward chaos of futurity,
          Tamed to their bidding; they who have the skill            350
          To manage books, and things, and make them act
          On infant minds as surely as the sun
          Deals with a flower; the keepers of our time,
          The guides and wardens of our faculties,
          Sages who in their prescience would control
          All accidents, and to the very road
          Which they have fashioned would confine us down,
          Like engines; when will their presumption learn,
          That in the unreasoning progress of the world
          A wiser spirit is at work for us,                          360
          A better eye than theirs, most prodigal
          Of blessings, and most studious of our good,
          Even in what seem our most unfruitful hours?

            There was a Boy: ye knew him well, ye cliffs
          And islands of Winander!--many a time
          At evening, when the earliest stars began
          To move along the edges of the hills,
          Rising or setting, would he stand alone
          Beneath the trees or by the glimmering lake,

          And there, with fingers interwoven, both hands             370
          Pressed closely palm to palm, and to his mouth
          Uplifted, he, as through an instrument,
          Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls,
          That they might answer him; and they would shout
          Across the watery vale, and shout again,
          Responsive to his call, with quivering peals,
          And long halloos and screams, and echoes loud,
          Redoubled and redoubled, concourse wild
          Of jocund din; and, when a lengthened pause
          Of silence came and baffled his best skill,                380
          Then sometimes, in that silence while he hung
          Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise
          Has carried far into his heart the voice
          Of mountain torrents; or the visible scene
          Would enter unawares into his mind,
          With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,
          Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received
          Into the bosom of the steady lake.

            This Boy was taken from his mates, and died
          In childhood, ere he was full twelve years old.            390
          Fair is the spot, most beautiful the vale
          Where he was born; the grassy churchyard hangs
          Upon a slope above the village school,
          And through that churchyard when my way has led
          On summer evenings, I believe that there
          A long half hour together I have stood
          Mute, looking at the grave in which he lies!
          Even now appears before the mind's clear eye
          That self-same village church; I see her sit
          (The throned Lady whom erewhile we hailed)                 400
          On her green hill, forgetful of this Boy
          Who slumbers at her feet,--forgetful, too,
          Of all her silent neighbourhood of graves,
          And listening only to the gladsome sounds
          That, from the rural school ascending, play
          Beneath her and about her. May she long
          Behold a race of young ones like to those
          With whom I herded!--(easily, indeed,
          We might have fed upon a fatter soil
          Of arts and letters--but be that forgiven)--               410
          A race of real children; not too wise,
          Too learned, or too good; but wanton, fresh,
          And bandied up and down by love and hate;
          Not unresentful where self-justified;
          Fierce, moody, patient, venturous, modest, shy;
          Mad at their sports like withered leaves in winds;
          Though doing wrong and suffering, and full oft
          Bending beneath our life's mysterious weight
          Of pain, and doubt, and fear, yet yielding not
          In happiness to the happiest upon earth.                   420
          Simplicity in habit, truth in speech,
          Be these the daily strengtheners of their minds;
          May books and Nature be their early joy!
          And knowledge, rightly honoured with that name--
          Knowledge not purchased by the loss of power!

            Well do I call to mind the very week
          When I was first intrusted to the care
          Of that sweet Valley; when its paths, its shores,
          And brooks were like a dream of novelty
          To my half-infant thoughts; that very week,                430
          While I was roving up and down alone,
          Seeking I knew not what, I chanced to cross
          One of those open fields, which, shaped like ears,
          Make green peninsulas on Esthwaite's Lake:
          Twilight was coming on, yet through the gloom
          Appeared distinctly on the opposite shore
          A heap of garments, as if left by one
          Who might have there been bathing. Long I watched,
          But no one owned them; meanwhile the calm lake
          Grew dark with all the shadows on its breast,              440
          And, now and then, a fish up-leaping snapped
          The breathless stillness. The succeeding day,
          Those unclaimed garments telling a plain tale
          Drew to the spot an anxious crowd; some looked
          In passive expectation from the shore,
          While from a boat others hung o'er the deep,
          Sounding with grappling irons and long poles.
          At last, the dead man, 'mid that beauteous scene
          Of trees and hills and water, bolt upright
          Rose, with his ghastly face, a spectre shape               450
          Of terror; yet no soul-debasing fear,
          Young as I was, a child not nine years old,
          Possessed me, for my inner eye had seen
          Such sights before, among the shining streams
          Of faery land, the forest of romance.
          Their spirit hallowed the sad spectacle
          With decoration of ideal grace;
          A dignity, a smoothness, like the works
          Of Grecian art, and purest poesy.

            A precious treasure had I long possessed,                460
          A little yellow, canvas-covered book,
          A slender abstract of the Arabian tales;
          And, from companions in a new abode,
          When first I learnt, that this dear prize of mine
          Was but a block hewn from a mighty quarry--
          That there were four large volumes, laden all
          With kindred matter, 'twas to me, in truth,
          A promise scarcely earthly. Instantly,
          With one not richer than myself, I made
          A covenant that each should lay aside                      470
          The moneys he possessed, and hoard up more,
          Till our joint savings had amassed enough
          To make this book our own. Through several months,
          In spite of all temptation, we preserved
          Religiously that vow; but firmness failed,
          Nor were we ever masters of our wish.

            And when thereafter to my father's house
          The holidays returned me, there to find
          That golden store of books which I had left,
          What joy was mine! How often in the course                 480
          Of those glad respites, though a soft west wind
          Ruffled the waters to the angler's wish,
          For a whole day together, have I lain
          Down by thy side, O Derwent! murmuring stream,
          On the hot stones, and in the glaring sun,
          And there have read, devouring as I read,
          Defrauding the day's glory, desperate!
          Till with a sudden bound of smart reproach,
          Such as an idler deals with in his shame,
          I to the sport betook myself again.                        490

            A gracious spirit o'er this earth presides,
          And o'er the heart of man; invisibly
          It comes, to works of unreproved delight,
          And tendency benign, directing those
          Who care not, know not, think not, what they do.
          The tales that charm away the wakeful night
          In Araby, romances; legends penned
          For solace by dim light of monkish lamps;
          Fictions, for ladies of their love, devised
          By youthful squires; adventures endless, spun              500
          By the dismantled warrior in old age,
          Out of the bowels of those very schemes
          In which his youth did first extravagate;
          These spread like day, and something in the shape
          Of these will live till man shall be no more.
          Dumb yearnings, hidden appetites, are ours,
          And 'they must' have their food. Our childhood sits,
          Our simple childhood, sits upon a throne
          That hath more power than all the elements.
          I guess not what this tells of Being past,                 510
          Nor what it augurs of the life to come;
          But so it is; and, in that dubious hour--
          That twilight--when we first begin to see
          This dawning earth, to recognise, expect,
          And, in the long probation that ensues,
          The time of trial, ere we learn to live
          In reconcilement with our stinted powers;
          To endure this state of meagre vassalage,
          Unwilling to forego, confess, submit,
          Uneasy and unsettled, yoke-fellows                         520
          To custom, mettlesome, and not yet tamed
          And humbled down--oh! then we feel, we feel,
          We know where we have friends. Ye dreamers, then,
          Forgers of daring tales! we bless you then,
          Impostors, drivellers, dotards, as the ape
          Philosophy will call you: 'then' we feel
          With what, and how great might ye are in league,
          Who make our wish, our power, our thought a deed,
          An empire, a possession,--ye whom time
          And seasons serve; all Faculties to whom                   530
          Earth crouches, the elements are potter's clay,
          Space like a heaven filled up with northern lights,
          Here, nowhere, there, and everywhere at once.

            Relinquishing this lofty eminence
          For ground, though humbler, not the less a tract
          Of the same isthmus, which our spirits cross
          In progress from their native continent
          To earth and human life, the Song might dwell
          On that delightful time of growing youth,
          When craving for the marvellous gives way                  540
          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-countenance, 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
          A rigorous student. What a stormy course
          Then followed. Oh! it is a pang that calls
          For utterance, to think what easy change
          Of circumstances might to thee have spared
          A world of pain, ripened a thousand hopes,
          For ever withered. Through this retrospect
          Of my collegiate life I still have had
          Thy after-sojourn in the self-same place
          Present before my eyes, have played with times
          And accidents as children do with cards,                   290
          Or as a man, who, when his house is built,
          A frame locked up in wood and stone, doth still,
          As impotent fancy prompts, by his fireside,
          Rebuild it to his liking. I have thought
          Of thee, thy learning, gorgeous eloquence,
          And all the strength and plumage of thy youth,
          Thy subtle speculations, toils abstruse
          Among the schoolmen, and Platonic forms
          Of wild ideal pageantry, shaped out
          From things well-matched or ill, and words for things,     300
          The self-created sustenance of a mind
          Debarred from Nature's living images,
          Compelled to be a life unto herself,
          And unrelentingly possessed by thirst
          Of greatness, love, and beauty. Not alone,
          Ah! surely not in singleness of heart
          Should I have seen the light of evening fade
          From smooth Cam's silent waters: had we met,
          Even at that early time, needs must I trust
          In the belief, that my maturer age,                        310
          My calmer habits, and more steady voice,
          Would with an influence benign have soothed,
          Or chased away, the airy wretchedness
          That battened on thy youth. But thou hast trod
          A march of glory, which doth put to shame
          These vain regrets; health suffers in thee, else
          Such grief for thee would be the weakest thought
          That ever harboured in the breast of man.

            A passing word erewhile did lightly touch
          On wanderings of my own, that now embraced                 320
          With livelier hope a region wider far.

            When the third summer freed us from restraint,
          A youthful friend, he too a mountaineer,
          Not slow to share my wishes, took his staff,
          And sallying forth, we journeyed side by side,
          Bound to the distant Alps. A hardy slight,
          Did this unprecedented course imply,
          Of college studies and their set rewards;
          Nor had, in truth, the scheme been formed by me
          Without uneasy forethought of the pain,                    330
          The censures, and ill-omening, of those
          To whom my worldly interests were dear.
          But Nature then was sovereign in my mind,
          And mighty forms, seizing a youthful fancy,
          Had given a charter to irregular hopes.
          In any age of uneventful calm
          Among the nations, surely would my heart
          Have been possessed by similar desire;
          But Europe at that time was thrilled with joy,
          France standing on the top of golden hours,                340
          And human nature seeming born again.

            Lightly equipped, and but a few brief looks
          Cast on the white cliffs of our native shore
          From the receding vessel's deck, we chanced
          To land at Calais on the very eve
          Of that great federal day; and there we saw,
          In a mean city, and among a few,
          How bright a face is worn when joy of one
          Is joy for tens of millions. Southward thence
          We held our way, direct through hamlets, towns,            350
          Gaudy with reliques of that festival,
          Flowers left to wither on triumphal arcs,
          And window-garlands. On the public roads,
          And, once, three days successively, through paths
          By which our toilsome journey was abridged,
          Among sequestered villages we walked
          And found benevolence and blessedness
          Spread like a fragrance everywhere, when spring
          Hath left no corner of the land untouched;
          Where elms for many and many a league in files             360
          With their thin umbrage, on the stately roads
          Of that great kingdom, rustled o'er our heads,
          For ever near us as we paced along:
          How sweet at such a time, with such delight
          On every side, in prime of youthful strength,
          To feed a Poet's tender melancholy
          And fond conceit of sadness, with the sound
          Of undulations varying as might please
          The wind that swayed them; once, and more than once,
          Unhoused beneath the evening star we saw                   370
          Dances of liberty, and, in late hours
          Of darkness, dances in the open air
          Deftly prolonged, though grey-haired lookers on
          Might waste their breath in chiding.
                                                Under hills--
          The vine-clad hills and slopes of Burgundy,
          Upon the bosom of the gentle Saone
          We glided forward with the flowing stream.
          Swift Rhone! thou wert the 'wings' on which we cut
          A winding passage with majestic ease
          Between thy lofty rocks. Enchanting show                   380
          Those woods and farms and orchards did present,
          And single cottages and lurking towns,
          Reach after reach, succession without end
          Of deep and stately vales! A lonely pair
          Of strangers, till day closed, we sailed along
          Clustered together with a merry crowd
          Of those emancipated, a blithe host
          Of travellers, chiefly delegates, returning
          From the great spousals newly solemnised
          At their chief city, in the sight of Heaven.               390
          Like bees they swarmed, gaudy and gay as bees;
          Some vapoured in the unruliness of joy,
          And with their swords flourished as if to fight
          The saucy air. In this proud company
          We landed--took with them our evening meal,
          Guests welcome almost as the angels were
          To Abraham of old. The supper done,
          With flowing cups elate and happy thoughts
          We rose at signal given, and formed a ring
          And, hand in hand, danced round and round the board;       400
          All hearts were open, every tongue was loud
          With amity and glee; we bore a name
          Honoured in France, the name of Englishmen,
          And hospitably did they give us hail,
          As their forerunners in a glorious course;
          And round and round the board we danced again.
          With these blithe friends our voyage we renewed
          At early dawn. The monastery bells
          Made a sweet jingling in our youthful ears;
          The rapid river flowing without noise,                     410
          And each uprising or receding spire
          Spake with a sense of peace, at intervals
          Touching the heart amid the boisterous crew
          By whom we were encompassed. Taking leave
          Of this glad throng, foot-travellers side by side,
          Measuring our steps in quiet, we pursued
          Our journey, and ere twice the sun had set
          Beheld the Convent of Chartreuse, and there
          Rested within an awful 'solitude':
          Yes, for even then no other than a place                   420
          Of soul-affecting 'solitude' appeared
          That far-famed region, though our eyes had seen,
          As toward the sacred mansion we advanced,
          Arms flashing, and a military glare
          Of riotous men commissioned to expel
          The blameless inmates, and belike subvert
          That frame of social being, which so long
          Had bodied forth the ghostliness of things
          In silence visible and perpetual calm.
          --"Stay, stay your sacrilegious hands!"--The voice         430
          Was Nature's, uttered from her Alpine throne;
          I heard it then and seem to hear it now--
          "Your impious work forbear, perish what may,
          Let this one temple last, be this one spot
          Of earth devoted to eternity!"
          She ceased to speak, but while St. Bruno's pines
          Waved their dark tops, not silent as they waved,
          And while below, along their several beds,
          Murmured the sister streams of Life and Death,
          Thus by conflicting passions pressed, my heart             440
          Responded; "Honour to the patriot's zeal!
          Glory and hope to new-born Liberty!
          Hail to the mighty projects of the time!
          Discerning sword that Justice wields, do thou
          Go forth and prosper; and, ye purging fires,
          Up to the loftiest towers of Pride ascend,
          Fanned by the breath of angry Providence.
          But oh! if Past and Future be the wings
          On whose support harmoniously conjoined
          Moves the great spirit of human knowledge, spare           450
          These courts of mystery, where a step advanced
          Between the portals of the shadowy rocks
          Leaves far behind life's treacherous vanities,
          For penitential tears and trembling hopes
          Exchanged--to equalise in God's pure sight
          Monarch and peasant: be the house redeemed
          With its unworldly votaries, for the sake
          Of conquest over sense, hourly achieved
          Through faith and meditative reason, resting
          Upon the word of heaven-imparted truth,                    460
          Calmly triumphant; and for humbler claim
          Of that imaginative impulse sent
          From these majestic floods, yon shining cliffs,
          The untransmuted shapes of many worlds,
          Cerulean ether's pure inhabitants,
          These forests unapproachable by death,
          That shall endure as long as man endures,
          To think, to hope, to worship, and to feel,
          To struggle, to be lost within himself
          In trepidation, from the blank abyss                       470
          To look with bodily eyes, and be consoled."
          Not seldom since that moment have I wished
          That thou, O Friend! the trouble or the calm
          Hadst shared, when, from profane regards apart,
          In sympathetic reverence we trod
          The floors of those dim cloisters, till that hour,
          From their foundation, strangers to the presence
          Of unrestricted and unthinking man.
          Abroad, how cheeringly the sunshine lay
          Upon the open lawns! Vallombre's groves                    480
          Entering, we fed the soul with darkness; thence
          Issued, and with uplifted eyes beheld,
          In different quarters of the bending sky,
          The cross of Jesus stand erect, as if
          Hands of angelic powers had fixed it there,
          Memorial reverenced by a thousand storms;
          Yet then, from the undiscriminating sweep
          And rage of one State-whirlwind, insecure.

            'Tis not my present purpose to retrace
          That variegated journey step by step.                      490
          A march it was of military speed,
          And Earth did change her images and forms
          Before us, fast as clouds are changed in heaven.
          Day after day, up early and down late,
          From hill to vale we dropped, from vale to hill
          Mounted--from province on to province swept,
          Keen hunters in a chase of fourteen weeks,
          Eager as birds of prey, or as a ship
          Upon the stretch, when winds are blowing fair:
          Sweet coverts did we cross of pastoral life,               500
          Enticing valleys, greeted them and left
          Too soon, while yet the very flash and gleam
          Of salutation were not passed away.
          Oh! sorrow for the youth who could have seen,
          Unchastened, unsubdued, unawed, unraised
          To patriarchal dignity of mind,
          And pure simplicity of wish and will,
          Those sanctified abodes of peaceful man,
          Pleased (though to hardship born, and compassed round
          With danger, varying as the seasons change),               510
          Pleased with his daily task, or, if not pleased,
          Contented, from the moment that the dawn
          (Ah! surely not without attendant gleams
          Of soul-illumination) calls him forth
          To industry, by glistenings flung on rocks,
          Whose evening shadows lead him to repose.

            Well might a stranger look with bounding heart
          Down on a green recess, the first I saw
          Of those deep haunts, an aboriginal vale,
          Quiet and lorded over and possessed                        520
          By naked huts, wood-built, and sown like tents
          Or Indian cabins over the fresh lawns
          And by the river side.
                                  That very day,
          From a bare ridge we also first beheld
          Unveiled the summit of Mont Blanc, and grieved
          To have a soulless image on the eye
          That had usurped upon a living thought
          That never more could be. The wondrous Vale
          Of Chamouny stretched far below, and soon
          With its dumb cataracts and streams of ice,                530
          A motionless array of mighty waves,
          Five rivers broad and vast, made rich amends,
          And reconciled us to realities;
          There small birds warble from the leafy trees,
          The eagle soars high in the element,
          There doth the reaper bind the yellow sheaf,
          The maiden spread the haycock in the sun,
          While Winter like a well-tamed lion walks,
          Descending from the mountain to make sport
          Among the cottages by beds of flowers.                     540

            Whate'er in this wide circuit we beheld,
          Or heard, was fitted to our unripe state
          Of intellect and heart. With such a book
          Before our eyes, we could not choose but read
          Lessons of genuine brotherhood, the plain
          And universal reason of mankind,
          The truths of young and old. Nor, side by side
          Pacing, two social pilgrims, or alone
          Each with his humour, could we fail to abound
          In dreams and fictions, pensively composed:                550
          Dejection taken up for pleasure's sake,
          And gilded sympathies, the willow wreath,
          And sober posies of funereal flowers,
          Gathered among those solitudes sublime
          From formal gardens of the lady Sorrow,
          Did sweeten many a meditative hour.

            Yet still in me with those soft luxuries
          Mixed something of stern mood, an underthirst
          Of vigour seldom utterly allayed:
          And from that source how different a sadness               560
          Would issue, let one incident make known.
          When from the Vallais we had turned, and clomb
          Along the Simplon's steep and rugged road,
          Following a band of muleteers, we reached
          A halting-place, where all together took
          Their noon-tide meal. Hastily rose our guide,
          Leaving us at the board; awhile we lingered,
          Then paced the beaten downward way that led
          Right to a rough stream's edge, and there broke off;
          The only track now visible was one                         570
          That from the torrent's further brink held forth
          Conspicuous invitation to ascend
          A lofty mountain. After brief delay
          Crossing the unbridged stream, that road we took,
          And clomb with eagerness, till anxious fears
          Intruded, for we failed to overtake
          Our comrades gone before. By fortunate chance,
          While every moment added doubt to doubt,
          A peasant met us, from whose mouth we learned
          That to the spot which had perplexed us first              580
          We must descend, and there should find the road,
          Which in the stony channel of the stream
          Lay a few steps, and then along its banks;
          And, that our future course, all plain to sight,
          Was downwards, with the current of that stream.
          Loth to believe what we so grieved to hear,
          For still we had hopes that pointed to the clouds,
          We questioned him again, and yet again;
          But every word that from the peasant's lips
          Came in reply, translated by our feelings,                 590
          Ended in this,--'that we had crossed the Alps'.

            Imagination--here the Power so called
          Through sad incompetence of human speech,
          That awful Power rose from the mind's abyss
          Like an unfathered vapour that enwraps,
          At once, some lonely traveller. I was lost;
          Halted without an effort to break through;
          But to my conscious soul I now can say--
          "I recognise thy glory:" in such strength
          Of usurpation, when the light of sense                     600
          Goes out, but with a flash that has revealed
          The invisible world, doth greatness make abode,
          There harbours; whether we be young or old,
          Our destiny, our being's heart and home,
          Is with infinitude, and only there;
          With hope it is, hope that can never die,
          Effort, and expectation, and desire,
          And something evermore about to be.
          Under such banners militant, the soul
          Seeks for no trophies, struggles for no spoils             610
          That may attest her prowess, blest in thoughts
          That are their own perfection and reward,
          Strong in herself and in beatitude
          That hides her, like the mighty flood of Nile
          Poured from his fount of Abyssinian clouds
          To fertilise the whole Egyptian plain.

            The melancholy slackening that ensued
          Upon those tidings by the peasant given
          Was soon dislodged. Downwards we hurried fast,
          And, with the half-shaped road which we had missed,        620
          Entered a narrow chasm. The brook and road
          Were fellow-travellers in this gloomy strait,
          And with them did we journey several hours
          At a slow pace. The immeasurable height
          Of woods decaying, never to be decayed,
          The stationary blasts of waterfalls,
          And in the narrow rent at every turn
          Winds thwarting winds, bewildered and forlorn,
          The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky,
          The rocks that muttered close upon our ears,               630
          Black drizzling crags that spake by the way-side
          As if a voice were in them, the sick sight
          And giddy prospect of the raving stream,
          The unfettered clouds and region of the Heavens,
          Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light--
          Were all like workings of one mind, the features
          Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree;
          Characters of the great Apocalypse,
          The types and symbols of Eternity,
          Of first, and last, and midst, and without end.            640

            That night our lodging was a house that stood
          Alone within the valley, at a point
          Where, tumbling from aloft, a torrent swelled
          The rapid stream whose margin we had trod;
          A dreary mansion, large beyond all need,
          With high and spacious rooms, deafened and stunned
          By noise of waters, making innocent sleep
          Lie melancholy among weary bones.

            Uprisen betimes, our journey we renewed,
          Led by the stream, ere noon-day magnified                  650
          Into a lordly river, broad and deep,
          Dimpling along in silent majesty,
          With mountains for its neighbours, and in view
          Of distant mountains and their snowy tops,
          And thus proceeding to Locarno's Lake,
          Fit resting-place for such a visitant.
          Locarno! spreading out in width like Heaven,
          How dost thou cleave to the poetic heart,
          Bask in the sunshine of the memory;
          And Como! thou, a treasure whom the earth                  660
          Keeps to herself, confined as in a depth
          Of Abyssinian privacy. I spake
          Of thee, thy chestnut woods, and garden plots
          Of Indian corn tended by dark-eyed maids;
          Thy lofty steeps, and pathways roofed with vines,
          Winding from house to house, from town to town,
          Sole link that binds them to each other; walks,
          League after league, and cloistral avenues,
          Where silence dwells if music be not there:
          While yet a youth undisciplined in verse,                  670
          Through fond ambition of that hour I strove
          To chant your praise; nor can approach you now
          Ungreeted by a more melodious Song,
          Where tones of Nature smoothed by learned Art
          May flow in lasting current. Like a breeze
          Or sunbeam over your domain I passed
          In motion without pause; but ye have left
          Your beauty with me, a serene accord
          Of forms and colours, passive, yet endowed
          In their submissiveness with power as sweet                680
          And gracious, almost, might I dare to say,
          As virtue is, or goodness; sweet as love,
          Or the remembrance of a generous deed,
          Or mildest visitations of pure thought,
          When God, the giver of all joy, is thanked
          Religiously, in silent blessedness;
          Sweet as this last herself, for such it is.

            With those delightful pathways we advanced,
          For two days' space, in presence of the Lake,
          That, stretching far among the Alps, assumed               690
          A character more stern. The second night,
          From sleep awakened, and misled by sound
          Of the church clock telling the hours with strokes
          Whose import then we had not learned, we rose
          By moonlight, doubting not that day was nigh,
          And that meanwhile, by no uncertain path,
          Along the winding margin of the lake,
          Led, as before, we should behold the scene
          Hushed in profound repose. We left the town
          Of Gravedona with this hope; but soon                      700
          Were lost, bewildered among woods immense,
          And on a rock sate down, to wait for day.
          An open place it was, and overlooked,
          From high, the sullen water far beneath,
          On which a dull red image of the moon
          Lay bedded, changing oftentimes its form
          Like an uneasy snake. From hour to hour
          We sate and sate, wondering, as if the night
          Had been ensnared by witchcraft. On the rock
          At last we stretched our weary limbs for sleep,            710
          But 'could not' sleep, tormented by the stings
          Of insects, which, with noise like that of noon,
          Filled all the woods: the cry of unknown birds;
          The mountains more by blackness visible
          And their own size, than any outward light;
          The breathless wilderness of clouds; the clock
          That told, with unintelligible voice,
          The widely parted hours; the noise of streams,
          And sometimes rustling motions nigh at hand,
          That did not leave us free from personal fear;             720
          And, lastly, the withdrawing moon, that set
          Before us, while she still was high in heaven;--
          These were our food; and such a summer's night
          Followed that pair of golden days that shed
          On Como's Lake, and all that round it lay,
          Their fairest, softest, happiest influence.

            But here I must break off, and bid farewell
          To days, each offering some new sight, or fraught
          With some untried adventure, in a course
          Prolonged till sprinklings of autumnal snow                730
          Checked our unwearied steps. Let t

THE PRELUDE
BOOK SEVENTH
RESIDENCE IN LONDON

          SIX changeful years have vanished since I first
          Poured out (saluted by that quickening breeze
          Which met me issuing from the City's walls)
          A glad preamble to this Verse: I sang
          Aloud, with fervour irresistible
          Of short-lived transport, like a torrent bursting,
          From a black thunder-cloud, down Scafell's side
          To rush and disappear. But soon broke forth
          (So willed the Muse) a less impetuous stream,
          That flowed awhile with unabating strength,                 10
          Then stopped for years; not audible again
          Before last primrose-time. Beloved Friend!
          The assurance which then cheered some heavy thoughts
          On thy departure to a foreign land
          Has failed; too slowly moves the promised work.
          Through the whole summer have I been at rest,
          Partly from voluntary holiday,
          And part through outward hindrance. But I heard,
          After the hour of sunset yester-even,
          Sitting within doors between light and dark,                20
          A choir of redbreasts gathered somewhere near
          My threshold,--minstrels from the distant woods
          Sent in on Winter's service, to announce,
          With preparation artful and benign,
          That the rough lord had left the surly North
          On his accustomed journey. The delight,
          Due to this timely notice, unawares
          Smote me, and, listening, I in whispers said,
          "Ye heartsome Choristers, ye and I will be
          Associates, and, unscared by blustering winds,              30
          Will chant together." Thereafter, as the shades
          Of twilight deepened, going forth, I spied
          A glow-worm underneath a dusky plume
          Or canopy of yet unwithered fern,
          Clear-shining, like a hermit's taper seen
          Through a thick forest. Silence touched me here
          No less than sound had done before; the child
          Of Summer, lingering, shining, by herself,
          The voiceless worm on the unfrequented hills,
          Seemed sent on the same errand with the choir               40
          Of Winter that had warbled at my door,
          And the whole year breathed tenderness and love.

            The last night's genial feeling overflowed
          Upon this morning, and my favourite grove,
          Tossing in sunshine its dark boughs aloft,
          As if to make the strong wind visible,
          Wakes in me agitations like its own,
          A spirit friendly to the Poet's task,
          Which we will now resume with lively hope,
          Nor checked by aught of tamer argument                      50
          That lies before us, needful to be told.

            Returned from that excursion, soon I bade
          Farewell for ever to the sheltered seats
          Of gowned students, quitted hall and bower,
          And every comfort of that privileged ground,
          Well pleased to pitch a vagrant tent among
          The unfenced regions of society.

            Yet, undetermined to what course of life
          I should adhere, and seeming to possess
          A little space of intermediate time                         60
          At full command, to London first I turned,
          In no disturbance of excessive hope,
          By personal ambition unenslaved,
          Frugal as there was need, and, though self-willed,
          From dangerous passions free. Three years had flown
          Since I had felt in heart and soul the shock
          Of the huge town's first presence, and had paced
          Her endless streets, a transient visitant:
          Now, fixed amid that concourse of mankind
          Where Pleasure whirls about incessantly,                    70
          And life and labour seem but one, I filled
          An idler's place; an idler well content
          To have a house (what matter for a home?)
          That owned him; living cheerfully abroad
          With unchecked fancy ever on the stir,
          And all my young affections out of doors.

            There was a time when whatsoe'er is feigned
          Of airy palaces, and gardens built
          By Genii of romance; or hath in grave
          Authentic history been set forth of Rome,                   80
          Alcairo, Babylon, or Persepolis;
          Or given upon report by pilgrim friars,
          Of golden cities ten months' journey deep
          Among Tartarian wilds--fell short, far short,
          Of what my fond simplicity believed
          And thought of London--held me by a chain
          Less strong of wonder and obscure delight.
          Whether the bolt of childhood's Fancy shot
          For me beyond its ordinary mark,
          'Twere vain to ask; but in our flock of boys                90
          Was One, a cripple from his birth, whom chance
          Summoned from school to London; fortunate
          And envied traveller! When the Boy returned,
          After short absence, curiously I scanned
          His mien and person, nor was free, in sooth,
          From disappointment, not to find some change
          In look and air, from that new region brought,
          As if from Fairy-land. Much I questioned him;
          And every word he uttered, on my ears
          Fell flatter than a caged parrot's note,                   100
          That answers unexpectedly awry,
          And mocks the prompter's listening. Marvellous things
          Had vanity (quick Spirit that appears
          Almost as deeply seated and as strong
          In a Child's heart as fear itself) conceived
          For my enjoyment. Would that I could now
          Recall what then I pictured to myself,
          Of mitred Prelates, Lords in ermine clad,
          The King, and the King's Palace, and, not last,
          Nor least, Heaven bless him! the renowned Lord Mayor.      110
          Dreams not unlike to those which once begat
          A change of purpose in young Whittington,
          When he, a friendless and a drooping boy,
          Sate on a stone, and heard the bells speak out
          Articulate music. Above all, one thought
          Baffled my understanding: how men lived
          Even next-door neighbours, as we say, yet still
          Strangers, not knowing each the other's name.

            Oh, wondrous power of words, by simple faith
          Licensed to take the meaning that we love!                 120
          Vauxhall and Ranelagh! I then had heard
          Of your green groves, and wilderness of lamps
          Dimming the stars, and fireworks magical,
          And gorgeous ladies, under splendid domes,
          Floating in dance, or warbling high in air
          The songs of spirits! Nor had Fancy fed
          With less delight upon that other class
          Of marvels, broad-day wonders permanent:
          The River proudly bridged; the dizzy top
          And Whispering Gallery of St. Paul's; the tombs            130
          Of Westminster; the Giants of Guildhall;
          Bedlam, and those carved maniacs at the gates,
          Perpetually recumbent; Statues--man,
          And the horse under him--in gilded pomp
          Adorning flowery gardens, 'mid vast squares;
          The Monument, and that Chamber of the Tower
          Where England's sovereigns sit in long array,
          Their steeds bestriding,--every mimic shape
          Cased in the gleaming mail the monarch wore,
          Whether for gorgeous tournament addressed,                 140
          Or life or death upon the battle-field.
          Those bold imaginations in due time
          Had vanished, leaving others in their stead:
          And now I looked upon the living scene;
          Familiarly perused it; oftentimes,
          In spite of strongest disappointment, pleased
          Through courteous self-submission, as a tax
          Paid to the object by prescriptive right.

            Rise up, thou monstrous ant-hill on the plain
          Of a too busy world! Before me flow,                       150
          Thou endless stream of men and moving things!
          Thy every-day appearance, as it strikes--
          With wonder heightened, or sublimed by awe--
          On strangers, of all ages; the quick dance
          Of colours, lights, and forms; the deafening din;
          The comers and the goers face to face,
          Face after face; the string of dazzling wares,
          Shop after shop, with symbols, blazoned names,
          And all the tradesman's honours overhead:
          Here, fronts of houses, like a title-page,                 160
          With letters huge inscribed from top to toe,
          Stationed above the door, like guardian saints;
          There, allegoric shapes, female or male,
          Or physiognomies of real men,
          Land-warriors, kings, or admirals of the sea,
          Boyle, Shakspeare, Newton, or the attractive head
          Of some quack-doctor, famous in his day.

            Meanwhile the roar continues, till at length,
          Escaped as from an enemy, we turn
          Abruptly into some sequestered nook,                       170
          Still as a sheltered place when winds blow loud!
          At leisure, thence, through tracts of thin resort,
          And sights and sounds that come at intervals,
          We take our way. A raree-show is here,
          With children gathered round; another street
          Presents a company of dancing dogs,
          Or dromedary, with an antic pair
          Of monkeys on his back; a minstrel band
          Of Savoyards; or, single and alone,
          An English ballad-singer. Private courts,                  180
          Gloomy as coffins, and unsightly lanes
          Thrilled by some female vendor's scream, belike
          The very shrillest of all London cries,
          May then entangle our impatient steps;
          Conducted through those labyrinths, unawares,
          To privileged regions and inviolate,
          Where from their airy lodges studious lawyers
          Look out on waters, walks, and gardens green.

            Thence back into the throng, until we reach,
          Following the tide that slackens by degrees,               190
          Some half-frequented scene, where wider streets
          Bring straggling breezes of suburban air.
          Here files of ballads dangle from dead walls;
          Advertisements, of giant-size, from high
          Press forward, in all colours, on the sight;
          These, bold in conscious merit, lower down;
          'That', fronted with a most imposing word,
          Is, peradventure, one in masquerade.
          As on the broadening causeway we advance,
          Behold, turned upwards, a face hard and strong             200
          In lineaments, and red with over-toil.
          'Tis one encountered here and everywhere;
          A travelling cripple, by the trunk cut short,
          And stumping on his arms. In sailor's garb
          Another lies at length, beside a range
          Of well-formed characters, with chalk inscribed
          Upon the smooth flint stones: the Nurse is here,
          The Bachelor, that loves to sun himself,
          The military Idler, and the Dame,
          That field-ward takes her walk with decent steps.          210

            Now homeward through the thickening hubbub, where
          See, among less distinguishable shapes,
          The begging scavenger, with hat in hand;
          The Italian, as he thrids his way with care,
          Steadying, far-seen, a frame of images
          Upon his head; with basket at his breast
          The Jew; the stately and slow-moving Turk,
          With freight of slippers piled beneath his arm!

            Enough;--the mighty concourse I surveyed
          With no unthinking mind, well pleased to note              220
          Among the crowd all specimens of man,
          Through all the colours which the sun bestows,
          And every character of form and face:
          The Swede, the Russian; from the genial south,
          The Frenchman and the Spaniard; from remote
          America, the Hunter-Indian; Moors,
          Malays, Lascars, the Tartar, the Chinese,
          And Negro Ladies in white muslin gowns.

            At leisure, then, I viewed, from day to day,
          The spectacles within doors,--birds and beasts             230
          Of every nature, and strange plants convened
          From every clime; and, next, those sights that ape
          The absolute presence of reality,
          Expressing, as in mirror, sea and land,
          And what earth is, and what she has to show.
          I do not here allude to subtlest craft,
          By means refined attaining purest ends,
          But imitations, fondly made in plain
          Confession of man's weakness and his loves.
          Whether the Painter, whose ambitious skill                 240
          Submits to nothing less than taking in
          A whole horizon's circuit, do with power,
          Like that of angels or commissioned spirits,
          Fix us upon some lofty pinnacle,
          Or in a ship on waters, with a world
          Of life, and life-like mockery beneath,
          Above, behind, far stretching and before;
          Or more mechanic artist represent
          By scale exact, in model, wood or clay,
          From blended colours also borrowing help,                  250
          Some miniature of famous spots or things,--
          St. Peter's Church; or, more aspiring aim,
          In microscopic vision, Rome herself;
          Or, haply, some choice rural haunt,--the Falls
          Of Tivoli; and, high upon that steep,
          The Sibyl's mouldering Temple! every tree,
          Villa, or cottage, lurking among rocks
          Throughout the landscape; tuft, stone scratch minute--
          All that the traveller sees when he is there.

            Add to these exhibitions, mute and still,                260
          Others of wider scope, where living men,
          Music, and shifting pantomimic scenes,
          Diversified the allurement. Need I fear
          To mention by its name, as in degree,
          Lowest of these and humblest in attempt,
          Yet richly graced with honours of her own,
          Half-rural Sadler's Wells? Though at that time
          Intolerant, as is the way of youth
          Unless itself be pleased, here more than once
          Taking my seat, I saw (nor blush to add,                   270
          With ample recompense) giants and dwarfs,
          Clowns, conjurors, posture-masters, harlequins,
          Amid the uproar of the rabblement,
          Perform their feats. Nor was it mean delight
          To watch crude Nature work in untaught minds;
          To note the laws and progress of belief;
          Though obstinate on this way, yet on that
          How willingly we travel, and how far!
          To have, for instance, brought upon the scene
          The champion, Jack the Giant-killer: Lo!                   280
          He dons his coat of darkness; on the stage
          Walks, and achieves his wonders, from the eye
          Of living Mortal covert, "as the moon
          Hid in her vacant interlunar cave."
          Delusion bold! and how can it be wrought?
          The garb he wears is black as death, the word
          "Invisible" flames forth upon his chest.

            Here, too, were "forms and pressures of the time,"
          Rough, bold, as Grecian comedy displayed
          When Art was young; dramas of living men,                  290
          And recent things yet warm with life; a sea-fight,
          Shipwreck, or some domestic incident
          Divulged by Truth and magnified by Fame;
          Such as the daring brotherhood of late
          Set forth, too serious theme for that light place--
          I mean, O distant Friend! a story drawn
          From our own ground,--the Maid of Buttermere,--
          And how, unfaithful to a virtuous wife
          Deserted and deceived, the Spoiler came
          And wooed the artless daughter of the hills,               300
          And wedded her, in cruel mockery
          Of love and marriage bonds. These words to thee
          Must needs bring back the moment when we first,
          Ere the broad world rang with the maiden's name,
          Beheld her serving at the cottage inn;
          Both stricken, as she entered or withdrew,
          With admiration of her modest mien
          And carriage, marked by unexampled grace.
          We since that time not unfamiliarly
          Have seen her,--her discretion have observed,              310
          Her just opinions, delicate reserve,
          Her patience, and humility of mind
          Unspoiled by commendation and the excess
          Of public notice--an offensive light
          To a meek spirit suffering inwardly.

            From this memorial tribute to my theme
          I was returning, when, with sundry forms
          Commingled--shapes which met me in the way
          That we must tread--thy image rose again,
          Maiden of Buttermere! She lives in peace                   320
          Upon the spot where she was born and reared;
          Without contamination doth she live
          In quietness, without anxiety:
          Beside the mountain chapel, sleeps in earth
          Her new-born infant, fearless as a lamb
          That, thither driven from some unsheltered place,
          Rests underneath the little rock-like pile
          When storms are raging. Happy are they both--
          Mother and child!--These feelings, in themselves
          Trite, do yet scarcely seem so when I think                330
          On those ingenuous moments of our youth
          Ere we have learnt by use to slight the crimes
          And sorrows of the world. Those simple days
          Are now my theme; and, foremost of the scenes,
          Which yet survive in memory, appears
          One, at whose centre sate a lovely Boy,
          A sportive infant, who, for six months' space,
          Not more, had been of age to deal about
          Articulate prattle--Child as beautiful
          As ever clung around a mother's neck,                      340
          Or father fondly gazed upon with pride.
          There, too, conspicuous for stature tall
          And large dark eyes, beside her infant stood
          The mother; but, upon her cheeks diffused,
          False tints too well accorded with the glare
          From play-house lustres thrown without reserve
          On every object near. The Boy had been
          The pride and pleasure of all lookers-on
          In whatsoever place, but seemed in this
          A sort of alien scattered from the clouds.                 350
          Of lusty vigour, more than infantine
          He was in limb, in cheek a summer rose
          Just three parts blown--a cottage-child--if e'er,
          By cottage-door on breezy mountain-side,
          Or in some sheltering vale, was seen a babe
          By Nature's gifts so favoured. Upon a board
          Decked with refreshments had this child been placed
          'His' little stage in the vast theatre,
          And there he sate, surrounded with a throng
          Of chance spectators, chiefly dissolute men                360
          And shameless women, treated and caressed;
          Ate, drank, and with the fruit and glasses played,
          While oaths and laughter and indecent speech
          Were rife about him as the songs of birds
          Contending after showers. The mother now
          Is fading out of memory, but I see
          The lovely Boy as I beheld him then
          Among the wretched and the falsely gay,
          Like one of those who walked with hair unsinged
          Amid the fiery furnace. Charms and spells                  370
          Muttered on black and spiteful instigation
          Have stopped, as some believe, the kindliest growths.
          Ah, with how different spirit might a prayer
          Have been preferred, that this fair creature, checked
          By special privilege of Nature's love,
          Should in his childhood be detained for ever!
          But with its universal freight the tide
          Hath rolled along, and this bright innocent,
          Mary! may now have lived till he could look
          With envy on thy nameless babe that sleeps,                380
          Beside the mountain chapel, undisturbed.

            Four rapid years had scarcely then been told
          Since, travelling southward from our pastoral hills,
          I heard, and for the first time in my life,
          The voice of woman utter blasphemy--
          Saw woman as she is, to open shame
          Abandoned, and the pride of public vice;
          I shuddered, for a barrier seemed at once
          Thrown in that from humanity divorced
          Humanity, splitting the race of man                        390
          In twain, yet leaving the same outward form.
          Distress of mind ensued upon the sight,
          And ardent meditation. Later years
          Brought to such spectacle a milder sadness,
          Feelings of pure commiseration, grief
          For the individual and the overthrow
          Of her soul's beauty; farther I was then
          But seldom led, or wished to go; in truth
          The sorrow of the passion stopped me there.

            But let me now, less moved, in order take                400
          Our argument. Enough is said to show
          How casual incidents of real life,
          Observed where pastime only had been sought,
          Outweighed, or put to flight, the set events
          And measured passions of the stage, albeit
          By Siddons trod in the fulness of her power.
          Yet was the theatre my dear delight;
          The very gilding, lamps and painted scrolls,
          And all the mean upholstery of the place,
          Wanted not animation, when the tide                        410
          Of pleasure ebbed but to return as fast
          With the ever-shifting figures of the scene,
          Solemn or gay: whether some beauteous dame
          Advanced in radiance through a deep recess
          Of thick entangled forest, like the moon
          Opening the clouds; or sovereign king, announced
          With flourishing trumpet, came in full-blown state
          Of the world's greatness, winding round with train
          Of courtiers, banners, and a length of guards;
          Or captive led in abject weeds, and jingling               420
          His slender manacles; or romping girl
          Bounced, leapt, and pawed the air; or mumbling sire,
          A scare-crow pattern of old age dressed up
          In all the tatters of infirmity
          All loosely put together, hobbled in,
          Stumping upon a cane with which he smites,
          From time to time, the solid boards, and makes them
          Prate somewhat loudly of the whereabout
          Of one so overloaded with his years.
          But what of this! the laugh, the grin, grimace,            430
          The antics striving to outstrip each other,
          Were all received, the least of them not lost,
          With an unmeasured welcome. Through the night,
          Between the show, and many-headed mass
          Of the spectators, and each several nook
          Filled with its fray or brawl, how eagerly
          And with what flashes, as it were, the mind
          Turned this way--that way! sportive and alert
          And watchful, as a kitten when at play,
          While winds are eddying round her, among straws            440
          And rustling leaves. Enchanting age and sweet!
          Romantic almost, looked at through a space,
          How small, of intervening years! For then,
          Though surely no mean progress had been made
          In meditations holy and sublime,
          Yet something of a girlish child-like gloss
          Of novelty survived for scenes like these;
          Enjoyment haply handed down from times
          When at a country-playhouse, some rude barn
          Tricked out for that proud use, if I perchance             450
          Caught, on a summer evening through a chink
          In the old wall, an unexpected glimpse
          Of daylight, the bare thought of where I was
          Gladdened me more than if I had been led
          Into a dazzling cavern of romance,
          Crowded with Genii busy among works
          Not to be looked at by the common sun.

            The matter that detains us now may seem,
          To many, neither dignified enough
          Nor arduous, yet will not be scorned by them,              460
          Who, looking inward, have observed the ties
          That bind the perishable hours of life
          Each to the other, and the curious props
          By which the world of memory and thought
          Exists and is sustained. More lofty themes,
          Such as at least do wear a prouder face,
          Solicit our regard; but when I think
          Of these, I feel the imaginative power
          Languish within me; even then it slept,
          When, pressed by tragic sufferings, the heart              470
          Was more than full; amid my sobs and tears
          It slept, even in the pregnant season of youth.
          For though I was most passionately moved
          And yielded to all changes of the scene
          With an obsequious promptness, yet the storm
          Passed not beyond the suburbs of the mind;
          Save when realities of act and mien,
          The incarnation of the spirits that move
          In harmony amid the Poet's world,
          Rose to ideal grandeur, or, called forth                   480
          By power of contrast, made me recognise,
          As at a glance, the things which I had shaped,
          And yet not shaped, had seen and scarcely seen,
          When, having closed the mighty Shakspeare's page,
          I mused, and thought, and felt, in solitude.

            Pass we from entertainments, that are such
          Professedly, to others titled higher,
          Yet, in the estimate of youth at least,
          More near akin to those than names imply,--
          I mean the brawls of lawyers in their courts               490
          Before the ermined judge, or that great stage
          Where senators, tongue-favoured men, perform,
          Admired and envied. Oh! the beating heart,
          When one among the prime of these rose up,--
          One, of whose name from childhood we had heard
          Familiarly, a household term, like those,
          The Bedfords, Glosters, Salsburys, of old,
          Whom the fifth Harry talks of. Silence! hush!
          This is no trifler, no short-flighted wit,
          No stammerer of a minute, painfully                        500
          Delivered, No! the Orator hath yoked
          The Hours, like young Aurora, to his car:
          Thrice welcome Presence! how can patience e'er
          Grow weary of attending on a track
          That kindles with such glory! All are charmed,
          Astonished; like a hero in romance,
          He winds away his never-ending horn;
          Words follow words, sense seems to follow sense:
          What memory and what logic! till the strain
          Transcendent, superhuman as it seemed,                     510
          Grows tedious even in a young man's ear.

             Genius of Burke! forgive the pen seduced
          By specious wonders, and too slow to tell
          Of what the ingenuous, what bewildered men,
          Beginning to mistrust their boastful guides,
          And wise men, willing to grow wiser, caught,
          Rapt auditors! from thy most eloquent tongue--
          Now mute, for ever mute in the cold grave.
          I see him,--old, but vigorous in age,--
          Stand like an oak whose stag-horn branches start           520
          Out of its leafy brow, the more to awe
          The younger brethren of the grove. But some--
          While he forewarns, denounces, launches forth,
          Against all systems built on abstract rights,
          Keen ridicule; the majesty proclaims
          Of Institutes and Laws, hallowed by time;
          Declares the vital power of social ties
          Endeared by Custom; and with high disdain,
          Exploding upstart Theory, insists
          Upon the allegiance to which men are born--                530
          Some--say at once a froward multitude--
          Murmur (for truth is hated, where not loved)
          As the winds fret within the Aeolian cave,
          Galled by their monarch's chain. The times were big
          With ominous change, which, night by night, provoked
          Keen struggles, and black clouds of passion raised;
          But memorable moments intervened,
          When Wisdom, like the Goddess from Jove's brain,
          Broke forth in armour of resplendent words,
          Startling the Synod. Could a youth, and one                540
          In ancient story versed, whose breast had heaved
          Under the weight of classic eloquence,
          Sit, see, and hear, unthankful, uninspired?

             Nor did the Pulpit's oratory fail
          To achieve its higher triumph. Not unfelt
          Were its admonishments, nor lightly heard
          The awful truths delivered thence by tongues
          Endowed with various power to search the soul;
          Yet ostentation, domineering, oft
          Poured forth harangues, how sadly out of place!--          550
          There have I seen a comely bachelor,
          Fresh from a toilette of two hours, ascend
          His rostrum, with seraphic glance look up,
          And, in a tone elaborately low
          Beginning, lead his voice through many a maze
          A minuet course; and, winding up his mouth,
          From time to time, into an orifice
          Most delicate, a lurking eyelet, small,
          And only not invisible, again
          Open it out, diffusing thence a smile                      560
          Of rapt irradiation, exquisite.
          Meanwhile the Evangelists, Isaiah, Job,
          Moses, and he who penned, the other day,
          The Death of Abel, Shakspeare, and the Bard
          Whose genius spangled o'er a gloomy theme
          With fancies thick as his inspiring stars,
          And Ossian (doubt not--'tis the naked truth)
          Summoned from streamy Morven--each and all
          Would, in their turns, lend ornaments and flowers
          To entwine the crook of eloquence that helped              570
          This pretty Shepherd, pride of all the plains,
          To rule and guide his captivated flock.

            I glance but at a few conspicuous marks,
          Leaving a thousand others, that, in hall,
          Court, theatre, conventicle, or shop,
          In public room or private, park or street,
          Each fondly reared on his own pedestal,
          Looked out for admiration. Folly, vice,
          Extravagance in gesture, mien, and dress,
          And all the strife of singularity,                         580
          Lies to the ear, and lies to every sense--
          Of these, and of the living shapes they wear,
          There is no end. Such candidates for regard,
          Although well pleased to be where they were found,
          I did not hunt after, nor greatly prize,
          Nor made unto myself a secret boast
          Of reading them with quick and curious eye;
          But, as a common produce, things that are
          To-day, to-morrow will be, took of them
          Such willing note, as, on some errand bound                590
          That asks not speed, a traveller might bestow
          On sea-shells that bestrew the sandy beach,
          Or daisies swarming through the fields of June.

            But foolishness and madness in parade,
          Though most at home in this their dear domain,
          Are scattered everywhere, no rarities,
          Even to the rudest novice of the Schools.
          Me, rather, it employed, to note, and keep
          In memory, those individual sights
          Of courage, or integrity, or truth,                        600
          Or tenderness, which there, set off by foil,
          Appeared more touching. One will I select--
          A Father--for he bore that sacred name;--
          Him saw I, sitting in an open square,
          Upon a corner-stone of that low wall,
          Wherein were fixed the iron pales that fenced
          A spacious grass-plot; there, in silence, sate
          This One Man, with a sickly babe outstretched
          Upon his knee, whom he had thither brought
          For sunshine, and to breathe the fresher air.              610
          Of those who passed, and me who looked at him,
          He took no heed; but in his brawny arms
          (The Artificer was to the elbow bare,
          And from his work this moment had been stolen)
          He held the child, and, bending over it,
          As if he were afraid both of the sun
          And of the air, which he had come to seek,
          Eyed the poor babe with love unutterable.

            As the black storm upon the mountain top
          Sets off the sunbeam in the valley, so                     620
          That huge fermenting mass of human-kind
          Serves as a solemn back-ground, or relief,
          To single forms and objects, whence they draw,
          For feeling and contemplative regard,
          More than inherent liveliness and power.
          How oft, amid those overflowing streets,
          Have I gone forward with the crowd, and said
          Unto myself, "The face of every one
          That passes by me is a mystery!"
          Thus have I looked, nor ceased to look, oppressed          630
          By thoughts of what and whither, when and how,
          Until the shapes before my eyes became
          A second-sight procession, such as glides
          Over still mountains, or appears in dreams;
          And once, far-travelled in such mood, beyond
          The reach of common indication, lost
          Amid the moving pageant, I was smitten
          Abruptly, with the view (a sight not rare)
          Of a blind Beggar, who, with upright face,
          Stood, propped against a wall, upon his chest              640
          Wearing a written paper, to explain
          His story, whence he came, and who he was.
          Caught by the spectacle my mind turned round
          As with the might of waters; and apt type
          This label seemed of the utmost we can know,
          Both of ourselves and of the universe;
          And, on the shape of that unmoving man,
          His steadfast face and sightless eyes, I gazed,
          As if admonished from another world.

            Though reared upon the base of outward things,           650
          Structures like these the excited spirit mainly
          Builds for herself; scenes different there are,
          Full-formed, that take, with small internal help,
          Possession of the faculties,--the peace
          That comes with night; the deep solemnity
          Of nature's intermediate hours of rest,
          When the great tide of human life stands still:
          The business of the day to come, unborn,
          Of that gone by, locked up, as in the grave;
          The blended calmness of the heavens and earth,             660
          Moonlight and stars, and empty streets, and sounds
          Unfrequent as in deserts; at late hours
          Of winter evenings, when unwholesome rains
          Are falling hard, with people yet astir,
          The feeble salutation from the voice
          Of some unhappy woman, now and then
          Heard as we pass, when no one looks about,
          Nothing is listened to. But these, I fear,
          Are falsely catalogued; things that are, are not,
          As the mind answers to them, or the heart                  670
          Is prompt, or slow, to feel. What say you, then,
          To times, when half the city shall break out
          Full of one passion, vengeance, rage, or fear?
          To executions, to a street on fire,
          Mobs, riots, or rejoicings? From these sights
          Take one,--that ancient festival, the Fair,
          Holden where martyrs suffered in past time,
          And named of St. Bartholomew; there, see
          A work completed to our hands, that lays,
          If any spectacle on earth can do,                          680
          The whole creative powers of man asleep!--
          For once, the Muse's help will we implore,
          And she shall lodge us, wafted on her wings,
          Above the press and danger of the crowd,
          Upon some showman's platform. What a shock
          For eyes and ears! what anarchy and din,
          Barbarian and infernal,--a phantasma,
          Monstrous in colour, motion, shape, sight, sound!
          Below, the open space, through every nook
          Of the wide area, twinkles, is alive                       690
          With heads; the midway region, and above,
          Is thronged with staring pictures and huge scrolls,
          Dumb proclamations of the Prodigies;
          With chattering monkeys dangling from their poles,
          And children whirling in their roundabouts;
          With those that stretch the neck and strain the eyes,
          And crack the voice in rivalship, the crowd
          Inviting; with buffoons against buffoons
          Grimacing, writhing, screaming,--him who grinds
          The hurdy-gurdy, at the fiddle weaves,                     700
          Rattles the salt-box, thumps the kettle-drum,
          And him who at the trumpet puffs his cheeks,
          The silver-collared Negro with his timbrel,
          Equestrians, tumblers, women, girls, and boys,
          Blue-breeched, pink-vested, with high-towering plumes.--
          All moveables of wonder, from all parts,
          Are here--Albinos, painted Indians, Dwarfs,
          The Horse of knowledge, and the learned Pig,
          The Stone-eater, the man that swallows fire,
          Giants, Ventriloquists, the Invisible Girl,                710
          The Bust that speaks and moves its goggling eyes,
          The Wax-work, Clock-work, all the marvellous craft
          Of modern Merlins, Wild Beasts, Puppet-shows,
          All out-o'-the-way, far-fetched, perverted things,
          All freaks of nature, all Promethean thoughts
          Of man, his dulness, madness, and their feats
          All jumbled up together, to compose
          A Parliament of Monsters. Tents and Booths
          Meanwhile, as if the whole were one vast mill,
          Are vomiting, receiving on all sides,                      720
          Men, Women, three-years' Children, Babes in arms.

            Oh, blank confusion! true epitome
          Of what the mighty City is herself,
          To thousands upon thousands of her sons,
          Living amid the same perpetual whirl
          Of trivial objects, melted and reduced
          To one identity, by differences
          That have no law, no meaning, and no end--
          Oppression, under which even highest minds
          Must labour, whence the strongest are not free.            730
          But though the picture weary out the eye,
     

THE PRELUDE
BOOK EIGHTH
RETROSPECT--LOVE OF NATURE LEADING TO LOVE OF MAN

          WHAT sounds are those, Helvellyn, that are heard
          Up to thy summit, through the depth of air
          Ascending, as if distance had the power
          To make the sounds more audible? What crowd
          Covers, or sprinkles o'er, yon village green?
          Crowd seems it, solitary hill! to thee,
          Though but a little family of men,
          Shepherds and tillers of the ground--betimes
          Assembled with their children and their wives,
          And here and there a stranger interspersed.                 10
          They hold a rustic fair--a festival,
          Such as, on this side now, and now on that,
          Repeated through his tributary vales,
          Helvellyn, in the silence of his rest,
          Sees annually, if clouds towards either ocean
          Blown from their favourite resting-place, or mists
          Dissolved, have left him an unshrouded head.
          Delightful day it is for all who dwell
          In this secluded glen, and eagerly
          They give it welcome. Long ere heat of noon,                20
          From byre or field the kine were brought; the sheep
          Are penned in cotes; the chaffering is begun.
          The heifer lows, uneasy at the voice
          Of a new master; bleat the flocks aloud.
          Booths are there none; a stall or two is here;
          A lame man or a blind, the one to beg,
          The other to make music; hither, too,
          From far, with basket, slung upon her arm,
          Of hawker's wares--books, pictures, combs, and pins--
          Some aged woman finds her way again,                        30
          Year after year, a punctual visitant!
          There also stands a speech-maker by rote,
          Pulling the strings of his boxed raree-show;
          And in the lapse of many years may come
          Prouder itinerant, mountebank, or he
          Whose wonders in a covered wain lie hid.
          But one there is, the loveliest of them all,
          Some sweet lass of the valley, looking out
          For gains, and who that sees her would not buy?
          Fruits of her father's orchard are her wares,               40
          And with the ruddy produce she walks round
          Among the crowd, half pleased with, half ashamed
          Of, her new office, blushing restlessly.
          The children now are rich, for the old to-day
          Are generous as the young; and, if content
          With looking on, some ancient wedded pair
          Sit in the shade together; while they gaze,
          "A cheerful smile unbends the wrinkled brow,
          The days departed start again to life,
          And all the scenes of childhood reappear,                   50
          Faint, but more tranquil, like the changing sun
          To him who slept at noon and wakes at eve."
          Thus gaiety and cheerfulness prevail,
          Spreading from young to old, from old to young,
          And no one seems to want his share.--Immense
          Is the recess, the circumambient world
          Magnificent, by which they are embraced:
          They move about upon the soft green turf:
          How little they, they and their doings, seem,
          And all that they can further or obstruct!                  60
          Through utter weakness pitiably dear,
          As tender infants are: and yet how great!
          For all things serve them: them the morning light
          Loves, as it glistens on the silent rocks;
          And them the silent rocks, which now from high
          Look down upon them; the reposing clouds;
          The wild brooks prattling from invisible haunts;
          And old Helvellyn, conscious of the stir
          Which animates this day their calm abode.

            With deep devotion, Nature, did I feel,                   70
          In that enormous City's turbulent world
          Of men and things, what benefit I owed
          To thee, and those domains of rural peace,
          Where to the sense of beauty first my heart
          Was opened; tract more exquisitely fair
          Than that famed paradise of ten thousand trees,
          Or Gehol's matchless gardens, for delight
          Of the Tartarian dynasty composed
          (Beyond that mighty wall, not fabulous,
          China's stupendous mound) by patient toil                   80
          Of myriads and boon nature's lavish help;
          There, in a clime from widest empire chosen,
          Fulfilling (could enchantment have done more?)
          A sumptuous dream of flowery lawns, with domes
          Of pleasure sprinkled over, shady dells
          For eastern monasteries, sunny mounts
          With temples crested, bridges, gondolas,
          Rocks, dens, and groves of foliage taught to melt
          Into each other their obsequious hues,
          Vanished and vanishing in subtle chase,                     90
          Too fine to be pursued; or standing forth
          In no discordant opposition, strong
          And gorgeous as the colours side by side
          Bedded among rich plumes of tropic birds;
          And mountains over all, embracing all;
          And all the landscape, endlessly enriched
          With waters running, falling, or asleep.

            But lovelier far than this, the paradise
          Where I was reared; in Nature's primitive gifts
          Favoured no less, and more to every sense                  100
          Delicious, seeing that the sun and sky,
          The elements, and seasons as they change,
          Do find a worthy fellow-labourer there--
          Man free, man working for himself, with choice
          Of time, and place, and object; by his wants,
          His comforts, native occupations, cares,
          Cheerfully led to individual ends
          Or social, and still followed by a train
          Unwooed, unthought-of even--simplicity,
          And beauty, and inevitable grace.                          110

            Yea, when a glimpse of those imperial bowers
          Would to a child be transport over-great,
          When but a half-hour's roam through such a place
          Would leave behind a dance of images,
          That shall break in upon his sleep for weeks;
          Even then the common haunts of the green earth,
          And ordinary interests of man,
          Which they embosom, all without regard
          As both may seem, are fastening on the heart
          Insensibly, each with the other's help.                    120
          For me, when my affections first were led
          From kindred, friends, and playmates, to partake
          Love for the human creature's absolute self,
          That noticeable kindliness of heart
          Sprang out of fountains, there abounding most,
          Where sovereign Nature dictated the tasks
          And occupations which her beauty adorned,
          And Shepherds were the men that pleased me first;
          Not such as Saturn ruled 'mid Latian wilds,
          With arts and laws so tempered, that their lives           130
          Left, even to us toiling in this late day,
          A bright tradition of the golden age;
          Not such as, 'mid Arcadian fastnesses
          Sequestered, handed down among themselves
          Felicity, in Grecian song renowned;
          Nor such as--when an adverse fate had driven,
          From house and home, the courtly band whose fortunes
          Entered, with Shakspeare's genius, the wild woods
          Of Arden--amid sunshine or in shade
          Culled the best fruits of Time's uncounted hours,          140
          Ere Phoebe sighed for the false Ganymede;
          Or there where Perdita and Florizel
          Together danced, Queen of the feast, and King;
          Nor such as Spenser fabled. True it is,
          That I had heard (what he perhaps had seen)
          Of maids at sunrise bringing in from far
          Their May-bush, and along the streets in flocks
          Parading with a song of taunting rhymes,
          Aimed at the laggards slumbering within doors;
          Had also heard, from those who yet remembered,             150
          Tales of the May-pole dance, and wreaths that decked
          Porch, door-way, or kirk-pillar; and of youths,
          Each with his maid, before the sun was up,
          By annual custom, issuing forth in troops,
          To drink the waters of some sainted well,
          And hang it round with garlands. Love survives;
          But, for such purpose, flowers no longer grow:
          The times, too sage, perhaps too proud, have dropped
          These lighter graces; and the rural ways
          And manners which my childhood looked upon                 160
          Were the unluxuriant produce of a life
          Intent on little but substantial needs,
          Yet rich in beauty, beauty that was felt.
          But images of danger and distress,
          Man suffering among awful Powers and Forms;
          Of this I heard, and saw enough to make
          Imagination restless; nor was free
          Myself from frequent perils; nor were tales
          Wanting,--the tragedies of former times,
          Hazards and strange escapes, of which the rocks            170
          Immutable, and everflowing streams,
          Where'er I roamed, were speaking monuments.

            Smooth life had flock and shepherd in old time,
          Long springs and tepid winters, on the banks
          Of delicate Galesus; and no less
          Those scattered along Adria's myrtle shores:
          Smooth life had herdsman, and his snow-white herd
          To triumphs and to sacrificial rites
          Devoted, on the inviolable stream
          Of rich Clitumnus; and the goat-herd lived                 180
          As calmly, underneath the pleasant brows
          Of cool Lucretilis, where the pipe was heard
          Of Pan, Invisible God, thrilling the rocks
          With tutelary music, from all harm
          The fold protecting, I myself, mature
          In manhood then, have seen a pastoral tract
          Like one of these, where Fancy might run wild,
          Though under skies less generous, less serene:
          There, for her own delight had Nature framed
          A pleasure-ground, diffused a fair expanse                 190
          Of level pasture, islanded with groves
          And banked with woody risings; but the Plain
          Endless, here opening widely out, and there
          Shut up in lesser lakes or beds of lawn
          And intricate recesses, creek or bay
          Sheltered within a shelter, where at large
          The shepherd strays, a rolling hut his home.
          Thither he comes with spring-time, there abides
          All summer, and at sunrise ye may hear
          His flageolet to liquid notes of love                      200
          Attuned, or sprightly fife resounding far.
          Nook is there none, nor tract of that vast space
          Where passage opens, but the same shall have
          In turn its visitant, telling there his hours
          In unlaborious pleasure, with no task
          More toilsome than to carve a beechen bowl
          For spring or fountain, which the traveller finds,
          When through the region he pursues at will
          His devious course. A glimpse of such sweet life
          I saw when, from the melancholy walls                      210
          Of Goslar, once imperial, I renewed
          My daily walk along that wide champaign,
          That, reaching to her gates, spreads east and west,
          And northwards, from beneath the mountainous verge
          Of the Hercynian forest. Yet, hail to you
          Moors, mountains, headlands, and ye hollow vales,
          Ye long deep channels for the Atlantic's voice,
          Powers of my native region! Ye that seize
          The heart with firmer grasp! Your snows and streams
          Ungovernable, and your terrifying winds,                   220
          That howl so dismally for him who treads
          Companionless your awful solitudes!
          There, 'tis the shepherd's task the winter long
          To wait upon the storms: of their approach
          Sagacious, into sheltering coves he drives
          His flock, and thither from the homestead bears
          A toilsome burden up the craggy ways,
          And deals it out, their regular nourishment
          Strewn on the frozen snow. And when the spring
          Looks out, and all the pastures dance with lambs,          230
          And when the flock, with warmer weather, climbs
          Higher and higher, him his office leads
          To watch their goings, whatsoever track
          The wanderers choose. For this he quits his home
          At day-spring, and no sooner doth the sun
          Begin to strike him with a fire-like heat,
          Than he lies down upon some shining rock,
          And breakfasts with his dog. When they have stolen,
          As is their wont, a pittance from strict time,
          For rest not needed or exchange of love,                   240
          Then from his couch he starts; and now his feet
          Crush out a livelier fragrance from the flowers
          Of lowly thyme, by Nature's skill enwrought
          In the wild turf: the lingering dews of morn
          Smoke round him, as from hill to hill he hies,
          His staff protending like a hunter's spear,
          Or by its aid leaping from crag to crag,
          And o'er the brawling beds of unbridged streams.
          Philosophy, methinks, at Fancy's call,
          Might deign to follow him through what he does             250
          Or sees in his day's march; himself he feels,
          In those vast regions where his service lies,
          A freeman, wedded to his life of hope
          And hazard, and hard labour interchanged
          With that majestic indolence so dear
          To native man. A rambling schoolboy, thus,
          I felt his presence in his own domain,
          As of a lord and master, or a power,
          Or genius, under Nature, under God,
          Presiding; and severest solitude                           260
          Had more commanding looks when he was there.
          When up the lonely brooks on rainy days
          Angling I went, or trod the trackless hills
          By mists bewildered, suddenly mine eyes
          Have glanced upon him distant a few steps,
          In size a giant, stalking through thick fog,
          His sheep like Greenland bears; or, as he stepped
          Beyond the boundary line of some hill-shadow,
          His form hath flashed upon me, glorified
          By the deep radiance of the setting sun:                   270
          Or him have I descried in distant sky,
          A solitary object and sublime,
          Above all height! like an aerial cross
          Stationed alone upon a spiry rock
          Of the Chartreuse, for worship. Thus was man
          Ennobled outwardly before my sight,
          And thus my heart was early introduced
          To an unconscious love and reverence
          Of human nature; hence the human form
          To me became an index of delight,                          280
          Of grace and honour, power and worthiness.
          Meanwhile this creature--spiritual almost
          As those of books, but more exalted far;
          Far more of an imaginative form
          Than the gay Corin of the groves, who lives
          For his own fancies, or to dance by the hour,
          In coronal, with Phyllis in the midst--
          Was, for the purposes of kind, a man
          With the most common; husband, father; learned,
          Could teach, admonish; suffered with the rest              290
          From vice and folly, wretchedness and fear;
          Of this I little saw, cared less for it,
          But something must have felt.
                                         Call ye these appearances--
          Which I beheld of shepherds in my youth,
          This sanctity of Nature given to man--
          A shadow, a delusion, ye who pore
          On the dead letter, miss the spirit of things;
          Whose truth is not a motion or a shape
          Instinct with vital functions, but a block
          Or waxen image which yourselves have made,                 300
          And ye adore! But blessed be the God
          Of Nature and of Man that this was so;
          That men before my inexperienced eyes
          Did first present themselves thus purified,
          Removed, and to a distance that was fit:
          And so we all of us in some degree
          Are led to knowledge, wheresoever led,
          And howsoever; were it otherwise,
          And we found evil fast as we find good
          In our first years, or think that it is found,             310
          How could the innocent heart bear up and live!
          But doubly fortunate my lot; not here
          Alone, that something of a better life
          Perhaps was round me than it is the privilege
          Of most to move in, but that first I looked
          At Man through objects that were great or fair;
          First communed with him by their help. And thus
          Was founded a sure safeguard and defence
          Against the weight of meanness, selfish cares,
          Coarse manners, vulgar passions, that beat in              320
          On all sides from the ordinary world
          In which we traffic. Starting from this point
          I had my face turned toward the truth, began
          With an advantage furnished by that kind
          Of prepossession, without which the soul
          Receives no knowledge that can bring forth good,
          No genuine insight ever comes to her.
          From the restraint of over-watchful eyes
          Preserved, I moved about, year after year,
          Happy, and now most thankful that my walk                  330
          Was guarded from too early intercourse
          With the deformities of crowded life,
          And those ensuing laughters and contempts,
          Self-pleasing, which, if we would wish to think
          With a due reverence on earth's rightful lord,
          Here placed to be the inheritor of heaven,
          Will not permit us; but pursue the mind,
          That to devotion willingly would rise,
          Into the temple and the temple's heart.

            Yet deem not, Friend! that human kind with me            340
          Thus early took a place pre-eminent;
          Nature herself was, at this unripe time,
          But secondary to my own pursuits
          And animal activities, and all
          Their trivial pleasures; and when these had drooped
          And gradually expired, and Nature, prized
          For her own sake, became my joy, even then--
          And upwards through late youth, until not less
          Than two-and-twenty summers had been told--
          Was Man in my affections and regards                       350
          Subordinate to her, her visible forms
          And viewless agencies: a passion, she,
          A rapture often, and immediate love
          Ever at hand; he, only a delight
          Occasional, an accidental grace,
          His hour being not yet come. Far less had then
          The inferior creatures, beast or bird, attuned
          My spirit to that gentleness of love,
          (Though they had long been carefully observed),
          Won from me those minute obeisances                        360
          Of tenderness, which I may number now
          With my first blessings. Nevertheless, on these
          The light of beauty did not fall in vain,
          Or grandeur circumfuse them to no end.

            But when that first poetic faculty
          Of plain Imagination and severe,
          No longer a mute influence of the soul,
          Ventured, at some rash Muse's earnest call,
          To try her strength among harmonious words;
          And to book-notions and the rules of art                   370
          Did knowingly conform itself; there came
          Among the simple shapes of human life
          A wilfulness of fancy and conceit;
          And Nature and her objects beautified
          These fictions, as in some sort, in their turn,
          They burnished her. From touch of this new power
          Nothing was safe: the elder-tree that grew
          Beside the well-known charnel-house had then
          A dismal look: the yew-tree had its ghost,
          That took his station there for ornament:                  380
          The dignities of plain occurrence then
          Were tasteless, and truth's golden mean, a point
          Where no sufficient pleasure could be found.
          Then, if a widow, staggering with the blow
          Of her distress, was known to have turned her steps
          To the cold grave in which her husband slept,
          One night, or haply more than one, through pain
          Or half-insensate impotence of mind,
          The fact was caught at greedily, and there
          She must be visitant the whole year through,               390
          Wetting the turf with never-ending tears.

            Through quaint obliquities I might pursue
          These cravings; when the foxglove, one by one,
          Upwards through every stage of the tall stem,
          Had shed beside the public way its bells,
          And stood of all dismantled, save the last
          Left at the tapering ladder's top, that seemed
          To bend as doth a slender blade of grass
          Tipped with a rain-drop, Fancy loved to seat,
          Beneath the plant despoiled, but crested still             400
          With this last relic, soon itself to fall,
          Some vagrant mother, whose arch little ones,
          All unconcerned by her dejected plight,
          Laughed as with rival eagerness their hands
          Gathered the purple cups that round them lay,
          Strewing the turfs green slope.
                                           A diamond light
          (Whene'er the summer sun, declining, smote
          A smooth rock wet with constant springs) was seen
          Sparkling from out a copse-clad bank that rose
          Fronting our cottage. Oft beside the hearth                410
          Seated, with open door, often and long
          Upon this restless lustre have I gazed,
          That made my fancy restless as itself.
          'Twas now for me a burnished silver shield
          Suspended over a knight's tomb, who lay
          Inglorious, buried in the dusky wood:
          An entrance now into some magic cave
          Or palace built by fairies of the rock;
          Nor could I have been bribed to disenchant
          The spectacle, by visiting the spot.                       420
          Thus wilful Fancy, in no hurtful mood,
          Engrafted far-fetched shapes on feelings bred
          By pure Imagination: busy Power
          She was, and with her ready pupil turned
          Instinctively to human passions, then
          Least understood. Yet, 'mid the fervent swarm
          Of these vagaries, with an eye so rich
          As mine was through the bounty of a grand
          And lovely region, I had forms distinct
          To steady me: each airy thought revolved                   430
          Round a substantial centre, which at once
          Incited it to motion, and controlled.
          I did not pine like one in cities bred,
          As was thy melancholy lot, dear Friend!
          Great Spirit as thou art, in endless dreams
          Of sickliness, disjoining, joining, things
          Without the light of knowledge. Where the harm,
          If, when the woodman languished with disease
          Induced by sleeping nightly on the ground
          Within his sod-built cabin, Indian-wise,                   440
          I called the pangs of disappointed love,
          And all the sad etcetera of the wrong,
          To help him to his grave? Meanwhile the man,
          If not already from the woods retired
          To die at home, was haply, as I knew,
          Withering by slow degrees, 'mid gentle airs,
          Birds, running streams, and hills so beautiful
          On golden evenings, while the charcoal pile
          Breathed up its smoke, an image of his ghost
          Or spirit that full soon must take her flight.             450
          Nor shall we not be tending towards that point
          Of sound humanity to which our Tale
          Leads, though by sinuous ways, if here I show
          How Fancy, in a season when she wove
          Those slender cords, to guide the unconscious Boy
          For the Man's sake, could feed at Nature's call
          Some pensive musings which might well beseem
          Maturer years.
                          A grove there is whose boughs
          Stretch from the western marge of Thurstonmere
          With length of shade so thick, that whoso glides           460
          Along the line of low-roofed water, moves
          As in a cloister. Once--while, in that shade
          Loitering, I watched the golden beams of light
          Flung from the setting sun, as they reposed
          In silent beauty on the naked ridge
          Of a high eastern hill--thus flowed my thoughts
          In a pure stream of words fresh from the heart:
          Dear native Regions, wheresoe'er shall close
          My mortal course, there will I think on you;
          Dying, will cast on you a backward look;                   470
          Even as this setting sun (albeit the Vale
          Is no where touched by one memorial gleam)
          Doth with the fond remains of his last power
          Still linger, and a farewell lustre sheds,
          On the dear mountain-tops where first he rose.

            Enough of humble arguments; recall,
          My Song! those high emotions which thy voice
          Has heretofore made known; that bursting forth
          Of sympathy, inspiring and inspired,
          When everywhere a vital pulse was felt,                    480
          And all the several frames of things, like stars,
          Through every magnitude distinguishable,
          Shone mutually indebted, or half lost
          Each in the other's blaze, a galaxy
          Of life and glory. In the midst stood Man,
          Outwardly, inwardly contemplated,
          As, of all visible natures, crown, though born
          Of dust, and kindred to the worm; a Being,
          Both in perception and discernment, first
          In every capability of rapture,                            490
          Through the divine effect of power and love;
          As, more than anything we know, instinct
          With godhead, and, by reason and by will,
          Acknowledging dependency sublime.

            Ere long, the lonely mountains left, I moved,
          Begirt, from day to day, with temporal shapes
          Of vice and folly thrust upon my view,
          Objects of sport, and ridicule, and scorn,
          Manners and characters discriminate,
          And little bustling passions that eclipse,                 500
          As well they might, the impersonated thought,
          The idea, or abstraction of the kind.

            An idler among academic bowers,
          Such was my new condition, as at large
          Has been set forth; yet here the vulgar light
          Of present, actual, superficial life,
          Gleaming through colouring of other times,
          Old usages and local privilege,
          Was welcomed, softened, if not solemnised.
          This notwithstanding, being brought more near              510
          To vice and guilt, forerunning wretchedness,
          I trembled,--thought, at times, of human life
          With an indefinite terror and dismay,
          Such as the storms and angry elements
          Had bred in me; but gloomier far, a dim
          Analogy to uproar and misrule,
          Disquiet, danger, and obscurity.

            It might be told (but wherefore speak of things
          Common to all?) that, seeing, I was led
          Gravely to ponder--judging between good                    520
          And evil, not as for the mind's delight
          But for her guidance--one who was to 'act',
          As sometimes to the best of feeble means
          I did, by human sympathy impelled:
          And, through dislike and most offensive pain,
          Was to the truth conducted; of this faith
          Never forsaken, that, by acting well,
          And understanding, I should learn to love
          The end of life, and everything we know.

            Grave Teacher, stern Preceptress! for at times           530
          Thou canst put on an aspect most severe;
          London, to thee I willingly return.
          Erewhile my verse played idly with the flowers
          Enwrought upon thy mantle; satisfied
          With that amusement, and a simple look
          Of child-like inquisition now and then
          Cast upwards on thy countenance, to detect
          Some inner meanings which might harbour there.
          But how could I in mood so light indulge,
          Keeping such fresh remembrance of the day,                 540
          When, having thridded the long labyrinth
          Of the suburban villages, I first
          Entered thy vast dominion? On the roof
          Of an itinerant vehicle I sate,
          With vulgar men about me, trivial forms
          Of houses, pavement, streets, of men and things,--
          Mean shapes on every side: but, at the instant,
          When to myself it fairly might be said,
          The threshold now is overpast, (how strange
          That aught external to the living mind                     550
          Should have such mighty sway! yet so it was),
          A weight of ages did at once descend
          Upon my heart; no thought embodied, no
          Distinct remembrances, but weight and power,--
          Power growing under weight: alas! I feel
          That I am trifling: 'twas a moment's pause,--
          All that took place within me came and went
          As in a moment; yet with Time it dwells,
          And grateful memory, as a thing divine.

            The curious traveller, who, from open day,               560
          Hath passed with torches into some huge cave,
          The Grotto of Antiparos, or the Den
          In old time haunted by that Danish Witch,
          Yordas; he looks around and sees the vault
          Widening on all sides; sees, or thinks he sees,
          Erelong, the massy roof above his head,
          That instantly unsettles and recedes,--
          Substance and shadow, light and darkness, all
          Commingled, making up a canopy
          Of shapes and forms and tendencies to shape                570
          That shift and vanish, change and interchange
          Like spectres,--ferment silent and sublime!
          That after a short space works less and less,
          Till, every effort, every motion gone,
          The scene before him stands in perfect view
          Exposed, and lifeless as a written book!--
          But let him pause awhile, and look again,
          And a new quickening shall succeed, at first
          Beginning timidly, then creeping fast,
          Till the whole cave, so late a senseless mass,             580
          Busies the eye with images and forms
          Boldly assembled,--here is shadowed forth
          From the projections, wrinkles, cavities,
          A variegated landscape,--there the shape
          Of some gigantic warrior clad in mail,
          The ghostly semblance of a hooded monk,
          Veiled nun, or pilgrim resting on his staff:
          Strange congregation! yet not slow to meet
          Eyes that perceive through minds that can inspire.

            Even in such sort had I at first been moved,             590
          Nor otherwise continued to be moved,
          As I explored the vast metropolis,
          Fount of my country's destiny and the world's;
          That great emporium, chronicle at once
          And burial-place of passions, and their home
          Imperial, their chief living residence.

            With strong sensations teeming as it did
          Of past and present, such a place must needs
          Have pleased me, seeking knowledge at that time
          Far less than craving power; yet knowledge came,           600
          Sought or unsought, and influxes of power
          Came, of themselves, or at her call derived
          In fits of kindliest apprehensiveness,
          From all sides, when whate'er was in itself
          Capacious found, or seemed to find, in me
          A correspondent amplitude of mind;
          Such is the strength and glory of our youth!
          The human nature unto which I felt
          That I belonged, and reverenced with love,
          Was not a punctual presence, but a spirit                  610
          Diffused through time and space, with aid derived
          Of evidence from monuments, erect,
          Prostrate, or leaning towards their common rest
          In earth, the widely scattered wreck sublime
          Of vanished nations, or more clearly drawn
          From books and what they picture and record.

            'Tis true, the history of our native land--
          With those of Greece compared and popular Rome,
          And in our high-wrought modern narratives
          Stript of their harmonising soul, the life                 620
          Of manners and familiar incidents--
          Had never much delighted me. And less
          Than other intellects had mine been used
          To lean upon extrinsic circumstance
          Of record or tradition; but a sense
          Of what in the Great City had been done
          And suffered, and was doing, suffering, still,
          Weighed with me, could support the test of thought;
          And, in despite of all that had gone by,
          Or was departing never to return,                          630
          There I conversed with majesty and power
          Like independent natures. Hence the place
          Was thronged with impregnations like the Wilds
          In which my early feelings had been nursed--
          Bare hills and valleys, full of caverns, rocks,
          And audible seclusions, dashing lakes,
          Echoes and waterfalls, and pointed crags
          That into music touch the passing wind.
          Here then my young imagination found
          No uncongenial element; could here                         640
          Among new objects serve or give command,
          Even as the heart's occasions might require,
          To forward reason's else too-scrupulous march.
          The effect was, still more elevated views
          Of human nature. Neither vice nor guilt,
          Debasement undergone by body or mind,
          Nor all the misery forced upon my sight,
          Misery not lightly passed, but sometimes scanned
          Most feelingly, could overthrow my trust
          In what we 'may' become; induce belief                     650
          That I was ignorant, had been falsely taught,
          A solitary, who with vain conceits
          Had been inspired, and walked about in dreams.
          From those sad scenes when meditation turned,
          Lo! everything that was indeed divine
          Retained its purity inviolate,
          Nay brighter shone, by this portentous gloom
          Set off; such opposition as aroused
          The mind of Adam, yet in Paradise
          Though fallen from bliss, when in the East he saw          660
          Darkness ere day's mid course, and morning light
          More orient in the western cloud, that drew
          O'er the blue firmament a radiant white,
          Descending slow with something heavenly fraught.

            Add also, that among the multitudes
          Of that huge city, oftentimes was seen
          Affectingly set forth, more than elsewhere
          Is possible, the unity of man,
          One spirit over ignorance and vice
          Predominant, in good and evil hearts;                      670
          One sense for moral judgments, as one eye
          For the sun's light. The soul when smitten thus
          By a sublime 'idea', whencesoe'er
          Vouchsafed for union or communion, feeds
          On the pure bliss, and takes her rest with God.

            Thus from a very early age, O Friend!
          My thoughts by slow gradations had been drawn
          To human-kind, and to the good and ill
          Of human life: Nature had led me on;
          And oft amid the "busy hum" I seemed                       680
          To travel independent of her help,
          As if I had forgotten her; but no,
          The world of human-kind outweighed not hers
          In my habitual thoughts; the scale of love,
          Though filling daily, still was light, compared
          With that in which 'her' mighty objects lay.
 
   

THE PRELUDE
BOOK NINTH
RESIDENCE IN FRANCE

          EVEN as a river,--partly (it might seem)
          Yielding to old remembrances, and swayed
          In part by fear to shape a way direct,
          That would engulph him soon in the ravenous sea--
          Turns, and will measure back his course, far back,
          Seeking the very regions which he crossed
          In his first outset; so have we, my Friend!
          Turned and returned with intricate delay.
          Or as a traveller, who has gained the brow
          Of some aerial Down, while there he halts                   10
          For breathing-time, is tempted to review
          The region left behind him; and, if aught
          Deserving notice have escaped regard,
          Or been regarded with too careless eye,
          Strives, from that height, with one and yet one more
          Last look, to make the best amends he may:
          So have we lingered. Now we start afresh
          With courage, and new hope risen on our toil.
          Fair greetings to this shapeless eagerness,
          Whene'er it comes! needful in work so long,                 20
          Thrice needful to the argument which now
          Awaits us! Oh, how much unlike the past!

            Free as a colt at pasture on the hill,
          I ranged at large, through London's wide domain,
          Month after month. Obscurely did I live,
          Not seeking frequent intercourse with men,
          By literature, or elegance, or rank,
          Distinguished. Scarcely was a year thus spent
          Ere I forsook the crowded solitude,
          With less regret for its luxurious pomp,                    30
          And all the nicely-guarded shows of art,
          Than for the humble book-stalls in the streets,
          Exposed to eye and hand where'er I turned.

            France lured me forth; the realm that I had crossed
          So lately, journeying toward the snow-clad Alps.
          But now, relinquishing the scrip and staff,
          And all enjoyment which the summer sun
          Sheds round the steps of those who meet the day
          With motion constant as his own, I went
          Prepared to sojourn in a pleasant town,                     40
          Washed by the current of the stately Loire.

            Through Paris lay my readiest course, and there
          Sojourning a few days, I visited
          In haste, each spot of old or recent fame,
          The latter chiefly, from the field of Mars
          Down to the suburbs of St. Antony,
          And from Mont Martre southward to the Dome
          Of Genevieve. In both her clamorous Halls,
          The National Synod and the Jacobins,
          I saw the Revolutionary Power                               50
          Toss like a ship at anchor, rocked by storms;
          The Arcades I traversed, in the Palace huge
          Of Orleans; coasted round and round the line
          Of Tavern, Brothel, Gaming-house, and Shop,
          Great rendezvous of worst and best, the walk
          Of all who had a purpose, or had not;
          I stared and listened, with a stranger's ears,
          To Hawkers and Haranguers, hubbub wild!
          And hissing Factionists with ardent eyes,
          In knots, or pairs, or single. Not a look                   60
          Hope takes, or Doubt or Fear is forced to wear,
          But seemed there present; and I scanned them all,
          Watched every gesture uncontrollable,
          Of anger, and vexation, and despite,
          All side by side, and struggling face to face,
          With gaiety and dissolute idleness.

            Where silent zephyrs sported with the dust
          Of the Bastille, I sate in the open sun,
          And from the rubbish gathered up a stone,
          And pocketed the relic, in the guise                        70
          Of an enthusiast; yet, in honest truth,
          I looked for something that I could not find,
          Affecting more emotion than I felt;
          For 'tis most certain, that these various sights,
          However potent their first shock, with me
          Appeared to recompense the traveller's pains
          Less than the painted Magdalene of Le Brun,
          A beauty exquisitely wrought, with hair
          Dishevelled, gleaming eyes, and rueful cheek
          Pale and bedropped with overflowing tears.                  80

            But hence to my more permanent abode
          I hasten; there, by novelties in speech,
          Domestic manners, customs, gestures, looks,
          And all the attire of ordinary life,
          Attention was engrossed; and, thus amused,
          I stood 'mid those concussions, unconcerned,
          Tranquil almost, and careless as a flower
          Glassed in a green-house, or a parlour shrub
          That spreads its leaves in unmolested peace,
          While every bush and tree, the country through,             90
          Is shaking to the roots: indifference this
          Which may seem strange: but I was unprepared
          With needful knowledge, had abruptly passed
          Into a theatre, whose stage was filled
          And busy with an action far advanced.
          Like others, I had skimmed, and sometimes read
          With care, the master pamphlets of the day;
          Nor wanted such half-insight as grew wild
          Upon that meagre soil, helped out by talk
          And public news; but having never seen                     100
          A chronicle that might suffice to show
          Whence the main organs of the public power
          Had sprung, their transmigrations, when and how
          Accomplished, giving thus unto events
          A form and body; all things were to me
          Loose and disjointed, and the affections left
          Without a vital interest. At that time,
          Moreover, the first storm was overblown,
          And the strong hand of outward violence
          Locked up in quiet. For myself, I fear                     110
          Now, in connection with so great a theme,
          To speak (as I must be compelled to do)
          Of one so unimportant; night by night
          Did I frequent the formal haunts of men,
          Whom, in the city, privilege of birth
          Sequestered from the rest, societies
          Polished in arts, and in punctilio versed;
          Whence, and from deeper causes, all discourse
          Of good and evil of the time was shunned
          With scrupulous care; but these restrictions soon          120
          Proved tedious, and I gradually withdrew
          Into a noisier world, and thus ere long
          Became a patriot; and my heart was all
          Given to the people, and my love was theirs.

            A band of military Officers,
          Then stationed in the city, were the chief
          Of my associates: some of these wore swords
          That had been seasoned in the wars, and all
          Were men well-born; the chivalry of France.
          In age and temper differing, they had yet                  130
          One spirit ruling in each heart; alike
          (Save only one, hereafter to be named)
          Were bent upon undoing what was done:
          This was their rest and only hope; therewith
          No fear had they of bad becoming worse,
          For worst to them was come; nor would have stirred,
          Or deemed it worth a moment's thought to stir,
          In anything, save only as the act
          Looked thitherward. One, reckoning by years,
          Was in the prime of manhood, and erewhile                  140
          He had sate lord in many tender hearts;
          Though heedless of such honours now, and changed:
          His temper was quite mastered by the times,
          And they had blighted him, had eaten away
          The beauty of his person, doing wrong
          Alike to body and to mind: his port,
          Which once had been erect and open, now
          Was stooping and contracted, and a face,
          Endowed by Nature with her fairest gifts
          Of symmetry and light and bloom, expressed,                150
          As much as any that was ever seen,
          A ravage out of season, made by thoughts
          Unhealthy and vexatious. With the hour,
          That from the press of Paris duly brought
          Its freight of public news, the fever came,
          A punctual visitant, to shake this man,
          Disarmed his voice and fanned his yellow cheek
          Into a thousand colours; while he read,
          Or mused, his sword was haunted by his touch
          Continually, like an uneasy place                          160
          In his own body. 'Twas in truth an hour
          Of universal ferment; mildest men
          Were agitated, and commotions, strife
          Of passion and opinion, filled the walls
          Of peaceful houses with unquiet sounds.
          The soil of common life was, at that time,
          Too hot to tread upon. Oft said I then,
          And not then only, "What a mockery this
          Of history, the past and that to come!
          Now do I feel how all men are deceived,                    170
          Reading of nations and their works, in faith,
          Faith given to vanity and emptiness;
          Oh! laughter for the page that would reflect
          To future times the face of what now is!"
          The land all swarmed with passion, like a plain
          Devoured by locusts,--Carra, Gorsas,--add
          A hundred other names, forgotten now,
          Nor to be heard of more; yet, they were powers,
          Like earthquakes, shocks repeated day by day,
          And felt through every nook of town and field.             180

            Such was the state of things. Meanwhile the chief
          Of my associates stood prepared for flight
          To augment the band of emigrants in arms
          Upon the borders of the Rhine, and leagued
          With foreign foes mustered for instant war.
          This was their undisguised intent, and they
          Were waiting with the whole of their desires
          The moment to depart.
                                 An Englishman,
          Born in a land whose very name appeared
          To license some unruliness of mind;
          A stranger, with youth's further privilege,                190
          And the indulgence that a half-learnt speech
          Wins from the courteous; I, who had been else
          Shunned and not tolerated, freely lived
          With these defenders of the Crown, and talked,
          And heard their notions; nor did they disdain
          The wish to bring me over to their cause.

            But though untaught by thinking or by books
          To reason well of polity or law,
          And nice distinctions, then on every tongue,
          Of natural rights and civil; and to acts                   200
          Of nations and their passing interests,
          (If with unworldly ends and aims compared)
          Almost indifferent, even the historian's tale
          Prizing but little otherwise than I prized
          Tales of the poets, as it made the heart
          Beat high, and filled the fancy with fair forms,
          Old heroes and their sufferings and their deeds;
          Yet in the regal sceptre, and the pomp
          Of orders and degrees, I nothing found
          Then, or had ever, even in crudest youth,                  210
          That dazzled me, but rather what I mourned
          And ill could brook, beholding that the best
          Ruled not, and feeling that they ought to rule.

            For, born in a poor district, and which yet
          Retaineth more of ancient homeliness,
          Than any other nook of English ground,
          It was my fortune scarcely to have seen,
          Through the whole tenor of my school-day time,
          The face of one, who, whether boy or man,
          Was vested with attention or respect                       220
          Through claims of wealth or blood; nor was it least
          Of many benefits, in later years
          Derived from academic institutes
          And rules, that they held something up to view
          Of a Republic, where all stood thus far
          Upon equal ground; that we were brothers all
          In honour, as in one community,
          Scholars and gentlemen; where, furthermore,
          Distinction open lay to all that came,
          And wealth and titles were in less esteem                  230
          Than talents, worth, and prosperous industry,
          Add unto this, subservience from the first
          To presences of God's mysterious power
          Made manifest in Nature's sovereignty,
          And fellowship with venerable books,
          To sanction the proud workings of the soul,
          And mountain liberty. It could not be
          But that one tutored thus should look with awe
          Upon the faculties of man, receive
          Gladly the highest promises, and hail,                     240
          As best, the government of equal rights
          And individual worth. And hence, O Friend!
          If at the first great outbreak I rejoiced
          Less than might well befit my youth, the cause
          In part lay here, that unto me the events
          Seemed nothing out of nature's certain course,
          A gift that was come rather late than soon.
          No wonder, then, if advocates like these,
          Inflamed by passion, blind with prejudice,
          And stung with injury, at this riper day,                  250
          Were impotent to make my hopes put on
          The shape of theirs, my understanding bend
          In honour to their honour: zeal, which yet
          Had slumbered, now in opposition burst
          Forth like a Polar summer: every word
          They uttered was a dart, by counter-winds
          Blown back upon themselves; their reason seemed
          Confusion-stricken by a higher power
          Than human understanding, their discourse
          Maimed, spiritless; and, in their weakness strong,         260
          I triumphed.
                        Meantime, day by day, the roads
          Were crowded with the bravest youth of France,
          And all the promptest of her spirits, linked
          In gallant soldiership, and posting on
          To meet the war upon her frontier bounds.
          Yet at this very moment do tears start
          Into mine eyes: I do not say I weep--
          I wept not then,--but tears have dimmed my sight,
          In memory of the farewells of that time,
          Domestic severings, female fortitude                       270
          At dearest separation, patriot love
          And self-devotion, and terrestrial hope,
          Encouraged with a martyr's confidence;
          Even files of strangers merely seen but once,
          And for a moment, men from far with sound
          Of music, martial tunes, and banners spread,
          Entering the city, here and there a face,
          Or person, singled out among the rest,
          Yet still a stranger and beloved as such;
          Even by these passing spectacles my heart                  280
          Was oftentimes uplifted, and they seemed
          Arguments sent from Heaven to prove the cause
          Good, pure, which no one could stand up against,
          Who was not lost, abandoned, selfish, proud,
          Mean, miserable, wilfully depraved,
          Hater perverse of equity and truth.

            Among that band of Officers was one,
          Already hinted at, of other mould--
          A patriot, thence rejected by the rest,
          And with an oriental loathing spurned,                     290
          As of a different caste. A meeker man
          Than this lived never, nor a more benign,
          Meek though enthusiastic. Injuries
          Made 'him' more gracious, and his nature then
          Did breathe its sweetness out most sensibly,
          As aromatic flowers on Alpine turf,
          When foot hath crushed them. He through the events
          Of that great change wandered in perfect faith,
          As through a book, an old romance, or tale
          Of Fairy, or some dream of actions wrought                 300
          Behind the summer clouds. By birth he ranked
          With the most noble, but unto the poor
          Among mankind he was in service bound,
          As by some tie invisible, oaths professed
          To a religious order. Man he loved
          As man; and, to the mean and the obscure,
          And all the homely in their homely works,
          Transferred a courtesy which had no air
          Of condescension; but did rather seem
          A passion and a gallantry, like that                       310
          Which he, a soldier, in his idler day
          Had paid to woman: somewhat vain he was,
          Or seemed so, yet it was not vanity,
          But fondness, and a kind of radiant joy
          Diffused around him, while he was intent
          On works of love or freedom, or revolved
          Complacently the progress of a cause,
          Whereof he was a part: yet this was meek
          And placid, and took nothing from the man
          That was delightful. Oft in solitude                       320
          With him did I discourse about the end
          Of civil government, and its wisest forms;
          Of ancient loyalty, and chartered rights,
          Custom and habit, novelty and change;
          Of self-respect, and virtue in the few
          For patrimonial honour set apart,
          And ignorance in the labouring multitude.
          For he, to all intolerance indisposed,
          Balanced these contemplations in his mind;
          And I, who at that time was scarcely dipped                330
          Into the turmoil, bore a sounder judgment
          Than later days allowed; carried about me,
          With less alloy to its integrity,
          The experience of past ages, as, through help
          Of books and common life, it makes sure way
          To youthful minds, by objects over near
          Not pressed upon, nor dazzled or misled
          By struggling with the crowd for present ends.

            But though not deaf, nor obstinate to find
          Error without excuse upon the side                         340
          Of them who strove against us, more delight
          We took, and let this freely be confessed,
          In painting to ourselves the miseries
          Of royal courts, and that voluptuous life
          Unfeeling, where the man who is of soul
          The meanest thrives the most; where dignity,
          True personal dignity, abideth not;
          A light, a cruel, and vain world cut off
          From the natural inlets of just sentiment,
          From lowly sympathy and chastening truth;                  350
          Where good and evil interchange their names,
          And thirst for bloody spoils abroad is paired
          With vice at home. We added dearest themes--
          Man and his noble nature, as it is
          The gift which God has placed within his power,
          His blind desires and steady faculties
          Capable of clear truth, the one to break
          Bondage, the other to build liberty
          On firm foundations, making social life,
          Through knowledge spreading and imperishable,              360
          As just in regulation, and as pure
          As individual in the wise and good.

            We summoned up the honourable deeds
          Of ancient Story, thought of each bright spot,
          That would be found in all recorded time,
          Of truth preserved and error passed away;
          Of single spirits that catch the flame from Heaven,
          And how the multitudes of men will feed
          And fan each other; thought of sects, how keen
          They are to put the appropriate nature on,                 370
          Triumphant over every obstacle
          Of custom, language, country, love, or hate,
          And what they do and suffer for their creed;
          How far they travel, and how long endure;
          How quickly mighty Nations have been formed,
          From least beginnings; how, together locked
          By new opinions, scattered tribes have made
          One body, spreading wide as clouds in heaven.
          To aspirations then of our own minds
          Did we appeal; and, finally, beheld                        380
          A living confirmation of the whole
          Before us, in a people from the depth
          Of shameful imbecility uprisen,
          Fresh as the morning star. Elate we looked
          Upon their virtues; saw, in rudest men,
          Self-sacrifice the firmest; generous love,
          And continence of mind, and sense of right,
          Uppermost in the midst of fiercest strife.

            Oh, sweet it is, in academic groves,
          Or such retirement, Friend! as we have known               390
          In the green dales beside our Rotha's stream,
          Greta, or Derwent, or some nameless rill,
          To ruminate, with interchange of talk,
          On rational liberty, and hope in man,
          Justice and peace. But far more sweet such toil--
          Toil, say I, for it leads to thoughts abstruse--
          If nature then be standing on the brink
          Of some great trial, and we hear the voice
          Of one devoted,--one whom circumstance
          Hath called upon to embody his deep sense                  400
          In action, give it outwardly a shape,
          And that of benediction, to the world.
          Then doubt is not, and truth is more than truth,--
          A hope it is, and a desire; a creed
          Of zeal, by an authority Divine
          Sanctioned, of danger, difficulty, or death.
          Such conversation, under Attic shades,
          Did Dion hold with Plato; ripened thus
          For a Deliverer's glorious task,--and such
          He, on that ministry already bound,                        410
          Held with Eudemus and Timonides,
          Surrounded by adventurers in arms,
          When those two vessels with their daring freight,
          For the Sicilian Tyrant's overthrow,
          Sailed from Zacynthus,--philosophic war,
          Led by Philosophers. With harder fate,
          Though like ambition, such was he, O Friend!
          Of whom I speak. So Beaupuis (let the name
          Stand near the worthiest of Antiquity)
          Fashioned his life; and many a long discourse,             420
          With like persuasion honoured, we maintained:
          He, on his part, accoutred for the worst,
          He perished fighting, in supreme command,
          Upon the borders of the unhappy Loire,
          For liberty, against deluded men,
          His fellow-countrymen; and yet most blessed
          In this, that he the fate of later times
          Lived not to see, nor what we now behold,
          Who have as ardent hearts as he had then.

            Along that very Loire, with festal mirth                 430
          Resounding at all hours, and innocent yet
          Of civil slaughter, was our frequent walk;
          Or in wide forests of continuous shade,
          Lofty and over-arched, with open space
          Beneath the trees, clear footing many a mile--
          A solemn region. Oft amid those haunts,
          From earnest dialogues I slipped in thought,
          And let remembrance steal to other times,
          When, o'er those interwoven roots, moss-clad,
          And smooth as marble or a waveless sea,                    440
          Some Hermit, from his cell forth-strayed, might pace
          In sylvan meditation undisturbed;
          As on the pavement of a Gothic church
          Walks a lone Monk, when service hath expired,
          In peace and silence. But if e'er was heard,--
          Heard, though unseen,--a devious traveller,
          Retiring or approaching from afar
          With speed and echoes loud of trampling hoofs
          From the hard floor reverberated, then
          It was Angelica thundering through the woods               450
          Upon her palfrey, or that gentle maid
          Erminia, fugitive as fair as she.
          Sometimes methought I saw a pair of knights
          Joust underneath the trees, that as in storm
          Rocked high above their heads; anon, the din
          Of boisterous merriment, and music's roar,
          In sudden proclamation, burst from haunt
          Of Satyrs in some viewless glade, with dance
          Rejoicing o'er a female in the midst,
          A mortal beauty, their unhappy thrall.                     460
          The width of those huge forests, unto me
          A novel scene, did often in this way
          Master my fancy while I wandered on
          With that revered companion. And sometimes--
          When to a convent in a meadow green,
          By a brook-side, we came, a roofless pile,
          And not by reverential touch of Time
          Dismantled, but by violence abrupt--
          In spite of those heart-bracing colloquies,
          In spite of real fervour, and of that                      470
          Less genuine and wrought up within myself--
          I could not but bewail a wrong so harsh,
          And for the Matin-bell to sound no more
          Grieved, and the twilight taper, and the cross
          High on the topmost pinnacle, a sign
          (How welcome to the weary traveller's eyes!)
          Of hospitality and peaceful rest.
          And when the partner of those varied walks
          Pointed upon occasion to the site
          Of Romorentin, home of ancient kings,                      480
          To the imperial edifice of Blois,
          Or to that rural castle, name now slipped
          From my remembrance, where a lady lodged,
          By the first Francis wooed, and bound to him
          In chains of mutual passion, from the tower,
          As a tradition of the country tells,
          Practised to commune with her royal knight
          By cressets and love-beacons, intercourse
          'Twixt her high-seated residence and his
          Far off at Chambord on the plain beneath;                  490
          Even here, though less than with the peaceful house
          Religious, 'mid those frequent monuments
          Of Kings, their vices and their better deeds,
          Imagination, potent to inflame
          At times with virtuous wrath and noble scorn,
          Did also often mitigate the force
          Of civic prejudice, the bigotry,
          So call it, of a youthful patriot's mind;
          And on these spots with many gleams I looked
          Of chivalrous delight. Yet not the less,                   500
          Hatred of absolute rule, where will of one
          Is law for all, and of that barren pride
          In them who, by immunities unjust,
          Between the sovereign and the people stand,
          His helper and not theirs, laid stronger hold
          Daily upon me, mixed with pity too
          And love; for where hope is, there love will be
          For the abject multitude, And when we chanced
          One day to meet a hunger-bitten girl,
          Who crept along fitting her languid gait                   510
          Unto a heifer's motion, by a cord
          Tied to her arm, and picking thus from the lane
          Its sustenance, while the girl with pallid hands
          Was busy knitting in a heartless mood
          Of solitude, and at the sight my friend
          In agitation said, "'Tis against 'that'
          That we are fighting," I with him believed
          That a benignant spirit was abroad
          Which might not be withstood, that poverty
          Abject as this would in a little time                      520
          Be found no more, that we should see the earth
          Unthwarted in her wish to recompense
          The meek, the lowly, patient child of toil,
          All institutes for ever blotted out
          That legalised exclusion, empty pomp
          Abolished, sensual state and cruel power
          Whether by edict of the one or few;
          And finally, as sum and crown of all,
          Should see the people having a strong hand
          In framing their own laws; whence better days              530
          To all mankind. But, these things set apart,
          Was not this single confidence enough
          To animate the mind that ever turned
          A thought to human welfare? That henceforth
          Captivity by mandate without law
          Should cease; and open accusation lead
          To sentence in the hearing of the world,
          And open punishment, if not the air
          Be free to breathe in, and the heart of man
          Dread nothing. From this height I shall not stoop          540
          To humbler matter that detained us oft
          In thought or conversation, public acts,
          And public persons, and emotions wrought
          Within the breast, as ever-varying winds
          Of record or report swept over us;
          But I might here, instead, repeat a tale,
          Told by my Patriot friend, of sad events,
          That prove to what low depth had struck the roots,
          How widely spread the boughs, of that old tree
          Which, as a deadly mischief, and a foul                    550
          And black dishonour, France was weary of.

            Oh, happy time of youthful lovers, (thus
          The story might begin,) oh, balmy time,
          In which a love-knot, on a lady's brow,
          Is fairer than the fairest star in Heaven!
          So might--and with that prelude 'did' begin
          The record; and, in faithful verse, was given
          The doleful sequel.
                               But our little bark
          On a strong river boldly hath been launched;
          And from the driving current should we turn                560
          To loiter wilfully within a creek,
          Howe'er attractive, Fellow voyager!
          Would'st thou not chide? Yet deem not my pains lost:
          For Vaudracour and Julia (so were named
          The ill-fated pair) in that plain tale will draw
          Tears from the hearts of others, when their own
          Shall beat no more. Thou, also, there may'st read,
          At leisure, how the enamoured youth was driven,
          By public power abased, to fatal crime,
          Nature's rebellion against monstrous law;                  570
          How, between heart and heart, oppression thrust
          Her mandates, severing whom true love had joined,
          Harassing both; until he sank and pressed
          The couch his fate had made for him; supine,
          Save when the stings of viperous remorse,
          Trying their strength, enforced him to start up,
          Aghast and prayerless. Into a deep wood
          He fled, to shun the haunts of human kind;
          There dwelt, weakened in spirit more and more;
          Nor could the voice of Freedom, which through France       580
          Full speedily resounded, public hope,
          Or personal memory of his own worst wrongs,
          Rouse him; but, hidden in those gloomy shades,
          His days he wasted,--an imbecile mind.
 
   

THE PRELUDE
BOOK TENTH
RESIDENCE IN FRANCE (continued)

          IT was a beautiful and silent day
          That overspread the countenance of earth,
          Then fading with unusual quietness,--
          A day as beautiful as e'er was given
          To soothe regret, though deepening what it soothed,
          When by the gliding Loire I paused, and cast
          Upon his rich domains, vineyard and tilth,
          Green meadow-ground, and many-coloured woods,
          Again, and yet again, a farewell look;
          Then from the quiet of that scene passed on,                10
          Bound to the fierce Metropolis. From his throne
          The King had fallen, and that invading host--
          Presumptuous cloud, on whose black front was written
          The tender mercies of the dismal wind
          That bore it--on the plains of Liberty
          Had burst innocuous. Say in bolder words,
          They--who had come elate as eastern hunters
          Banded beneath the Great Mogul, when he
          Erewhile went forth from Agra or Lahore,
          Rajahs and Omrahs in his train, intent                      20
          To drive their prey enclosed within a ring
          Wide as a province, but, the signal given,
          Before the point of the life-threatening spear
          Narrowing itself by moments--they, rash men,
          Had seen the anticipated quarry turned
          Into avengers, from whose wrath they fled
          In terror. Disappointment and dismay
          Remained for all whose fancies had run wild
          With evil expectations; confidence
          And perfect triumph for the better cause.                   30

            The State--as if to stamp the final seal
          On her security, and to the world
          Show what she was, a high and fearless soul,
          Exulting in defiance, or heart-stung
          By sharp resentment, or belike to taunt
          With spiteful gratitude the baffled League,
          That had stirred up her slackening faculties
          To a new transition--when the King was crushed,
          Spared not the empty throne, and in proud haste
          Assumed the body and venerable name                         40
          Of a Republic. Lamentable crimes,
          'Tis true, had gone before this hour, dire work
          Of massacre, in which the senseless sword
          Was prayed to as a judge; but these were past,
          Earth free from them for ever, as was thought,--
          Ephemeral monsters, to be seen but once!
          Things that could only show themselves and die.

            Cheered with this hope, to Paris I returned,
          And ranged, with ardour heretofore unfelt,
          The spacious city, and in progress passed                   50
          The prison where the unhappy Monarch lay,
          Associate with his children and his wife
          In bondage; and the palace, lately stormed
          With roar of cannon by a furious host.
          I crossed the square (an empty area then!)
          Of the Carrousel, where so late had lain
          The dead, upon the dying heaped, and gazed
          On this and other spots, as doth a man
          Upon a volume whose contents he knows
          Are memorable, but from him locked up,                      60
          Being written in a tongue he cannot read,
          So that he questions the mute leaves with pain,
          And half upbraids their silence. But that night
          I felt most deeply in what world I was,
          What ground I trod on, and what air I breathed.
          High was my room and lonely, near the roof
          Of a large mansion or hotel, a lodge
          That would have pleased me in more quiet times;
          Nor was it wholly without pleasure then.
          With unextinguished taper I kept watch,                     70
          Reading at intervals; the fear gone by
          Pressed on me almost like a fear to come.
          I thought of those September massacres,
          Divided from me by one little month,
          Saw them and touched: the rest was conjured up
          From tragic fictions or true history,
          Remembrances and dim admonishments.
          The horse is taught his manage, and no star
          Of wildest course but treads back his own steps;
          For the spent hurricane the air provides                    80
          As fierce a successor; the tide retreats
          But to return out of its hiding-place
          In the great deep; all things have second birth;
          The earthquake is not satisfied at once;
          And in this way I wrought upon myself,
          Until I seemed to hear a voice that cried,
          To the whole city, "Sleep no more." The trance
          Fled with the voice to which it had given birth;
          But vainly comments of a calmer mind
          Promised soft peace and sweet forgetfulness.                90
          The place, all hushed and silent as it was,
          Appeared unfit for the repose of night,
          Defenceless as a wood where tigers roam.

            With early morning towards the Palace-walk
          Of Orleans eagerly I turned: as yet
          The streets were still; not so those long Arcades;
          There, 'mid a peal of ill-matched sounds and cries,
          That greeted me on entering, I could hear
          Shrill voices from the hawkers in the throng,
          Bawling, "Denunciation of the Crimes                       100
          Of Maximilian Robespierre;" the hand,
          Prompt as the voice, held forth a printed speech,
          The same that had been recently pronounced,
          When Robespierre, not ignorant for what mark
          Some words of indirect reproof had been
          Intended, rose in hardihood, and dared
          The man who had an ill surmise of him
          To bring his charge in openness; whereat,
          When a dead pause ensued, and no one stirred,
          In silence of all present, from his seat                   110
          Louvet walked single through the avenue,
          And took his station in the Tribune, saying,
          "I, Robespierre, accuse thee!" Well is known
          The inglorious issue of that charge, and how
          He, who had launched the startling thunderbolt,
          The one bold man, whose voice the attack had sounded,
          Was left without a follower to discharge
          His perilous duty, and retire lamenting
          That Heaven's best aid is wasted upon men
          Who to themselves are false.
                                        But these are things         120
          Of which I speak, only as they were storm
          Or sunshine to my individual mind,
          No further. Let me then relate that now--
          In some sort seeing with my proper eyes
          That Liberty, and Life, and Death, would soon
          To the remotest corners of the land
          Lie in the arbitrement of those who ruled
          The capital City; what was struggled for,
          And by what combatants victory must be won;
          The indecision on their part whose aim                     130
          Seemed best, and the straightforward path of those
          Who in attack or in defence were strong
          Through their impiety--my inmost soul
          Was agitated; yea, I could almost
          Have prayed that throughout earth upon all men,
          By patient exercise of reason made
          Worthy of liberty, all spirits filled
          With zeal expanding in Truth's holy light,
          The gift of tongues might fall, and power arrive
          From the four quarters of the winds to do                  140
          For France, what without help she could not do,
          A work of honour; think not that to this
          I added, work of safety: from all doubt
          Or trepidation for the end of things
          Far was I, far as angels are from guilt.

            Yet did I grieve, nor only grieved, but thought
          Of opposition and of remedies:
          An insignificant stranger and obscure,
          And one, moreover, little graced with power
          Of eloquence even in my native speech,                     150
          And all unfit for tumult or intrigue,
          Yet would I at this time with willing heart
          Have undertaken for a cause so great
          Service however dangerous. I revolved,
          How much the destiny of Man had still
          Hung upon single persons; that there was,
          Transcendent to all local patrimony,
          One nature, as there is one sun in heaven;
          That objects, even as they are great, thereby
          Do come within the reach of humblest eyes;                 160
          That Man is only weak through his mistrust
          And want of hope where evidence divine
          Proclaims to him that hope should be most sure;
          Nor did the inexperience of my youth
          Preclude conviction, that a spirit strong
          In hope, and trained to noble aspirations,
          A spirit thoroughly faithful to itself,
          Is for Society's unreasoning herd
          A domineering instinct, serves at once
          For way and guide, a fluent receptacle                     170
          That gathers up each petty straggling rill
          And vein of water, glad to be rolled on
          In safe obedience; that a mind, whose rest
          Is where it ought to be, in self-restraint,
          In circumspection and simplicity,
          Falls rarely in entire discomfiture
          Below its aim, or meets with, from without,
          A treachery that foils it or defeats;
          And, lastly, if the means on human will,
          Frail human will, dependent should betray                  180
          Him who too boldly trusted them, I felt
          That 'mid the loud distractions of the world
          A sovereign voice subsists within the soul,
          Arbiter undisturbed of right and wrong,
          Of life and death, in majesty severe
          Enjoining, as may best promote the aims
          Of truth and justice, either sacrifice,
          From whatsoever region of our cares
          Or our infirm affections Nature pleads,
          Earnest and blind, against the stern decree.               190

            On the other side, I called to mind those truths
          That are the commonplaces of the schools--
          (A theme for boys, too hackneyed for their sires,)
          Yet, with a revelation's liveliness,
          In all their comprehensive bearings known
          And visible to philosophers of old,
          Men who, to business of the world untrained,
          Lived in the shade; and to Harmodius known
          And his compeer Aristogiton, known
          To Brutus--that tyrannic power is weak,                    200
          Hath neither gratitude, nor faith, nor love,
          Nor the support of good or evil men
          To trust in; that the godhead which is ours
          Can never utterly be charmed or stilled;
          That nothing hath a natural right to last
          But equity and reason; that all else
          Meets foes irreconcilable, and at best
          Lives only by variety of disease.

            Well might my wishes be intense, my thoughts
          Strong and perturbed, not doubting at that time            210
          But that the virtue of one paramount mind
          Would have abashed those impious crests--have quelled
          Outrage and bloody power, and--in despite
          Of what the People long had been and were
          Through ignorance and false teaching, sadder proof
          Of immaturity, and--in the teeth
          Of desperate opposition from without--
          Have cleared a passage for just government,
          And left a solid birthright to the State,
          Redeemed, according to example given                       220
          By ancient lawgivers.
                                 In this frame of mind,
          Dragged by a chain of harsh necessity,
          So seemed it,--now I thankfully acknowledge,
          Forced by the gracious providence of Heaven,--
          To England I returned, else (though assured
          That I both was and must be of small weight,
          No better than a landsman on the deck
          Of a ship struggling with a hideous storm)
          Doubtless, I should have then made common cause
          With some who perished; haply perished too,                230
          A poor mistaken and bewildered offering,--
          Should to the breast of Nature have gone back,
          With all my resolutions, all my hopes,
          A Poet only to myself, to men
          Useless, and even, beloved Friend! a soul
          To thee unknown!
                            Twice had the trees let fall
          Their leaves, as often Winter had put on
          His hoary crown, since I had seen the surge
          Beat against Albion's shore, since ear of mine
          Had caught the accents of my native speech                 240
          Upon our native country's sacred ground.
          A patriot of the world, how could I glide
          Into communion with her sylvan shades,
          Erewhile my tuneful haunt? It pleased me more
          To abide in the great City, where I found
          The general air still busy with the stir
          Of that first memorable onset made
          By a strong levy of humanity
          Upon the traffickers in Negro blood;
          Effort which, though defeated, had recalled                250
          To notice old forgotten principles,
          And through the nation spread a novel heat
          Of virtuous feeling. For myself, I own
          That this particular strife had wanted power
          To rivet my affections; nor did now
          Its unsuccessful issue much excite
          My sorrow; for I brought with me the faith
          That, if France prospered, good men would not long
          Pay fruitless worship to humanity,
          And this most rotten branch of human shame,                260
          Object, so seemed it, of superfluous pains
          Would fall together with its parent tree.
          What, then, were my emotions, when in arms
          Britain put forth her free-born strength in league,
          Oh, pity and shame! with those confederate Powers!
          Not in my single self alone I found,
          But in the minds of all ingenuous youth,
          Change and subversion from that hour. No shock
          Given to my moral nature had I known
          Down to that very moment; neither lapse                    270
          Nor turn of sentiment that might be named
          A revolution, save at this one time;
          All else was progress on the self-same path
          On which, with a diversity of pace,
          I had been travelling: this a stride at once
          Into another region. As a light
          And pliant harebell, swinging in the breeze
          On some grey rock--its birth-place--so had I
          Wantoned, fast rooted on the ancient tower
          Of my beloved country, wishing not                         280
          A happier fortune than to wither there:
          Now was I from that pleasant station torn
          And tossed about in whirlwind. I rejoiced,
          Yea, afterwards--truth most painful to record!--
          Exulted, in the triumph of my soul,
          When Englishmen by thousands were o'erthrown,
          Left without glory on the field, or driven,
          Brave hearts! to shameful flight. It was a grief,--
          Grief call it not, 'twas anything but that,--
          A conflict of sensations without name,                     290
          Of which 'he' only, who may love the sight
          Of a village steeple, as I do, can judge,
          When, in the congregation bending all
          To their great Father, prayers were offered up,
          Or praises for our country's victories;
          And, 'mid the simple worshippers, perchance
          I only, like an uninvited guest
          Whom no one owned, sate silent, shall I add,
          Fed on the day of vengeance yet to come.

            Oh! much have they to account for, who could tear,       300
          By violence, at one decisive rent,
          From the best youth in England their dear pride,
          Their joy, in England; this, too, at a time
          In which worst losses easily might wean
          The best of names, when patriotic love
          Did of itself in modesty give way,
          Like the Precursor when the Deity
          Is come Whose harbinger he was; a time
          In which apostasy from ancient faith
          Seemed but conversion to a higher creed;                   310
          Withal a season dangerous and wild,
          A time when sage Experience would have snatched
          Flowers out of any hedge-row to compose
          A chaplet in contempt of his grey locks.

            When the proud fleet that bears the red-cross flag
          In that unworthy service was prepared
          To mingle, I beheld the vessels lie,
          A brood of gallant creatures, on the deep;
          I saw them in their rest, a sojourner
          Through a whole month of calm and glassy days              320
          In that delightful island which protects
          Their place of convocation--there I heard,
          Each evening, pacing by the still sea-shore,
          A monitory sound that never failed,--
          The sunset cannon. While the orb went down
          In the tranquillity of nature, came
          That voice, ill requiem! seldom heard by me
          Without a spirit overcast by dark
          Imaginations, sense of woes to come,
          Sorrow for human kind, and pain of heart.                  330

            In France, the men, who, for their desperate ends,
          Had plucked up mercy by the roots, were glad
          Of this new enemy. Tyrants, strong before
          In wicked pleas, were strong as demons now;
          And thus, on every side beset with foes,
          The goaded land waxed mad; the crimes of few
          Spread into madness of the many; blasts
          From hell came sanctified like airs from heaven.
          The sternness of the just, the faith of those
          Who doubted not that Providence had times                  340
          Of vengeful retribution, theirs who throned
          The human Understanding paramount
          And made of that their God, the hopes of men
          Who were content to barter short-lived pangs
          For a paradise of ages, the blind rage
          Of insolent tempers, the light vanity
          Of intermeddlers, steady purposes
          Of the suspicious, slips of the indiscreet,
          And all the accidents of life--were pressed
          Into one service, busy with one work.                      350
          The Senate stood aghast, her prudence quenched,
          Her wisdom stifled, and her justice scared,
          Her frenzy only active to extol
          Past outrages, and shape the way for new,
          Which no one dared to oppose or mitigate.

            Domestic carnage now filled the whole year
          With feast-days; old men from the chimney-nook,
          The maiden from the bosom of her love,
          The mother from the cradle of her babe,
          The warrior from the field--all perished, all--            360
          Friends, enemies, of all parties, ages, ranks,
          Head after head, and never heads enough
          For those that bade them fall. They found their joy,
          They made it proudly, eager as a child,
          (If like desires of innocent little ones
          May with such heinous appetites be compared),
          Pleased in some open field to exercise
          A toy that mimics with revolving wings
          The motion of a wind-mill; though the air
          Do of itself blow fresh, and make the vanes                370
          Spin in his eyesight, 'that' contents him not,
          But with the plaything at arm's length, he sets
          His front against the blast, and runs amain,
          That it may whirl the faster.
                                         Amid the depth
          Of those enormities, even thinking minds
          Forgot, at seasons, whence they had their being
          Forgot that such a sound was ever heard
          As Liberty upon earth: yet all beneath
          Her innocent authority was wrought,
          Nor could have been, without her blessed name.             380
          The illustrious wife of Roland, in the hour
          Of her composure, felt that agony,
          And gave it vent in her last words. O Friend!
          It was a lamentable time for man,
          Whether a hope had e'er been his or not:
          A woful time for them whose hopes survived
          The shock; most woful for those few who still
          Were flattered, and had trust in human kind:
          They had the deepest feeling of the grief.
          Meanwhile the Invaders fared as they deserved:             390
          The Herculean Commonwealth had put forth her arms,
          And throttled with an infant godhead's might
          The snakes about her cradle; that was well,
          And as it should be; yet no cure for them
          Whose souls were sick with pain of what would be
          Hereafter brought in charge against mankind.
          Most melancholy at that time, O Friend!
          Were my day-thoughts,--my nights were miserable;
          Through months, through years, long after the last beat
          Of those atrocities, the hour of sleep                     400
          To me came rarely charged with natural gifts,
          Such ghastly visions had I of despair
          And tyranny, and implements of death;
          And innocent victims sinking under fear,
          And momentary hope, and worn-out prayer,
          Each in his separate cell, or penned in crowds
          For sacrifice, and struggling with fond mirth
          And levity in dungeons, where the dust
          Was laid with tears. Then suddenly the scene
          Changed, and the unbroken dream entangled me               410
          In long orations, which I strove to plead
          Before unjust tribunals,--with a voice
          Labouring, a brain confounded, and a sense,
          Death-like, of treacherous desertion, felt
          In the last place of refuge--my own soul.

            When I began in youth's delightful prime
          To yield myself to Nature, when that strong
          And holy passion overcame me first,
          Nor day nor night, evening or morn, was free
          From its oppression. But, O Power Supreme!                 420
          Without Whose call this world would cease to breathe
          Who from the fountain of Thy grace dost fill
          The veins that branch through every frame of life,
          Making man what he is, creature divine,
          In single or in social eminence,
          Above the rest raised infinite ascents
          When reason that enables him to be
          Is not sequestered--what a change is here!
          How different ritual for this after-worship,
          What countenance to promote this second love!              430
          The first was service paid to things which lie
          Guarded within the bosom of Thy will.
          Therefore to serve was high beatitude;
          Tumult was therefore gladness, and the fear
          Ennobling, venerable; sleep secure,
          And waking thoughts more rich than happiest dreams.

            But as the ancient Prophets, borne aloft
          In vision, yet constrained by natural laws
          With them to take a troubled human heart,
          Wanted not consolations, nor a creed                       440
          Of reconcilement, then when they denounced,
          On towns and cities, wallowing in the abyss
          Of their offences, punishment to come;
          Or saw, like other men, with bodily eyes,
          Before them, in some desolated place,
          The wrath consummate and the threat fulfilled;
          So, with devout humility be it said,
          So, did a portion of that spirit fall
          On me uplifted from the vantage-ground
          Of pity and sorrow to a state of being                     450
          That through the time's exceeding fierceness saw
          Glimpses of retribution, terrible,
          And in the order of sublime behests:
          But, even if that were not, amid the awe
          Of unintelligible chastisement,
          Not only acquiescences of faith
          Survived, but daring sympathies with power,
          Motions not treacherous or profane, else why
          Within the folds of no ungentle breast
          Their dread vibration to this hour prolonged?              460
          Wild blasts of music thus could find their way
          Into the midst of turbulent events;
          So that worst tempests might be listened to.
          Then was the truth received into my heart,
          That, under heaviest sorrow earth can bring,
          If from the affliction somewhere do not grow
          Honour which could not else have been, a faith,
          An elevation, and a sanctity,
          If new strength be not given nor old restored,
          The blame is ours, not Nature's. When a taunt              470
          Was taken up by scoffers in their pride,
          Saying, "Behold the harvest that we reap
          From popular government and equality,"
          I clearly saw that neither these nor aught
          Of wild belief engrafted on their names
          By false philosophy had caused the woe,
          But a terrific reservoir of guilt
          And ignorance filled up from age to age,
          That could no longer hold its loathsome charge,
          But burst and spread in deluge through the land.           480

            And as the desert hath green spots, the sea
          Small islands scattered amid stormy waves,
          So 'that' disastrous period did not want
          Bright sprinklings of all human excellence,
          To which the silver wands of saints in Heaven
          Might point with rapturous joy. Yet not the less,
          For those examples, in no age surpassed,
          Of fortitude and energy and love,
          And human nature faithful to herself
          Under worst trials, was I driven to think                  490
          Of the glad times when first I traversed France
          A youthful pilgrim; above all reviewed
          That eventide, when under windows bright
          With happy faces and with garlands hung,
          And through a rainbow-arch that spanned the street,
          Triumphal pomp for liberty confirmed,
          I paced, a dear companion at my side,
          The town of Arras, whence with promise high
          Issued, on delegation to sustain
          Humanity and right, 'that' Robespierre,                    500
          He who thereafter, and in how short time!
          Wielded the sceptre of the Atheist crew.
          When the calamity spread far and wide--
          And this same city, that did then appear
          To outrun the rest in exultation, groaned
          Under the vengeance of her cruel son,
          As Lear reproached the winds--I could almost
          Have quarrelled with that blameless spectacle
          For lingering yet an image in my mind
          To mock me under such a strange reverse.                   510

            O Friend! few happier moments have been mine
          Than that which told the downfall of this Tribe
          So dreaded, so abhorred. The day deserves
          A separate record. Over the smooth sands
          Of Leven's ample estuary lay
          My journey, and beneath a genial sun,
          With distant prospect among gleams of sky
          And clouds and intermingling mountain tops,
          In one inseparable glory clad,
          Creatures of one ethereal substance met                    520
          In consistory, like a diadem
          Or crown of burning seraphs as they sit
          In the empyrean. Underneath that pomp
          Celestial, lay unseen the pastoral vales
          Among whose happy fields I had grown up
          From childhood. On the fulgent spectacle,
          That neither passed away nor changed, I gazed
          Enrapt; but brightest things are wont to draw
          Sad opposites out of the inner heart,
          As even their pensive influence drew from mine.            530
          How could it otherwise? for not in vain
          That very morning had I turned aside
          To seek the ground where, 'mid a throng of graves,
          An honoured teacher of my youth was laid,
          And on the stone were graven by his desire
          Lines from the churchyard elegy of Gray.
          This faithful guide, speaking from his deathbed,
          Added no farewell to his parting counsel,
          But said to me, "My head will soon lie low;"
          And when I saw the turf that covered him,                  540
          After the lapse of full eight years, those words,
          With sound of voice and countenance of the Man,
          Came back upon me, so that some few tears
          Fell from me in my own despite. But now
          I thought, still traversing that widespread plain,
          With tender pleasure of the verses graven
          Upon his tombstone, whispering to myself:
          He loved the Poets, and, if now alive,
          Would have loved me, as one not destitute
          Of promise, nor belying the kind hope                      550
          That he had formed, when I, at his command,
          Began to spin, with toil, my earliest songs.

            As I advanced, all that I saw or felt
          Was gentleness and peace. Upon a small
          And rocky island near, a fragment stood,
          (Itself like a sea rock) the low remains
          (With shells encrusted, dark with briny weeds)
          Of a dilapidated structure, once
          A Romish chapel, where the vested priest
          Said matins at the hour that suited those                  560
          Who crossed the sands with ebb of morning tide.
          Not far from that still ruin all the plain
          Lay spotted with a variegated crowd
          Of vehicles and travellers, horse and foot,
          Wading beneath the conduct of their guide
          In loose procession through the shallow stream
          Of inland waters; the great sea meanwhile
          Heaved at safe distance, far retired. I paused,
          Longing for skill to paint a scene so bright
          And cheerful, but the foremost of the band                 570
          As he approached, no salutation given
          In the familiar language of the day,
          Cried, "Robespierre is dead!" nor was a doubt,
          After strict question, left within my mind
          That he and his supporters all were fallen.

            Great was my transport, deep my gratitude
          To everlasting Justice, by this fiat
          Made manifest. "Come now, ye golden times,"
          Said I forth-pouring on those open sands
          A hymn of triumph: "as the morning comes                   580
          From out the bosom of the night, come ye:
          Thus far our trust is verified; behold!
          They who with clumsy desperation brought
          A river of Blood, and preached that nothing else
          Could cleanse the Augean stable, by the might
          Of their own helper have been swept away;
          Their madness stands declared and visible;
          Elsewhere will safety now be sought, and earth
          March firmly towards righteousness and peace."--
          Then schemes I framed more calmly, when and how            590
          The madding factions might be tranquillised,
          And how through hardships manifold and long
          The glorious renovation would proceed.
          Thus interrupted by uneasy bursts
          Of exultation, I pursued my way
          Along that very shore which I had skimmed
          In former days, when--spurring from the Vale
          Of Nightshade, and St. Mary's mouldering fane,
          And the stone abbot, after circuit made
          In wantonness of heart, a joyous band                      600
          Of schoolboys hastening to their distant home
          Along the margin of the moonlight sea--
          We beat with thundering hoofs the level sand.
 
   

THE PRELUDE
BOOK ELEVENTH
FRANCE (concluded)

          FROM that time forth, Authority in France
          Put on a milder face; Terror had ceased,
          Yet everything was wanting that might give
          Courage to them who looked for good by light
          Of rational Experience, for the shoots
          And hopeful blossoms of a second spring:
          Yet, in me, confidence was unimpaired;
          The Senate's language, and the public acts
          And measures of the Government, though both
          Weak, and of heartless omen, had not power                  10
          To daunt me; in the People was my trust:
          And, in the virtues which mine eyes had seen,
          I knew that wound external could not take
          Life from the young Republic; that new foes
          Would only follow, in the path of shame,
          Their brethren, and her triumphs be in the end
          Great, universal, irresistible.
          This intuition led me to confound
          One victory with another, higher far,--
          Triumphs of unambitious peace at home,                      20
          And noiseless fortitude. Beholding still
          Resistance strong as heretofore, I thought
          That what was in degree the same was likewise
          The same in quality,--that, as the worse
          Of the two spirits then at strife remained
          Untired, the better, surely, would preserve
          The heart that first had roused him. Youth maintains,
          In all conditions of society,
          Communion more direct and intimate
          With Nature,--hence, ofttimes, with reason too--            30
          Than age or manhood, even. To Nature, then,
          Power had reverted: habit, custom, law,
          Had left an interregnum's open space
          For 'her' to move about in, uncontrolled.
          Hence could I see how Babel-like their task,
          Who, by the recent deluge stupified,
          With their whole souls went culling from the day
          Its petty promises, to build a tower
          For their own safety; laughed with my compeers
          At gravest heads, by enmity to France                       40
          Distempered, till they found, in every blast
          Forced from the street-disturbing newsman's horn,
          For her great cause record or prophecy
          Of utter ruin. How might we believe
          That wisdom could, in any shape, come near
          Men clinging to delusions so insane?
          And thus, experience proving that no few
          Of our opinions had been just, we took
          Like credit to ourselves where less was due,
          And thought that other notions were as sound                50
          Yea, could not but be right, because we saw
          That foolish men opposed them.
                                          To a strain
          More animated I might here give way,
          And tell, since juvenile errors are my theme,
          What in those days, through Britain, was performed
          To turn 'all' judgments out of their right course;
          But this is passion over-near ourselves,
          Reality too close and too intense,
          And intermixed with something, in my mind,
          Of scorn and condemnation personal,                         60
          That would profane the sanctity of verse.
          Our Shepherds, this say merely, at that time
          Acted, or seemed at least to act, like men
          Thirsting to make the guardian crook of law
          A tool of murder; they who ruled the State--
          Though with such awful proof before their eyes
          That he, who would sow death, reaps death, or worse,
          And can reap nothing better--child-like longed
          To imitate, not wise enough to avoid;
          Or left (by mere timidity betrayed)                         70
          The plain straight road, for one no better chosen
          Than if their wish had been to undermine
          Justice, and make an end of Liberty.

            But from these bitter truths I must return
          To my own history. It hath been told
          That I was led to take an eager part
          In arguments of civil polity,
          Abruptly, and indeed before my time:
          I had approached, like other youths, the shield
          Of human nature from the golden side,                       80
          And would have fought, even to the death, to attest
          The quality of the metal which I saw.
          What there is best in individual man,
          Of wise in passion, and sublime in power,
          Benevolent in small societies,
          And great in large ones, I had oft revolved,
          Felt deeply, but not thoroughly understood
          By reason: nay, far from it; they were yet,
          As cause was given me afterwards to learn,
          Not proof against the injuries of the day;                  90
          Lodged only at the sanctuary's door,
          Not safe within its bosom. Thus prepared,
          And with such general insight into evil,
          And of the bounds which sever it from good,
          As books and common intercourse with life
          Must needs have given--to the inexperienced mind,
          When the world travels in a beaten road,
          Guide faithful as is needed--I began
          To meditate with ardour on the rule
          And management of nations; what it is                      100
          And ought to be; and strove to learn how far
          Their power or weakness, wealth or poverty,
          Their happiness or misery, depends
          Upon their laws, and fashion of the State.

            O pleasant exercise of hope and joy!
          For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
          Upon our side, us who were strong in love!
          Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
          But to be young was very Heaven! O times,
          In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways                110
          Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
          The attraction of a country in romance!
          When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights
          When most intent on making of herself
          A prime enchantress--to assist the work,
          Which then was going forward in her name!
          Not favoured spots alone, but the whole Earth,
          The beauty wore of promise--that which sets
          (As at some moments might not be unfelt
          Among the bowers of Paradise itself)                       120
          The budding rose above the rose full blown.
          What temper at the prospect did not wake
          To happiness unthought of? The inert
          Were roused, and lively natures rapt away!
          They who had fed their childhood upon dreams,
          The play-fellows of fancy, who had made
          All powers of swiftness, subtilty, and strength
          Their ministers,--who in lordly wise had stirred
          Among the grandest objects of the sense,
          And dealt with whatsoever they found there                 130
          As if they had within some lurking right
          To wield it;--they, too, who of gentle mood
          Had watched all gentle motions, and to these
          Had fitted their own thoughts, schemers more mild,
          And in the region of their peaceful selves;--
          Now was it that 'both' found, the meek and lofty
          Did both find, helpers to their hearts' desire,
          And stuff at hand, plastic as they could wish,--
          Were called upon to exercise their skill,
          Not in Utopia,--subterranean fields,--                     140
          Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where!
          But in the very world, which is the world
          Of all of us,--the place where, in the end,
          We find our happiness, or not at all!

            Why should I not confess that Earth was then
          To me, what an inheritance, new-fallen,
          Seems, when the first time visited, to one
          Who thither comes to find in it his home?
          He walks about and looks upon the spot
          With cordial transport, moulds it and remoulds,            150
          And is half-pleased with things that are amiss,
          'Twill be such joy to see them disappear.

            An active partisan, I thus convoked
          From every object pleasant circumstance
          To suit my ends; I moved among mankind
          With genial feelings still predominant;
          When erring, erring on the better part,
          And in the kinder spirit; placable,
          Indulgent, as not uninformed that men
          See as they have been taught--Antiquity                    160
          Gives rights to error; and aware, no less
          That throwing off oppression must be work
          As well of License as of Liberty;
          And above all--for this was more than all--
          Not caring if the wind did now and then
          Blow keen upon an eminence that gave
          Prospect so large into futurity;
          In brief, a child of Nature, as at first,
          Diffusing only those affections wider
          That from the cradle had grown up with me,                 170
          And losing, in no other way than light
          Is lost in light, the weak in the more strong.

            In the main outline, such it might be said
          Was my condition, till with open war
          Britain opposed the liberties of France.
          This threw me first out of the pale of love;
          Soured and corrupted, upwards to the source,
          My sentiments; was not, as hitherto,
          A swallowing up of lesser things in great,
          But change of them into their contraries;                  180
          And thus a way was opened for mistakes
          And false conclusions, in degree as gross,
          In kind more dangerous. What had been a pride,
          Was now a shame; my likings and my loves
          Ran in new channels, leaving old ones dry;
          And hence a blow that, in maturer age,
          Would but have touched the judgment, struck more deep
          Into sensations near the heart: meantime,
          As from the first, wild theories were afloat,
          To whose pretensions, sedulously urged,                    190
          I had but lent a careless ear, assured
          That time was ready to set all things right,
          And that the multitude, so long oppressed,
          Would be oppressed no more.
                                       But when events
          Brought less encouragement, and unto these
          The immediate proof of principles no more
          Could be entrusted, while the events themselves,
          Worn out in greatness, stripped of novelty,
          Less occupied the mind, and sentiments
          Could through my understanding's natural growth            200
          No longer keep their ground, by faith maintained
          Of inward consciousness, and hope that laid
          Her hand upon her object--evidence
          Safer, of universal application, such
          As could not be impeached, was sought elsewhere.

            But now, become oppressors in their turn,
          Frenchmen had changed a war of self-defence
          For one of conquest, losing sight of all
          Which they had struggled for: up mounted now,
          Openly in the eye of earth and heaven,                     210
          The scale of liberty. I read her doom,
          With anger vexed, with disappointment sore,
          But not dismayed, nor taking to the shame
          Of a false prophet. While resentment rose
          Striving to hide, what nought could heal, the wounds
          Of mortified presumption, I adhered
          More firmly to old tenets, and, to prove
          Their temper, strained them more; and thus, in heat
          Of contest, did opinions every day
          Grow into consequence, till round my mind                  220
          They clung, as if they were its life, nay more,
          The very being of the immortal soul.

            This was the time, when, all things tending fast
          To depravation, speculative schemes--
          That promised to abstract the hopes of Man
          Out of his feelings, to be fixed thenceforth
          For ever in a purer element--
          Found ready welcome. Tempting region 'that'
          For Zeal to enter and refresh herself,
          Where passions had the privilege to work,                  230
          And never hear the sound of their own names.
          But, speaking more in charity, the dream
          Flattered the young, pleased with extremes, nor least
          With that which makes our Reason's naked self
          The object of its fervour. What delight!
          How glorious! in self-knowledge and self-rule,
          To look through all the frailties of the world,
          And, with a resolute mastery shaking off
          Infirmities of nature, time, and place,
          Build social upon personal Liberty,                        240
          Which, to the blind restraints of general laws,
          Superior, magisterially adopts
          One guide, the light of circumstances, flashed
          Upon an independent intellect.
          Thus expectation rose again; thus hope,
          From her first ground expelled, grew proud once more.
          Oft, as my thoughts were turned to human kind,
          I scorned indifference; but, inflamed with thirst
          Of a secure intelligence, and sick
          Of other longing, I pursued what seemed                    250
          A more exalted nature; wished that Man
          Should start out of his earthy, worm-like state,
          And spread abroad the wings of Liberty,
          Lord of himself, in undisturbed delight--
          A noble aspiration! 'yet' I feel
          (Sustained by worthier as by wiser thoughts)
          The aspiration, nor shall ever cease
          To feel it;--but return we to our course.

            Enough, 'tis true--could such a plea excuse
          Those aberrations--had the clamorous friends               260
          Of ancient Institutions said and done
          To bring disgrace upon their very names;
          Disgrace, of which, custom and written law,
          And sundry moral sentiments as props
          Or emanations of those institutes,
          Too justly bore a part. A veil had been
          Uplifted; why deceive ourselves? in sooth,
          'Twas even so; and sorrow for the man
          Who either had not eyes wherewith to see,
          Or, seeing, had forgotten! A strong shock                  270
          Was given to old opinions; all men's minds
          Had felt its power, and mine was both let loose,
          Let loose and goaded. After what hath been
          Already said of patriotic love,
          Suffice it here to add, that, somewhat stern
          In temperament, withal a happy man,
          And therefore bold to look on painful things,
          Free likewise of the world, and thence more bold,
          I summoned my best skill, and toiled, intent
          To anatomise the frame of social life;                     280
          Yea, the whole body of society
          Searched to its heart. Share with me, Friend! the wish
          That some dramatic tale, endued with shapes
          Livelier, and flinging out less guarded words
          Than suit the work we fashion, might set forth
          What then I learned, or think I learned, of truth,
          And the errors into which I fell, betrayed
          By present objects, and by reasonings false
          From their beginnings, inasmuch as drawn
          Out of a heart that had been turned aside                  290
          From Nature's way by outward accidents,
          And which was thus confounded, more and more
          Misguided, and misguiding. So I fared,
          Dragging all precepts, judgments, maxims, creeds,
          Like culprits to the bar; calling the mind,
          Suspiciously, to establish in plain day
          Her titles and her honours; now believing,
          Now disbelieving; endlessly perplexed
          With impulse, motive, right and wrong, the ground
          Of obligation, what the rule and whence                    300
          The sanction; till, demanding formal 'proof',
          And seeking it in every thing, I lost
          All feeling of conviction, and, in fine,
          Sick, wearied out with contrarieties,
          Yielded up moral questions in despair.

            This was the crisis of that strong disease,
          This the soul's last and lowest ebb; I drooped,
          Deeming our blessed reason of least use
          Where wanted most: "The lordly attributes
          Of will and choice," I bitterly exclaimed                  310
          "What are they but a mockery of a Being
          Who hath in no concerns of his a test
          Of good and evil; knows not what to fear
          Or hope for, what to covet or to shun;
          And who, if those could be discerned, would yet
          Be little profited, would see, and ask
          Where is the obligation to enforce?
          And, to acknowledged law rebellious, still,
          As selfish passion urged, would act amiss;
          The dupe of folly, or the slave of crime."                 320

            Depressed, bewildered thus, I did not walk
          With scoffers, seeking light and gay revenge
          From indiscriminate laughter, nor sate down
          In reconcilement with an utter waste
          Of intellect; such sloth I could not brook,
          (Too well I loved, in that my spring of life,
          Pains-taking thoughts, and truth, their dear reward)
          But turned to abstract science, and there sought
          Work for the reasoning faculty enthroned
          Where the disturbances of space and time--                 330
          Whether in matters various, properties
          Inherent, or from human will and power
          Derived--find no admission. Then it was--
          Thanks to the bounteous Giver of all good!--
          That the beloved Sister in whose sight
          Those days were passed, now speaking in a voice
          Of sudden admonition--like a brook
          That did but 'cross' a lonely road, and now
          Is seen, heard, felt, and caught at every turn,
          Companion never lost through many a league--               340
          Maintained for me a saving intercourse
          With my true self; for, though bedimmed and changed
          Much, as it seemed, I was no further changed
          Than as a clouded and a waning moon:
          She whispered still that brightness would return;
          She, in the midst of all, preserved me still
          A Poet, made me seek beneath that name,
          And that alone, my office upon earth;
          And, lastly, as hereafter will be shown,
          If willing audience fail not, Nature's self,               350
          By all varieties of human love
          Assisted, led me back through opening day
          To those sweet counsels between head and heart
          Whence grew that genuine knowledge, fraught with peace,
          Which, through the later sinkings of this cause,
          Hath still upheld me, and upholds me now
          In the catastrophe (for so they dream,
          And nothing less), when, finally to close
          And seal up all the gains of France, a Pope
          Is summoned in, to crown an Emperor--                      360
          This last opprobrium, when we see a people,
          That once looked up in faith, as if to Heaven
          For manna, take a lesson from the dog
          Returning to his vomit; when the sun
          That rose in splendour, was alive, and moved
          In exultation with a living pomp
          Of clouds--his glory's natural retinue--
          Hath dropped all functions by the gods bestowed,
          And, turned into a gewgaw, a machine,
          Sets like an Opera phantom.
                                       Thus, O Friend!               370
          Through times of honour and through times of shame
          Descending, have I faithfully retraced
          The perturbations of a youthful mind
          Under a long-lived storm of great events--
          A story destined for thy ear, who now,
          Among the fallen of nations, dost abide
          Where Etna, over hill and valley, casts
          His shadow stretching towards Syracuse,
          The city of Timoleon! Righteous Heaven!
          How are the mighty prostrated! They first,                 380
          They first of all that breathe should have awaked
          When the great voice was heard from out the tombs
          Of ancient heroes. If I suffered grief
          For ill-requited France, by many deemed
          A trifler only in her proudest day;
          Have been distressed to think of what she once
          Promised, now is; a far more sober cause
          Thine eyes must see of sorrow in a land,
          To the reanimating influence lost
          Of memory, to virtue lost and hope,                        390
          Though with the wreck of loftier years bestrewn.

            But indignation works where hope is not,
          And thou, O Friend! wilt be refreshed. There is
          One great society alone on earth:
          The noble Living and the noble Dead.

            Thine be such converse strong and sanative,
          A ladder for thy spirit to reascend
          To health and joy and pure contentedness;
          To me the grief confined, that thou art gone
          From this last spot of earth, where Freedom now            400
          Stands single in her only sanctuary;
          A lonely wanderer, art gone, by pain
          Compelled and sickness, at this latter day,
          This sorrowful reverse for all mankind.
          I feel for thee, must utter what I feel:
          The sympathies erewhile in part discharged,
          Gather afresh, and will have vent again:
          My own delights do scarcely seem to me
          My own delights; the lordly Alps themselves,
          Those rosy peaks, from which the Morning looks             410
          Abroad on many nations, are no more
          For me that image of pure gladsomeness
          Which they were wont to be. Through kindred scenes,
          For purpose, at a time, how different!
          Thou tak'st thy way, carrying the heart and soul
          That Nature gives to Poets, now by thought
          Matured, and in the summer of their strength.
          Oh! wrap him in your shades, ye giant woods,
          On Etna's side; and thou, O flowery field
          Of Enna! is there not some nook of thine,                  420
          From the first play-time of the infant world
          Kept sacred to restorative delight,
          When from afar invoked by anxious love?

            Child of the mountains, among shepherds reared,
          Ere yet familiar with the classic page,
          I learnt to dream of Sicily; and lo,
          The gloom, that, but a moment past, was deepened
          At thy command, at her command gives way;
          A pleasant promise, wafted from her shores,
          Comes o'er my heart: in fancy I behold                     430
          Her seas yet smiling, her once happy vales;
          Nor can my tongue give utterance to a name
          Of note belonging to that honoured isle,
          Philosopher or Bard, Empedocles,
          Or Archimedes, pure abstracted soul!
          That doth not yield a solace to my grief:
          And, O Theocritus, so far have some
          Prevailed among the powers of heaven and earth,
          By their endowments, good or great, that they
          Have had, as thou reportest, miracles                      440
          Wrought for them in old time: yea, not unmoved,
          When thinking on my own beloved friend,
          I hear thee tell how bees with honey fed
          Divine Comates, by his impious lord
          Within a chest imprisoned; how they came
          Laden from blooming grove or flowery field,
          And fed him there, alive, month after month,
          Because the goatherd, blessed man! had lips
          Wet with the Muses' nectar.
                                       Thus I soothe
          The pensive moments by this calm fire-side,                450
          And find a thousand bounteous images
          To cheer the thoughts of those I love, and mine.
          Our prayers have been accepted; thou wilt stand
          On Etna's summit, above earth and sea,
          Triumphant, winning from the invaded heavens
          Thoughts without bound, magnificent designs,
          Worthy of poets who attuned their harps
          In wood or echoing cave, for discipline
          Of heroes; or, in reverence to the gods,
          'Mid temples, served by sapient priests, and choirs        460
          Of virgins crowned with roses. Not in vain
          Those temples, where they in their ruins yet
          Survive for inspiration, shall attract
          Thy solitary steps: and on the brink
          Thou wilt recline of pastoral Arethuse;
          Or, if that fountain be in truth no more,
          Then, near some other spring--which, by the name
          Thou gratulatest, willingly deceived--
          I see thee linger a glad votary,
          And not a captive pining for his home.                     470