THE PRELUDE
BOOK TWELFTH
IMAGINATION AND TASTE, HOW IMPAIRED AND RESTORED

          LONG time have human ignorance and guilt
          Detained us, on what spectacles of woe
          Compelled to look, and inwardly oppressed
          With sorrow, disappointment, vexing thoughts,
          Confusion of the judgment, zeal decayed,
          And, lastly, utter loss of hope itself
          And things to hope for! Not with these began
          Our song, and not with these our song must end.
          Ye motions of delight, that haunt the sides
          Of the green hills; ye breezes and soft airs,               10
          Whose subtle intercourse with breathing flowers,
          Feelingly watched, might teach Man's haughty race
          How without Injury to take, to give
          Without offence; ye who, as if to show
          The wondrous influence of power gently used,
          Bend the complying heads of lordly pines,
          And, with a touch, shift the stupendous clouds
          Through the whole compass of the sky; ye brooks,
          Muttering along the stones, a busy noise
          By day, a quiet sound in silent night;                      20
          Ye waves, that out of the great deep steal forth
          In a calm hour to kiss the pebbly shore,
          Not mute, and then retire, fearing no storm;
          And you, ye groves, whose ministry it is
          To interpose the covert of your shades,
          Even as a sleep, between the heart of man
          And outward troubles, between man himself,
          Not seldom, and his own uneasy heart:
          Oh! that I had a music and a voice
          Harmonious as your own, that I might tell                   30
          What ye have done for me. The morning shines,
          Nor heedeth Man's perverseness; Spring returns,--
          I saw the Spring return, and could rejoice,
          In common with the children of her love,
          Piping on boughs, or sporting on fresh fields,
          Or boldly seeking pleasure nearer heaven
          On wings that navigate cerulean skies.
          So neither were complacency, nor peace,
          Nor tender yearnings, wanting for my good
          Through these distracted times; in Nature still             40
          Glorying, I found a counterpoise in her,
          Which, when the spirit of evil reached its height,
          Maintained for me a secret happiness.

            This narrative, my Friend! hath chiefly told
          Of intellectual power, fostering love,
          Dispensing truth, and, over men and things,
          Where reason yet might hesitate, diffusing
          Prophetic sympathies of genial faith:
          So was I favoured--such my happy lot--
          Until that natural graciousness of mind                     50
          Gave way to overpressure from the times
          And their disastrous issues. What availed,
          When spells forbade the voyager to land,
          That fragrant notice of a pleasant shore
          Wafted, at intervals, from many a bower
          Of blissful gratitude and fearless love?
          Dare I avow that wish was mine to see,
          And hope that future times 'would' surely see,
          The man to come, parted, as by a gulph,
          From him who had been; that I could no more                 60
          Trust the elevation which had made me one
          With the great family that still survives
          To illuminate the abyss of ages past,
          Sage, warrior, patriot, hero; for it seemed
          That their best virtues were not free from taint
          Of something false and weak, that could not stand
          The open eye of Reason. Then I said,
          "Go to the Poets, they will speak to thee
          More perfectly of purer creatures;--yet
          If reason be nobility in man,                               70
          Can aught be more ignoble than the man
          Whom they delight in, blinded as he is
          By prejudice, the miserable slave
          Of low ambition or distempered love?"

            In such strange passion, if I may once more
          Review the past, I warred against myself--
          A bigot to a new idolatry--
          Like a cowled monk who hath forsworn the world,
          Zealously laboured to cut off my heart
          From all the sources of her former strength;                80
          And as, by simple waving of a wand,
          The wizard instantaneously dissolves
          Palace or grove, even so could I unsoul
          As readily by syllogistic words
          Those mysteries of being which have made,
          And shall continue evermore to make,
          Of the whole human race one brotherhood.

            What wonder, then, if, to a mind so far
          Perverted, even the visible Universe
          Fell under the dominion of a taste                          90
          Less spiritual, with microscopic view
          Was scanned, as I had scanned the moral world?

            O Soul of Nature! excellent and fair!
          That didst rejoice with me, with whom I, too,
          Rejoiced through early youth, before the winds
          And roaring waters, and in lights and shades
          That marched and countermarched about the hills
          In glorious apparition, Powers on whom
          I daily waited, now all eye and now
          All ear; but never long without the heart                  100
          Employed, and man's unfolding intellect:
          O Soul of Nature! that, by laws divine
          Sustained and governed, still dost overflow
          With an impassioned life, what feeble ones
          Walk on this earth! how feeble have I been
          When thou wert in thy strength! Nor this through stroke
          Of human suffering, such as justifies
          Remissness and inaptitude of mind,
          But through presumption; even in pleasure pleased
          Unworthily, disliking here, and there                      110
          Liking; by rules of mimic art transferred
          To things above all art; but more,--for this,
          Although a strong infection of the age,
          Was never much my habit--giving way
          To a comparison of scene with scene,
          Bent overmuch on superficial things,
          Pampering myself with meagre novelties
          Of colour and proportion; to the moods
          Of time and season, to the moral power,
          The affections and the spirit of the place,                120
          Insensible. Nor only did the love
          Of sitting thus in judgment interrupt
          My deeper feelings, but another cause,
          More subtle and less easily explained,
          That almost seems inherent in the creature,
          A twofold frame of body and of mind.
          I speak in recollection of a time
          When the bodily eye, in every stage of life
          The most despotic of our senses, gained
          Such strength in 'me' as often held my mind                130
          In absolute dominion. Gladly here,
          Entering upon abstruser argument,
          Could I endeavour to unfold the means
          Which Nature studiously employs to thwart
          This tyranny, summons all the senses each
          To counteract the other, and themselves,
          And makes them all, and the objects with which all
          Are conversant, subservient in their turn
          To the great ends of Liberty and Power.
          But leave we this: enough that my delights                 140
          (Such as they were) were sought insatiably.
          Vivid the transport, vivid though not profound;
          I roamed from hill to hill, from rock to rock,
          Still craving combinations of new forms,
          New pleasure, wider empire for the sight,
          Proud of her own endowments, and rejoiced
          To lay the inner faculties asleep.
          Amid the turns and counterturns, the strife
          And various trials of our complex being,
          As we grow up, such thraldom of that sense                 150
          Seems hard to shun. And yet I knew a maid,
          A young enthusiast, who escaped these bonds;
          Her eye was not the mistress of her heart;
          Far less did rules prescribed by passive taste,
          Or barren intermeddling subtleties,
          Perplex her mind; but, wise as women are
          When genial circumstance hath favoured them,
          She welcomed what was given, and craved no more;
          Whate'er the scene presented to her view
          That was the best, to that she was attuned                 160
          By her benign simplicity of life,
          And through a perfect happiness of soul,
          Whose variegated feelings were in this
          Sisters, that they were each some new delight.
          Birds in the bower, and lambs in the green field,
          Could they have known her, would have loved; methought
          Her very presence such a sweetness breathed,
          That flowers, and trees, and even the silent hills,
          And everything she looked on, should have had
          An intimation how she bore herself                         170
          Towards them and to all creatures. God delights
          In such a being; for, her common thoughts
          Are piety, her life is gratitude.

            Even like this maid, before I was called forth
          From the retirement of my native hills,
          I loved whate'er I saw: nor lightly loved,
          But most intensely; never dreamt of aught
          More grand, more fair, more exquisitely framed
          Than those few nooks to which my happy feet
          Were limited. I had not at that time                       180
          Lived long enough, nor in the least survived
          The first diviner influence of this world,
          As it appears to unaccustomed eyes.
          Worshipping them among the depth of things,
          As piety ordained, could I submit
          To measured admiration, or to aught
          That should preclude humility and love?
          I felt, observed, and pondered; did not judge,
          Yea, never thought of judging; with the gift
          Of all this glory filled and satisfied.                    190
          And afterwards, when through the gorgeous Alps
          Roaming, I carried with me the same heart:
          In truth, the degradation--howsoe'er
          Induced, effect, in whatsoe'er degree,
          Of custom that prepares a partial scale
          In which the little oft outweighs the great;
          Or any other cause that hath been named;
          Or lastly, aggravated by the times
          And their impassioned sounds, which well might make
          The milder minstrelsies of rural scenes                    200
          Inaudible--was transient; I had known
          Too forcibly, too early in my life,
          Visitings of imaginative power
          For this to last: I shook the habit off
          Entirely and for ever, and again
          In Nature's presence stood, as now I stand,
          A sensitive being, a 'creative' soul.

            There are in our existence spots of time,
          That with distinct pre-eminence retain
          A renovating virtue, whence--depressed                     210
          By false opinion and contentious thought,
          Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight,
          In trivial occupations, and the round
          Of ordinary intercourse--our minds
          Are nourished and invisibly repaired;
          A virtue, by which pleasure is enhanced,
          That penetrates, enables us to mount,
          When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen.
          This efficacious spirit chiefly lurks
          Among those passages of life that give                     220
          Profoundest knowledge to what point, and how,
          The mind is lord and master--outward sense
          The obedient servant of her will. Such moments
          Are scattered everywhere, taking their date
          From our first childhood. I remember well,
          That once, while yet my inexperienced hand
          Could scarcely hold a bridle, with proud hopes
          I mounted, and we journeyed towards the hills:
          An ancient servant of my father's house
          Was with me, my encourager and guide:                      230
          We had not travelled long, ere some mischance
          Disjoined me from my comrade; and, through fear
          Dismounting, down the rough and stony moor
          I led my horse, and, stumbling on, at length
          Came to a bottom, where in former times
          A murderer had been hung in iron chains.
          The gibbet-mast had mouldered down, the bones
          And iron case were gone; but on the turf,
          Hard by, soon after that fell deed was wrought,
          Some unknown hand had carved the murderer's name.          240
          The monumental letters were inscribed
          In times long past; but still, from year to year
          By superstition of the neighbourhood,
          The grass is cleared away, and to this hour
          The characters are fresh and visible:
          A casual glance had shown them, and I fled,
          Faltering and faint, and ignorant of the road:
          Then, reascending the bare common, saw
          A naked pool that lay beneath the hills,
          The beacon on the summit, and, more near,                  250
          A girl, who bore a pitcher on her head,
          And seemed with difficult steps to force her way
          Against the blowing wind. It was, in truth,
          An ordinary sight; but I should need
          Colours and words that are unknown to man,
          To paint the visionary dreariness
          Which, while I looked all round for my lost guide,
          Invested moorland waste and naked pool,
          The beacon crowning the lone eminence,
          The female and her garments vexed and tossed               260
          By the strong wind. When, in the blessed hours
          Of early love, the loved one at my side,
          I roamed, in daily presence of this scene,
          Upon the naked pool and dreary crags,
          And on the melancholy beacon, fell
          A spirit of pleasure and youth's golden gleam;
          And think ye not with radiance more sublime
          For these remembrances, and for the power
          They had left behind? So feeling comes in aid
          Of feeling, and diversity of strength                      270
          Attends us, if but once we have been strong.
          Oh! mystery of man, from what a depth
          Proceed thy honours. I am lost, but see
          In simple childhood something of the base
          On which thy greatness stands; but this I feel,
          That from thyself it comes, that thou must give,
          Else never canst receive. The days gone by
          Return upon me almost from the dawn
          Of life: the hiding-places of man's power
          Open; I would approach them, but they close.               280
          I see by glimpses now; when age comes on,
          May scarcely see at all; and I would give,
          While yet we may, as far as words can give,
          Substance and life to what I feel, enshrining,
          Such is my hope, the spirit of the Past
          For future restoration.--Yet another
          Of these memorials:--
                                 One Christmas-time,
          On the glad eve of its dear holidays,
          Feverish, and tired, and restless, I went forth
          Into the fields, impatient for the sight                   290
          Of those led palfreys that should bear us home;
          My brothers and myself. There rose a crag,
          That, from the meeting-point of two highways
          Ascending, overlooked them both, far stretched;
          Thither, uncertain on which road to fix
          My expectation, thither I repaired,
          Scout-like, and gained the summit; 'twas a day
          Tempestuous, dark, and wild, and on the grass
          I sate half-sheltered by a naked wall;
          Upon my right hand couched a single sheep,                 300
          Upon my left a blasted hawthorn stood;
          With those companions at my side, I watched
          Straining my eyes intensely, as the mist
          Gave intermitting prospect of the copse
          And plain beneath. Ere we to school returned,--
          That dreary time,--ere we had been ten days
          Sojourners in my father's house, he died;
          And I and my three brothers, orphans then,
          Followed his body to the grave. The event,
          With all the sorrow that it brought, appeared              310
          A chastisement; and when I called to mind
          That day so lately past, when from the crag
          I looked in such anxiety of hope;
          With trite reflections of morality,
          Yet in the deepest passion, I bowed low
          To God, Who thus corrected my desires;
          And, afterwards, the wind and sleety rain,
          And all the business of the elements,
          The single sheep, and the one blasted tree,
          And the bleak music from that old stone wall,              320
          The noise of wood and water, and the mist
          That on the line of each of those two roads
          Advanced in such indisputable shapes;
          All these were kindred spectacles and sounds
          To which I oft repaired, and thence would drink,
          As at a fountain; and on winter nights,
          Down to this very time, when storm and rain
          Beat on my roof, or, haply, at noon-day,
          While in a grove I walk, whose lofty trees,
          Laden with summer's thickest foliage, rock                 330
          In a strong wind, some working of the spirit,
          Some inward agitations thence are brought,
          Whate'er their office, whether to beguile
          Thoughts over busy in the course they took,
          Or animate an hour of vacant ease.

THE PRELUDE
BOOK THIRTEENTH
IMAGINATION AND TASTE, HOW IMPAIRED AND RESTORED (concluded)

          FROM Nature doth emotion come, and moods
          Of calmness equally are Nature's gift:
          This is her glory; these two attributes
          Are sister horns that constitute her strength.
          Hence Genius, born to thrive by interchange
          Of peace and excitation, finds in her
          His best and purest friend; from her receives
          That energy by which he seeks the truth,
          From her that happy stillness of the mind
          Which fits him to receive it when unsought.                 10

            Such benefit the humblest intellects
          Partake of, each in their degree; 'tis mine
          To speak, what I myself have known and felt;
          Smooth task! for words find easy way, inspired
          By gratitude, and confidence in truth.
          Long time in search of knowledge did I range
          The field of human life, in heart and mind
          Benighted; but, the dawn beginning now
          To re-appear, 'twas proved that not in vain
          I had been taught to reverence a Power                      20
          That is the visible quality and shape
          And image of right reason; that matures
          Her processes by steadfast laws; gives birth
          To no impatient or fallacious hopes,
          No heat of passion or excessive zeal,
          No vain conceits; provokes to no quick turns
          Of self-applauding intellect; but trains
          To meekness, and exalts by humble faith;
          Holds up before the mind intoxicate
          With present objects, and the busy dance                    30
          Of things that pass away, a temperate show
          Of objects that endure; and by this course
          Disposes her, when over-fondly set
          On throwing off incumbrances, to seek
          In man, and in the frame of social life,
          Whate'er there is desirable and good
          Of kindred permanence, unchanged in form
          And function, or, through strict vicissitude
          Of life and death, revolving. Above all
          Were re-established now those watchful thoughts             40
          Which, seeing little worthy or sublime
          In what the Historian's pen so much delights
          To blazon--power and energy detached
          From moral purpose--early tutored me
          To look with feelings of fraternal love
          Upon the unassuming things that hold
          A silent station in this beauteous world.

            Thus moderated, thus composed, I found
          Once more in Man an object of delight,
          Of pure imagination, and of love;                           50
          And, as the horizon of my mind enlarged,
          Again I took the intellectual eye
          For my instructor, studious more to see
          Great truths, than touch and handle little ones.
          Knowledge was given accordingly; my trust
          Became more firm in feelings that had stood
          The test of such a trial; clearer far
          My sense of excellence--of right and wrong:
          The promise of the present time retired
          Into its true proportion; sanguine schemes,                 60
          Ambitious projects, pleased me less; I sought
          For present good in life's familiar face,
          And built thereon my hopes of good to come.

            With settling judgments now of what would last
          And what would disappear; prepared to find
          Presumption, folly, madness, in the men
          Who thrust themselves upon the passive world
          As Rulers of the world; to see in these,
          Even when the public welfare is their aim,
          Plans without thought, or built on theories                 70
          Vague and unsound; and having brought the books
          Of modern statists to their proper test,
          Life, human life, with all its sacred claims
          Of sex and age, and heaven-descended rights,
          Mortal, or those beyond the reach of death;
          And having thus discerned how dire a thing
          Is worshipped in that idol proudly named
          "The Wealth of Nations," 'where' alone that wealth
          Is lodged, and how increased; and having gained
          A more judicious knowledge of the worth                     80
          And dignity of individual man,
          No composition of the brain, but man
          Of whom we read, the man whom we behold
          With our own eyes--I could not but inquire--
          Not with less interest than heretofore,
          But greater, though in spirit more subdued--
          Why is this glorious creature to be found
          One only in ten thousand? What one is,
          Why may not millions be? What bars are thrown
          By Nature in the way of such a hope?                        90
          Our animal appetites and daily wants,
          Are these obstructions insurmountable?
          If not, then others vanish into air.
          "Inspect the basis of the social pile:
          Inquire," said I, "how much of mental power
          And genuine virtue they possess who live
          By bodily toil, labour exceeding far
          Their due proportion, under all the weight
          Of that injustice which upon ourselves
          Ourselves entail." Such estimate to frame                  100
          I chiefly looked (what need to look beyond?)
          Among the natural abodes of men,
          Fields with their rural works; recalled to mind
          My earliest notices; with these compared
          The observations made in later youth,
          And to that day continued.--For, the time
          Had never been when throes of mighty Nations
          And the world's tumult unto me could yield,
          How far soe'er transported and possessed,
          Full measure of content; but still I craved                110
          An intermingling of distinct regards
          And truths of individual sympathy
          Nearer ourselves. Such often might be gleaned
          From the great City, else it must have proved
          To me a heart-depressing wilderness;
          But much was wanting: therefore did I turn
          To you, ye pathways, and ye lonely roads;
          Sought you enriched with everything I prized,
          With human kindnesses and simple joys.

            Oh! next to one dear state of bliss, vouchsafed,         120
          Alas! to few in this untoward world,
          The bliss of walking daily in life's prime
          Through field or forest with the maid we love,
          While yet our hearts are young, while yet we breathe
          Nothing but happiness, in some lone nook,
          Deep vale, or anywhere, the home of both,
          From which it would be misery to stir:
          Oh! next to such enjoyment of our youth,
          In my esteem, next to such dear delight,
          Was that of wandering on from day to day                   130
          Where I could meditate in peace, and cull
          Knowledge that step by step might lead me on
          To wisdom; or, as lightsome as a bird
          Wafted upon the wind from distant lands,
          Sing notes of greeting to strange fields or groves,
          Which lacked not voice to welcome me in turn:
          And, when that pleasant toil had ceased to please,
          Converse with men, where if we meet a face
          We almost meet a friend, on naked heaths
          With long long ways before, by cottage bench,              140
          Or well-spring where the weary traveller rests.

            Who doth not love to follow with his eye
          The windings of a public way? the sight,
          Familiar object as it is, hath wrought
          On my imagination since the morn
          Of childhood, when a disappearing line,
          One daily present to my eyes, that crossed
          The naked summit of a far-off hill
          Beyond the limits that my feet had trod,
          Was like an invitation into space                          150
          Boundless, or guide into eternity.
          Yes, something of the grandeur which invests
          The mariner, who sails the roaring sea
          Through storm and darkness, early in my mind
          Surrounded, too, the wanderers of the earth;
          Grandeur as much, and loveliness far more.
          Awed have I been by strolling Bedlamites;
          From many other uncouth vagrants (passed
          In fear) have walked with quicker step; but why
          Take note of this? When I began to enquire,                160
          To watch and question those I met, and speak
          Without reserve to them, the lonely roads
          Were open schools in which I daily read
          With most delight the passions of mankind,
          Whether by words, looks, sighs, or tears, revealed;
          There saw into the depth of human souls,
          Souls that appear to have no depth at all
          To careless eyes. And--now convinced at heart
          How little those formalities, to which
          With overweening trust alone we give                       170
          The name of Education, have to do
          With real feeling and just sense; how vain
          A correspondence with the talking world
          Proves to the most; and called to make good search
          If man's estate, by doom of Nature yoked
          With toil, be therefore yoked with ignorance;
          If virtue be indeed so hard to rear,
          And intellectual strength so rare a boon--
          I prized such walks still more, for there I found
          Hope to my hope, and to my pleasure peace                  180
          And steadiness, and healing and repose
          To every angry passion. There I heard,
          From mouths of men obscure and lowly, truths
          Replete with honour; sounds in unison
          With loftiest promises of good and fair.

            There are who think that strong affection, love
          Known by whatever name, is falsely deemed
          A gift, to use a term which they would use,
          Of vulgar nature; that its growth requires
          Retirement, leisure, language purified                     190
          By manners studied and elaborate;
          That whoso feels such passion in its strength
          Must live within the very light and air
          Of courteous usages refined by art.
          True is it, where oppression worse than death
          Salutes the being at his birth, where grace
          Of culture hath been utterly unknown,
          And poverty and labour in excess
          From day to day pre-occupy the ground
          Of the affections, and to Nature's self                    200
          Oppose a deeper nature; there, indeed,
          Love cannot be; nor does it thrive with ease
          Among the close and overcrowded haunts
          Of cities, where the human heart is sick,
          And the eye feeds it not, and cannot feed.
          --Yes, in those wanderings deeply did I feel
          How we mislead each other; above all,
          How books mislead us, seeking their reward
          From judgments of the wealthy Few, who see
          By artificial lights; how they debase                      210
          The Many for the pleasure of those Few;
          Effeminately level down the truth
          To certain general notions, for the sake
          Of being understood at once, or else
          Through want of better knowledge in the heads
          That framed them; flattering self-conceit with words,
          That, while they most ambitiously set forth
          Extrinsic differences, the outward marks
          Whereby society has parted man
          From man, neglect the universal heart.                     220

            Here, calling up to mind what then I saw,
          A youthful traveller, and see daily now
          In the familiar circuit of my home,
          Here might I pause, and bend in reverence
          To Nature, and the power of human minds,
          To men as they are men within themselves.
          How oft high service is performed within,
          When all the external man is rude in show,--
          Not like a temple rich with pomp and gold,
          But a mere mountain chapel, that protects                  230
          Its simple worshippers from sun and shower.
          Of these, said I, shall be my song; of these,
          If future years mature me for the task,
          Will I record the praises, making verse
          Deal boldly with substantial things; in truth
          And sanctity of passion, speak of these,
          That justice may be done, obeisance paid
          Where it is due: thus haply shall I teach,
          Inspire; through unadulterated ears
          Pour rapture, tenderness, and hope,--my theme              240
          No other than the very heart of man,
          As found among the best of those who live--
          Not unexalted by religious faith,
          Nor uninformed by books, good books, though few--
          In Nature's presence: thence may I select
          Sorrow, that is not sorrow, but delight;
          And miserable love, that is not pain
          To hear of, for the glory that redounds
          Therefrom to human kind, and what we are.
          Be mine to follow with no timid step                       250
          Where knowledge leads me: it shall be my pride
          That I have dared to tread this holy ground,
          Speaking no dream, but things oracular;
          Matter not lightly to be heard by those
          Who to the letter of the outward promise
          Do read the invisible soul; by men adroit
          In speech, and for communion with the world
          Accomplished; minds whose faculties are then
          Most active when they are most eloquent,
          And elevated most when most admired.                       260
          Men may be found of other mould than these,
          Who are their own upholders, to themselves
          Encouragement, and energy, and will,
          Expressing liveliest thoughts in lively words
          As native passion dictates. Others, too,
          There are among the walks of homely life
          Still higher, men for contemplation framed,
          Shy, and unpractised in the strife of phrase;
          Meek men, whose very souls perhaps would sink
          Beneath them, summoned to such intercourse:                270
          Theirs is the language of the heavens, the power,
          The thought, the image, and the silent joy:
          Words are but under-agents in their souls;
          When they are grasping with their greatest strength,
          They do not breathe among them: this I speak
          In gratitude to God, Who feeds our hearts
          For His own service; knoweth, loveth us,
          When we are unregarded by the world.

            Also, about this time did I receive
          Convictions still more strong than heretofore,             280
          Not only that the inner frame is good,
          And graciously composed, but that, no less,
          Nature for all conditions wants not power
          To consecrate, if we have eyes to see,
          The outside of her creatures, and to breathe
          Grandeur upon the very humblest face
          Of human life. I felt that the array
          Of act and circumstance, and visible form,
          Is mainly to the pleasure of the mind
          What passion makes them; that meanwhile the forms          290
          Of Nature have a passion in themselves,
          That intermingles with those works of man
          To which she summons him; although the works
          Be mean, have nothing lofty of their own;
          And that the Genius of the Poet hence
          May boldly take his way among mankind
          Wherever Nature leads; that he hath stood
          By Nature's side among the men of old,
          And so shall stand for ever. Dearest Friend!
          If thou partake the animating faith                        300
          That Poets, even as Prophets, each with each
          Connected in a mighty scheme of truth,
          Have each his own peculiar faculty,
          Heaven's gift, a sense that fits him to perceive
          Objects unseen before, thou wilt not blame
          The humblest of this band who dares to hope
          That unto him hath also been vouchsafed
          An insight that in some sort he possesses,
          A privilege whereby a work of his,
          Proceeding from a source of untaught things,               310
          Creative and enduring, may become
          A power like one of Nature's. To a hope
          Not less ambitious once among the wilds
          Of Sarum's Plain, my youthful spirit was raised;
          There, as I ranged at will the pastoral downs
          Trackless and smooth, or paced the bare white roads
          Lengthening in solitude their dreary line,
          Time with his retinue of ages fled
          Backwards, nor checked his flight until I saw
          Our dim ancestral Past in vision clear;                    320
          Saw multitudes of men, and, here and there,
          A single Briton clothed in wolf-skin vest,
          With shield and stone-axe, stride across the wold;
          The voice of spears was heard, the rattling spear
          Shaken by arms of mighty bone, in strength,
          Long mouldered, of barbaric majesty.
          I called on Darkness--but before the word
          Was uttered, midnight darkness seemed to take
          All objects from my sight; and lo! again
          The Desert visible by dismal flames;                       330
          It is the sacrificial altar, fed
          With living men--how deep the groans! the voice
          Of those that crowd the giant wicker thrills
          The monumental hillocks, and the pomp
          Is for both worlds, the living and the dead.
          At other moments--(for through that wide waste
          Three summer days I roamed) where'er the Plain
          Was figured o'er with circles, lines, or mounds,
          That yet survive, a work, as some divine,
          Shaped by the Druids, so to represent                      340
          Their knowledge of the heavens, and image forth
          The constellations--gently was I charmed
          Into a waking dream, a reverie
          That, with believing eyes, where'er I turned,
          Beheld long-bearded teachers, with white wands
          Uplifted, pointing to the starry sky,
          Alternately, and plain below, while breath
          Of music swayed their motions, and the waste
          Rejoiced with them and me in those sweet sounds.

            This for the past, and things that may be viewed         350
          Or fancied in the obscurity of years
          From monumental hints: and thou, O Friend!
          Pleased with some unpremeditated strains
          That served those wanderings to beguile, hast said
          That then and there my mind had exercised
          Upon the vulgar forms of present things,
          The actual world of our familiar days,
          Yet higher power; had caught from them a tone,
          An image, and a character, by books
          Not hitherto reflected. Call we this                       360
          A partial judgment--and yet why? for 'then'
          We were as strangers; and I may not speak
          Thus wrongfully of verse, however rude,
          Which on thy young imagination, trained
          In the great City, broke like light from far.
          Moreover, each man's Mind is to herself
          Witness and judge; and I remember well
          That in life's every-day appearances
          I seemed about this time to gain clear sight
          Of a new world--a world, too, that was fit                 370
          To be transmitted, and to other eyes
          Made visible; as ruled by those fixed laws
          Whence spiritual dignity originates,
          Which do both give it being and maintain
          A balance, an ennobling interchange
          Of action from without and from within;
          The excellence, pure function, and best power
          Both of the objects seen, and eye that sees.

THE PRELUDE
BOOK FOURTEENTH
CONCLUSION

          IN one of those excursions (may they ne'er
          Fade from remembrance!) through the Northern tracts
          Of Cambria ranging with a youthful friend,
          I left Bethgelert's huts at couching-time,
          And westward took my way, to see the sun
          Rise, from the top of Snowdon. To the door
          Of a rude cottage at the mountain's base
          We came, and roused the shepherd who attends
          The adventurous stranger's steps, a trusty guide;
          Then, cheered by short refreshment, sallied forth.          10

            It was a close, warm, breezeless summer night,
          Wan, dull, and glaring, with a dripping fog
          Low-hung and thick that covered all the sky;
          But, undiscouraged, we began to climb
          The mountain-side. The mist soon girt us round,
          And, after ordinary travellers' talk
          With our conductor, pensively we sank
          Each into commerce with his private thoughts:
          Thus did we breast the ascent, and by myself
          Was nothing either seen or heard that checked               20
          Those musings or diverted, save that once
          The shepherd's lurcher, who, among the crags,
          Had to his joy unearthed a hedgehog, teased
          His coiled-up prey with barkings turbulent.
          This small adventure, for even such it seemed
          In that wild place and at the dead of night,
          Being over and forgotten, on we wound
          In silence as before. With forehead bent
          Earthward, as if in opposition set
          Against an enemy, I panted up                               30
          With eager pace, and no less eager thoughts.
          Thus might we wear a midnight hour away,
          Ascending at loose distance each from each,
          And I, as chanced, the foremost of the band;
          When at my feet the ground appeared to brighten,
          And with a step or two seemed brighter still;
          Nor was time given to ask or learn the cause,
          For instantly a light upon the turf
          Fell like a flash, and lo! as I looked up,
          The Moon hung naked in a firmament                          40
          Of azure without cloud, and at my feet
          Rested a silent sea of hoary mist.
          A hundred hills their dusky backs upheaved
          All over this still ocean; and beyond,
          Far, far beyond, the solid vapours stretched,
          In headlands, tongues, and promontory shapes,
          Into the main Atlantic, that appeared
          To dwindle, and give up his majesty,
          Usurped upon far as the sight could reach.
          Not so the ethereal vault; encroachment none                50
          Was there, nor loss; only the inferior stars
          Had disappeared, or shed a fainter light
          In the clear presence of the full-orbed Moon,
          Who, from her sovereign elevation, gazed
          Upon the billowy ocean, as it lay
          All meek and silent, save that through a rift--
          Not distant from the shore whereon we stood,
          A fixed, abysmal, gloomy, breathing-place--
          Mounted the roar of waters, torrents, streams
          Innumerable, roaring with one voice!                        60
          Heard over earth and sea, and, in that hour,
          For so it seemed, felt by the starry heavens.

            When into air had partially dissolved
          That vision, given to spirits of the night
          And three chance human wanderers, in calm thought
          Reflected, it appeared to me the type
          Of a majestic intellect, its acts
          And its possessions, what it has and craves,
          What in itself it is, and would become.
          There I beheld the emblem of a mind                         70
          That feeds upon infinity, that broods
          Over the dark abyss, intent to hear
          Its voices issuing forth to silent light
          In one continuous stream; a mind sustained
          By recognitions of transcendent power,
          In sense conducting to ideal form,
          In soul of more than mortal privilege.
          One function, above all, of such a mind
          Had Nature shadowed there, by putting forth,
          'Mid circumstances awful and sublime,                       80
          That mutual domination which she loves
          To exert upon the face of outward things,
          So moulded, joined, abstracted, so endowed
          With interchangeable supremacy,
          That men, least sensitive, see, hear, perceive,
          And cannot choose but feel. The power, which all
          Acknowledge when thus moved, which Nature thus
          To bodily sense exhibits, is the express
          Resemblance of that glorious faculty
          That higher minds bear with them as their own.              90
          This is the very spirit in which they deal
          With the whole compass of the universe:
          They from their native selves can send abroad
          Kindred mutations; for themselves create
          A like existence; and, whene'er it dawns
          Created for them, catch it, or are caught
          By its inevitable mastery,
          Like angels stopped upon the wing by sound
          Of harmony from Heaven's remotest spheres.
          Them the enduring and the transient both                   100
          Serve to exalt; they build up greatest things
          From least suggestions; ever on the watch,
          Willing to work and to be wrought upon,
          They need not extraordinary calls
          To rouse them; in a world of life they live,
          By sensible impressions not enthralled,
          But by their quickening impulse made more prompt
          To hold fit converse with the spiritual world,
          And with the generations of mankind
          Spread over time, past, present, and to come,              110
          Age after age, till Time shall be no more.
          Such minds are truly from the Deity,
          For they are Powers; and hence the highest bliss
          That flesh can know is theirs--the consciousness
          Of Whom they are, habitually infused
          Through every image and through every thought,
          And all affections by communion raised
          From earth to heaven, from human to divine;
          Hence endless occupation for the Soul,
          Whether discursive or intuitive;                           120
          Hence cheerfulness for acts of daily life,
          Emotions which best foresight need not fear,
          Most worthy then of trust when most intense.
          Hence, amid ills that vex and wrongs that crush
          Our hearts--if here the words of Holy Writ
          May with fit reverence be applied--that peace
          Which passeth understanding, that repose
          In moral judgments which from this pure source
          Must come, or will by man be sought in vain.

            Oh! who is he that hath his whole life long              130
          Preserved, enlarged, this freedom in himself?
          For this alone is genuine liberty:
          Where is the favoured being who hath held
          That course unchecked, unerring, and untired,
          In one perpetual progress smooth and bright?--
          A humbler destiny have we retraced,
          And told of lapse and hesitating choice,
          And backward wanderings along thorny ways:
          Yet--compassed round by mountain solitudes,
          Within whose solemn temple I received                      140
          My earliest visitations, careless then
          Of what was given me; and which now I range,
          A meditative, oft a suffering, man--
          Do I declare--in accents which, from truth
          Deriving cheerful confidence, shall blend
          Their modulation with these vocal streams--
          That, whatsoever falls my better mind,
          Revolving with the accidents of life,
          May have sustained, that, howsoe'er misled,
          Never did I, in quest of right and wrong,                  150
          Tamper with conscience from a private aim;
          Nor was in any public hope the dupe
          Of selfish passions; nor did ever yield
          Wilfully to mean cares or low pursuits,
          But shrunk with apprehensive jealousy
          From every combination which might aid
          The tendency, too potent in itself,
          Of use and custom to bow down the soul
          Under a growing weight of vulgar sense,
          And substitute a universe of death                         160
          For that which moves with light and life informed,
          Actual, divine, and true. To fear and love,
          To love as prime and chief, for there fear ends,
          Be this ascribed; to early intercourse,
          In presence of sublime or beautiful forms,
          With the adverse principles of pain and joy--
          Evil as one is rashly named by men
          Who know not what they speak. By love subsists
          All lasting grandeur, by pervading love;
          That gone, we are as dust.--Behold the fields              170
          In balmy spring-time full of rising flowers
          And joyous creatures; see that pair, the lamb
          And the lamb's mother, and their tender ways
          Shall touch thee to the heart; thou callest this love,
          And not inaptly so, for love it is,
          Far as it carries thee. In some green bower
          Rest, and be not alone, but have thou there
          The One who is thy choice of all the world:
          There linger, listening, gazing, with delight
          Impassioned, but delight how pitiable!                     180
          Unless this love by a still higher love
          Be hallowed, love that breathes not without awe;
          Love that adores, but on the knees of prayer,
          By heaven inspired; that frees from chains the soul,
          Lifted, in union with the purest, best,
          Of earth-born passions, on the wings of praise
          Bearing a tribute to the Almighty's Throne.

            This spiritual Love acts not nor can exist
          Without Imagination, which, in truth,
          Is but another name for absolute power                     190
          And clearest insight, amplitude of mind,
          And Reason in her most exalted mood.
          This faculty hath been the feeding source
          Of our long labour: we have traced the stream
          From the blind cavern whence is faintly heard
          Its natal murmur; followed it to light
          And open day; accompanied its course
          Among the ways of Nature, for a time
          Lost sight of it bewildered and engulphed;
          Then given it greeting as it rose once more                200
          In strength, reflecting from its placid breast
          The works of man and face of human life;
          And lastly, from its progress have we drawn
          Faith in life endless, the sustaining thought
          Of human Being, Eternity, and God.

            Imagination having been our theme,
          So also hath that intellectual Love,
          For they are each in each, and cannot stand
          Dividually.--Here must thou be, O Man!
          Power to thyself; no Helper hast thou here;                210
          Here keepest thou in singleness thy state:
          No other can divide with thee this work:
          No secondary hand can intervene
          To fashion this ability; 'tis thine,
          The prime and vital principle is thine
          In the recesses of thy nature, far
          From any reach of outward fellowship,
          Else is not thine at all. But joy to him,
          Oh, joy to him who here hath sown, hath laid
          Here, the foundation of his future years!                  220
          For all that friendship, all that love can do,
          All that a darling countenance can look
          Or dear voice utter, to complete the man,
          Perfect him, made imperfect in himself,
          All shall be his: and he whose soul hath risen
          Up to the height of feeling intellect
          Shall want no humbler tenderness; his heart
          Be tender as a nursing mother's heart;
          Of female softness shall his life be full,
          Of humble cares and delicate desires,                      230
          Mild interests and gentlest sympathies.

            Child of my parents! Sister of my soul!
          Thanks in sincerest verse have been elsewhere
          Poured out for all the early tenderness
          Which I from thee imbibed: and 'tis most true
          That later seasons owed to thee no less;
          For, spite of thy sweet influence and the touch
          Of kindred hands that opened out the springs
          Of genial thought in childhood, and in spite
          Of all that unassisted I had marked                        240
          In life or nature of those charms minute
          That win their way into the heart by stealth
          (Still to the very going-out of youth)
          I too exclusively esteemed 'that' love,
          And sought 'that' beauty, which, as Milton sings,
          Hath terror in it. Thou didst soften down
          This over-sternness; but for thee, dear Friend!
          My soul, too reckless of mild grace, had stood
          In her original self too confident,
          Retained too long a countenance severe;                    250
          A rock with torrents roaring, with the clouds
          Familiar, and a favourite of the stars:
          But thou didst plant its crevices with flowers,
          Hang it with shrubs that twinkle in the breeze,
          And teach the little birds to build their nests
          And warble in its chambers. At a time
          When Nature, destined to remain so long
          Foremost in my affections, had fallen back
          Into a second place, pleased to become
          A handmaid to a nobler than herself,                       260
          When every day brought with it some new sense
          Of exquisite regard for common things,
          And all the earth was budding with these gifts
          Of more refined humanity, thy breath,
          Dear Sister! was a kind of gentler spring
          That went before my steps. Thereafter came
          One whom with thee friendship had early paired;
          She came, no more a phantom to adorn
          A moment, but an inmate of the heart,
          And yet a spirit, there for me enshrined                   270
          To penetrate the lofty and the low;
          Even as one essence of pervading light
          Shines, in the brightest of ten thousand stars
          And the meek worm that feeds her lonely lamp
          Couched in the dewy grass.
                                      With such a theme,
          Coleridge! with this my argument, of thee
          Shall I be silent? O capacious Soul!
          Placed on this earth to love and understand,
          And from thy presence shed the light of love,
          Shall I be mute, ere thou be spoken of?                    280
          Thy kindred influence to my heart of hearts
          Did also find its way. Thus fear relaxed
          Her overweening grasp; thus thoughts and things
          In the self-haunting spirit learned to take
          More rational proportions; mystery,
          The incumbent mystery of sense and soul,
          Of life and death, time and eternity,
          Admitted more habitually a mild
          Interposition--a serene delight
          In closelier gathering cares, such as become               290
          A human creature, howsoe'er endowed,
          Poet, or destined for a humbler name;
          And so the deep enthusiastic joy,
          The rapture of the hallelujah sent
          From all that breathes and is, was chastened, stemmed
          And balanced by pathetic truth, by trust
          In hopeful reason, leaning on the stay
          Of Providence; and in reverence for duty,
          Here, if need be, struggling with storms, and there
          Strewing in peace life's humblest ground with herbs,       300
          At every season green, sweet at all hours.

            And now, O Friend! this history is brought
          To its appointed close: the discipline
          And consummation of a Poet's mind,
          In everything that stood most prominent,
          Have faithfully been pictured; we have reached
          The time (our guiding object from the first)
          When we may, not presumptuously, I hope,
          Suppose my powers so far confirmed, and such
          My knowledge, as to make me capable                        310
          Of building up a Work that shall endure.
          Yet much hath been omitted, as need was;
          Of books how much! and even of the other wealth
          That is collected among woods and fields,
          Far more: for Nature's secondary grace
          Hath hitherto been barely touched upon,
          The charm more superficial that attends
          Her works, as they present to Fancy's choice
          Apt illustrations of the moral world,
          Caught at a glance, or traced with curious pains.          320

            Finally, and above all, O Friend! (I speak
          With due regret) how much is overlooked
          In human nature and her subtle ways,
          As studied first in our own hearts, and then
          In life among the passions of mankind,
          Varying their composition and their hue,
          Where'er we move, under the diverse shapes
          That individual character presents
          To an attentive eye. For progress meet,
          Along this intricate and difficult path,                   330
          Whate'er was wanting, something had I gained,
          As one of many schoolfellows compelled,
          In hardy independence, to stand up
          Amid conflicting interests, and the shock
          Of various tempers; to endure and note
          What was not understood, though known to be;
          Among the mysteries of love and hate,
          Honour and shame, looking to right and left,
          Unchecked by innocence too delicate,
          And moral notions too intolerant,                          340
          Sympathies too contracted. Hence, when called
          To take a station among men, the step
          Was easier, the transition more secure,
          More profitable also; for, the mind
          Learns from such timely exercise to keep
          In wholesome separation the two natures,
          The one that feels, the other that observes.

            Yet one word more of personal concern;--
          Since I withdrew unwillingly from France,
          I led an undomestic wanderer's life,                       350
          In London chiefly harboured, whence I roamed,
          Tarrying at will in many a pleasant spot
          Of rural England's cultivated vales
          Or Cambrian solitudes. A youth--(he bore
          The name of Calvert--it shall live, if words
          Of mine can give it life,) in firm belief
          That by endowments not from me withheld
          Good might be furthered--in his last decay
          By a bequest sufficient for my needs
          Enabled me to pause for choice, and walk                   360
          At large and unrestrained, nor damped too soon
          By mortal cares. Himself no Poet, yet
          Far less a common follower of the world,
          He deemed that my pursuits and labours lay
          Apart from all that leads to wealth, or even
          A necessary maintenance insures,
          Without some hazard to the finer sense;
          He cleared a passage for me, and the stream
          Flowed in the bent of Nature.
                                         Having now
          Told what best merits mention, further pains               370
          Our present purpose seems not to require,
          And I have other tasks. Recall to mind
          The mood in which this labour was begun,
          O Friend! The termination of my course
          Is nearer now, much nearer; yet even then,
          In that distraction and intense desire,
          I said unto the life which I had lived,
          Where art thou? Hear I not a voice from thee
          Which 'tis reproach to hear? Anon I rose
          As if on wings, and saw beneath me stretched               380
          Vast prospect of the world which I had been
          And was; and hence this Song, which, like a lark,
          I have protracted, in the unwearied heavens
          Singing, and often with more plaintive voice
          To earth attempered and her deep-drawn sighs,
          Yet centring all in love, and in the end
          All gratulant, if rightly understood.

            Whether to me shall be allotted life,
          And, with life, power to accomplish aught of worth,
          That will be deemed no insufficient plea                   390
          For having given the story of myself,
          Is all uncertain: but, beloved Friend!
          When, looking back, thou seest, in clearer view
          Than any liveliest sight of yesterday,
          That summer, under whose indulgent skies,
          Upon smooth Quantock's airy ridge we roved
          Unchecked, or loitered 'mid her sylvan combs,
          Thou in bewitching words, with happy heart,
          Didst chaunt the vision of that Ancient Man,
          The bright-eyed Mariner, and rueful woes                   400
          Didst utter of the Lady Christabel;
          And I, associate with such labour, steeped
          In soft forgetfulness the livelong hours,
          Murmuring of him who, joyous hap, was found,
          After the perils of his moonlight ride,
          Near the loud waterfall; or her who sate
          In misery near the miserable Thorn--
          When thou dost to that summer turn thy thoughts,
          And hast before thee all which then we were,
          To thee, in memory of that happiness,                      410
          It will be known, by thee at least, my Friend!
          Felt, that the history of a Poet's mind
          Is labour not unworthy of regard;
          To thee the work shall justify itself.

            The last and later portions of this gift
          Have been prepared, not with the buoyant spirits
          That were our daily portion when we first
          Together wantoned in wild Poesy,
          But, under pressure of a private grief,
          Keen and enduring, which the mind and heart,               420
          That in this meditative history
          Have been laid open, needs must make me feel
          More deeply, yet enable me to bear
          More firmly; and a comfort now hath risen
          From hope that thou art near, and wilt be soon
          Restored to us in renovated health;
          When, after the first mingling of our tears,
          'Mong other consolations, we may draw
          Some pleasure from this offering of my love.

            Oh! yet a few short years of useful life,                430
          And all will be complete, thy race be run,
          Thy monument of glory will be raised;
          Then, though (too weak to tread the ways of truth)
          This age fall back to old idolatry,
          Though men return to servitude as fast
          As the tide ebbs, to ignominy and shame,
          By nations, sink together, we shall still
          Find solace--knowing what we have learnt to know,
          Rich in true happiness if allowed to be
          Faithful alike in forwarding a day                         440
          Of firmer trust, joint labourers in the work
          (Should Providence such grace to us vouchsafe)
          Of their deliverance, surely yet to come.
          Prophets of Nature, we to them will speak
          A lasting inspiration, sanctified
          By reason, blest by faith: what we have loved,
          Others will love, and we will teach them how;
          Instruct them how the mind of man becomes
          A thousand times more beautiful than the earth
          On which he dwells, above this frame of things             450
          (Which, 'mid all revolution in the hopes
          And fears of men, doth still remain unchanged)
          In beauty exalted, as it is itself
          Of quality and fabric more divine.

                                                         1799-1805.

THE RECLUSE
PART FIRST
BOOK FIRST--HOME AT GRASMERE

          ONCE to the verge of yon steep barrier came
          A roving school-boy; what the adventurer's age
          Hath now escaped his memory--but the hour,
          One of a golden summer holiday,
          He well remembers, though the year be gone--
          Alone and devious from afar he came;
          And, with a sudden influx overpowered
          At sight of this seclusion, he forgot
          His haste, for hasty had his footsteps been
          As boyish his pursuits; and sighing said,                   10
          "What happy fortune were it here to live!
          And, if a thought of dying, if a thought
          Of mortal separation, could intrude
          With paradise before him, here to die!"
          No Prophet was he, had not even a hope,
          Scarcely a wish, but one bright pleasing thought,
          A fancy in the heart of what might be
          The lot of others, never could be his.
            The station whence he looked was soft and green,
          Not giddy yet aerial, with a depth                          20
          Of vale below, a height of hills above.
          For rest of body perfect was the spot,
          All that luxurious nature could desire;
          But stirring to the spirit; who could gaze
          And not feel motions there? He thought of clouds
          That sail on winds: of breezes that delight
          To play on water, or in endless chase
          Pursue each other through the yielding plain
          Of grass or corn, over and through and through,
          In billow after billow, evermore                            30
          Disporting--nor unmindful was the boy
          Of sunbeams, shadows, butterflies and birds;
          Of fluttering sylphs and softly-gliding Fays,
          Genii, and winged angels that are Lords
          Without restraint of all which they behold.
          The illusion strengthening as he gazed, he felt
          That such unfettered liberty was his,
          Such power and joy; but only for this end,
          To flit from field to rock, from rock to field,
          From shore to island, and from isle to shore,               40
          From open ground to covert, from a bed
          Of meadow-flowers into a tuft of wood;
          From high to low, from low to high, yet still
          Within the bound of this huge concave; here
          Must be his home, this valley be his world.
            Since that day forth the Place to him--'to me'
          (For I who live to register the truth
          Was that same young and happy Being) became
          As beautiful to thought, as it had been
          When present, to the bodily sense; a haunt                  50
          Of pure affections, shedding upon joy
          A brighter joy; and through such damp and gloom
          Of the gay mind, as ofttimes splenetic youth
          Mistakes for sorrow, darting beams of light
          That no self-cherished sadness could withstand;
          And now 'tis mine, perchance for life, dear Vale,
          Beloved Grasmere (let the wandering streams
          Take up, the cloud-capt hills repeat, the Name)
          One of thy lowly Dwellings is my Home.
            And was the cost so great? and could it seem              60
          An act of courage, and the thing itself
          A conquest? who must bear the blame? Sage man
          Thy prudence, thy experience, thy desires,
          Thy apprehensions--blush thou for them all.
            Yes the realities of life so cold,
          So cowardly, so ready to betray,
          So stinted in the measure of their grace
          As we pronounce them, doing them much wrong,
          Have been to me more bountiful than hope,
          Less timid than desire--but that is past.                   70
            On Nature's invitation do I come,
          By Reason sanctioned. Can the choice mislead,
          That made the calmest fairest spot of earth
          With all its unappropriated good
          My own; and not mine only, for with me
          Entrenched, say rather peacefully embowered,
          Under yon orchard, in yon humble cot,
          A younger Orphan of a home extinct,
          The only Daughter of my Parents dwells.
            Ay, think on that, my heart, and cease to stir,           80
          Pause upon that and let the breathing frame
          No longer breathe, but all be satisfied.
          --Oh, if such silence be not thanks to God
          For what hath been bestowed, then where, where then
          Shall gratitude find rest? Mine eyes did ne'er
          Fix on a lovely object, nor my mind
          Take pleasure in the midst of happy thoughts,
          But either She whom now I have, who now
          Divides with me this loved abode, was there,
          Or not far off. Where'er my footsteps turned,               90
          Her voice was like a hidden Bird that sang,
          The thought of her was like a flash of light,
          Or an unseen companionship, a breath
          Of fragrance independent of the Wind.
          In all my goings, in the new and old
          Of all my meditations, and in this
          Favourite of all, in this the most of all.
          --What being, therefore, since the birth of Man
          Had ever more abundant cause to speak
          Thanks, and if favours of the Heavenly Muse                100
          Make him more thankful, then to call on Verse
          To aid him and in song resound his joy?
          The boon is absolute; surpassing grace
          To me hath been vouchsafed; among the bowers
          Of blissful Eden this was neither given
          Nor could be given, possession of the good
          Which had been sighed for, ancient thought fulfilled,
          And dear Imaginations realised,
          Up to their highest measure, yea and more.
            Embrace me then, ye Hills, and close me in;              110
          Now in the clear and open day I feel
          Your guardianship; I take it to my heart;
          'Tis like the solemn shelter of the night.
          But I would call thee beautiful, for mild,
          And soft, and gay, and beautiful thou art
          Dear Valley, having in thy face a smile
          Though peaceful, full of gladness. Thou art pleased,
          Pleased with thy crags and woody steeps, thy Lake,
          Its one green island and its winding shores;
          The multitude of little rocky hills,                       120
          Thy Church and cottages of mountain stone
          Clustered like stars some few, but single most,
          And lurking dimly in their shy retreats,
          Or glancing at each other cheerful looks
          Like separated stars with clouds between.
          What want we? have we not perpetual streams,
          Warm woods, and sunny hills, and fresh green fields,
          And mountains not less green, and flocks and herds,
          And thickets full of songsters, and the voice
          Of lordly birds, an unexpected sound                       130
          Heard now and then from morn to latest eve,
          Admonishing the man who walks below
          Of solitude and silence in the sky?
          These have we, and a thousand nooks of earth
          Have also these, but nowhere else is found,
          Nowhere (or is it fancy?) can be found
          The one sensation that is here; 'tis here,
          Here as it found its way into my heart
          In childhood, here as it abides by day,
          By night, here only; or in chosen minds                    140
          That take it with them hence, where'er they go.
          --'Tis, but I cannot name it, 'tis the sense
          Of majesty, and beauty, and repose,
          A blended holiness of earth and sky,
          Something that makes this individual spot,
          This small abiding-place of many men,
          A termination, and a last retreat,
          A centre, come from wheresoe'er you will,
          A whole without dependence or defect,
          Made for itself, and happy in itself,                      150
          Perfect contentment, Unity entire.
            Bleak season was it, turbulent and bleak,
          When hitherward we journeyed side by side
          Through burst of sunshine and through flying showers;
          Paced the long vales--how long they were--and yet
          How fast that length of way was left behind,
          Wensley's rich Vale, and Sedbergh's naked heights.
          The frosty wind, as if to make amends
          For its keen breath, was aiding to our steps,
          And drove us onward like two ships at sea,                 160
          Or like two birds, companions in mid-air,
          Parted and reunited by the blast.
            Stern was the face of nature; we rejoiced
          In that stern countenance, for our souls thence drew
          A feeling of their strength. The naked trees,
          The icy brooks, as on we passed, appeared
          To question us. "Whence come ye, to what end?"
          They seemed to say, "What would ye," said the shower,
          "Wild Wanderers, whither through my dark domain?"
          The sunbeam said, "Be happy." When this vale               170
          We entered, bright and solemn was the sky
          That faced us with a passionate welcoming,
          And led us to our threshold. Daylight failed
          Insensibly, and round us gently fell
          Composing darkness, with a quiet load
          Of full contentment, in a little shed
          Disturbed, uneasy in itself as seemed,
          And wondering at its new inhabitants.
          It loves us now, this Vale so beautiful
          Begins to love us! by a sullen storm,                      180
          Two months unwearied of severest storm,
          It put the temper of our minds to proof,
          And found us faithful through the gloom, and heard
          The poet mutter his prelusive songs
          With cheerful heart, an unknown voice of joy
          Among the silence of the woods and hills;
          Silent to any gladsomeness of sound
          With all their shepherds.
                                     But the gates of Spring
          Are opened; churlish winter hath given leave
          That she should entertain for this one day,                190
          Perhaps for many genial days to come,
          His guests, and make them jocund.--They are pleased,
          But most of all the birds that haunt the flood
          With the mild summons; inmates though they be
          Of Winter's household, they keep festival
          This day, who drooped, or seemed to droop, so long;
          They show their pleasure, and shall I do less?
          Happier of happy though I be, like them
          I cannot take possession of the sky,
          Mount with a thoughtless impulse, and wheel there          200
          One of a mighty multitude, whose way
          Is a perpetual harmony and dance
          Magnificent. Behold how with a grace
          Of ceaseless motion, that might scarcely seem
          Inferior to angelical, they prolong
          Their curious pastime, shaping in mid-air,
          And sometimes with ambitious wing that soars
          High as the level of the mountain tops,
          A circuit ampler than the lake beneath,
          Their own domain;--but ever, while intent                  210
          On tracing and retracing that large round,
          Their jubilant activity evolves
          Hundreds of curves and circlets, to and fro,
          Upwards and downwards; progress intricate
          Yet unperplexed, as if one spirit swayed
          Their indefatigable flight. 'Tis done,
          Ten times and more I fancied it had ceased,
          But lo! the vanished company again
          Ascending, they approach. I hear their wings
          Faint, faint at first; and then an eager sound             220
          Passed in a moment--and as faint again!
          They tempt the sun to sport among their plumes;
          Tempt the smooth water, or the gleaming ice,
          To show them a fair image,--'tis themselves,
          Their own fair forms upon the glimmering plain
          Painted more soft and fair as they descend,
          Almost to touch,--then up again aloft,
          Up with a sally and a flash of speed,
          As if they scorned both resting-place and rest!
          --This day is a thanksgiving, 'tis a day                   230
          Of glad emotion and deep quietness;
          Not upon me alone hath been bestowed,
          Me rich in many onward-looking thoughts,
          The penetrating bliss; oh surely these
          Have felt it, not the happy choirs of spring,
          Her own peculiar family of love
          That sport among green leaves, a blither train!
            But two are missing, two, a lonely pair
          Of milk-white Swans; wherefore are they not seen
          Partaking this day's pleasure? From afar                   240
          They came, to sojourn here in solitude,
          Choosing this Valley, they who had the choice
          Of the whole world. We saw them day by day,
          Through those two months of unrelenting storm,
          Conspicuous at the centre of the Lake
          Their safe retreat, we knew them well, I guess
          That the whole valley knew them; but to us
          They were more dear than may be well believed,
          Not only for their beauty, and their still
          And placid way of life, and constant love                  250
          Inseparable, not for these alone,
          But that 'their' state so much resembled ours,
          They having also chosen this abode;
          They strangers, and we strangers, they a pair,
          And we a solitary pair like them.
          They should not have departed; many days
          Did I look forth in vain, nor on the wing
          Could see them, nor in that small open space
          Of blue unfrozen water, where they lodged
          And lived so long in quiet, side by side.                  260
          Shall we behold them consecrated friends,
          Faithful companions, yet another year
          Surviving, they for us, and we for them,
          And neither pair be broken? nay perchance
          It is too late already for such hope;
          The Dalesmen may have aimed the deadly tube,
          And parted them; or haply both are gone
          One death, and that were mercy given to both.
          Recall, my song, the ungenerous thought; forgive,
          Thrice favoured Region, the conjecture harsh               270
          Of such inhospitable penalty
          Inflicted upon confidence so pure.
          Ah! if I wished to follow where the sight
          Of all that is before my eyes, the voice
          Which speaks from a presiding spirit here,
          Would lead me, I should whisper to myself:
          They who are dwellers in this holy place
          Must needs themselves be hallowed, they require
          No benediction from the stranger's lips,
          For they are blessed already; none would give              280
          The greeting "peace be with you" unto them,
          For peace they have; it cannot but be theirs,
          And mercy, and forbearance--nay--not these--
          'Their' healing offices a pure good-will
          Precludes, and charity beyond the bounds
          Of charity--an overflowing love;
          Not for the creature only, but for all
          That is around them; love for everything
          Which in their happy Region they behold!
            Thus do we soothe ourselves, and when the thought        290
          Is passed, we blame it not for having come.
          --What if I floated down a pleasant stream,
          And now am landed, and the motion gone,
          Shall I reprove myself? Ah no, the stream
          Is flowing, and will never cease to flow,
          And I shall float upon that stream again.
          By such forgetfulness the soul becomes,
          Words cannot say how beautiful: then hail,
          Hail to the visible Presence, hail to thee,
          Delightful Valley, habitation fair!                        300
          And to whatever else of outward form
          Can give an inward help, can purify,
          And elevate, and harmonise, and soothe,
          And steal away, and for a while deceive
          And lap in pleasing rest, and bear us on
          Without desire in full complacency,
          Contemplating perfection absolute,
          And entertained as in a placid sleep.
            But not betrayed by tenderness of mind
          That feared, or wholly overlooked the truth,               310
          Did we come hither, with romantic hope
          To find in midst of so much loveliness
          Love, perfect love: of so much majesty
          A like majestic-frame of mind in those
          Who here abide, the persons like the place.
          Not from such hope, or aught of such belief,
          Hath issued any portion of the joy
          Which I have felt this day. An awful voice
          'Tis true hath in my walks been often heard,
          Sent from the mountains or the sheltered fields,           320
          Shout after shout--reiterated whoop,
          In manner of a bird that takes delight
          In answering to itself: or like a hound
          Single at chase among the lonely woods,
          His yell repeating; yet it was in truth
          A human voice--a spirit of coming night;
          How solemn when the sky is dark, and earth
          Not dark, nor yet enlightened, but by snow
          Made visible, amid a noise of winds
          And bleatings manifold of mountain sheep,                  330
          Which in that iteration recognise
          Their summons, and are gathering round for food,
          Devoured with keenness, ere to grove or bank
          Or rocky bield with patience they retire.
            That very voice, which, in some timid mood
          Of superstitious fancy, might have seemed
          Awful as ever stray demoniac uttered,
          His steps to govern in the wilderness;
          Or as the Norman Curfew's regular beat
          To hearths when first they darkened at the knell:          340
          That shepherd's voice, it may have reached mine ear
          Debased and under profanation, made
          The ready organ of articulate sounds
          From ribaldry, impiety, or wrath,
          Issuing when shame hath ceased to check the brawls
          Of some abused Festivity--so be it.
          I came not dreaming of unruffled life,
          Untainted manners; born among the hills,
          Bred also there, I wanted not a scale
          To regulate my hopes; pleased with the good                350
          I shrink not from the evil with disgust,
          Or with immoderate pain. I look for Man,
          The common creature of the brotherhood,
          Differing but little from the Man elsewhere,
          For selfishness and envy and revenge,
          Ill neighbourhood--pity that this should be--
          Flattery and double-dealing, strife and wrong.
            Yet is it something gained, it is in truth
          A mighty gain, that Labour here preserves
          His rosy face, a servant only here                         360
          Of the fireside or of the open field,
          A Freeman therefore sound and unimpaired:
          That extreme penury is here unknown,
          And cold and hunger's abject wretchedness
          Mortal to body and the heaven-born mind:
          That they who want are not too great a weight
          For those who can relieve; here may the heart
          Breathe in the air of fellow-suffering
          Dreadless, as in a kind of fresher breeze
          Of her own native element, the hand                        370
          Be ready and unwearied without plea,
          From tasks too frequent or beyond its power,
          For languor or indifference or despair.
          And as these lofty barriers break the force
          Of winds,--this deep Vale, as it doth in part
          Conceal us from the storm, so here abides
          A power and a protection for the mind,
          Dispensed indeed to other solitudes
          Favoured by noble privilege like this,
          Where kindred independence of estate                       380
          Is prevalent, where he who tills the field,
          He, happy man! is master of the field,
          And treads the mountains which his Fathers trod.
            Not less than halfway up yon mountain's side,
          Behold a dusky spot, a grove of Firs
          That seems still smaller than it is; this grove
          Is haunted--by what ghost? a gentle spirit
          Of memory faithful to the call of love;
          For, as reports the Dame, whose fire sends up
          Yon curling smoke from the grey cot below,                 390
          The trees (her first-born child being then a babe)
          Were planted by her husband and herself,
          That ranging o'er the high and houseless ground
          Their sheep might neither want from perilous storm
          Of winter, nor from summer's sultry heat,
          A friendly covert; "and they knew it well,"
          Said she, "for thither as the trees grew up
          We to the patient creatures carried food
          In times of heavy snow." She then began
          In fond obedience to her private thoughts                  400
          To speak of her dead husband; is there not
          An art, a music, and a strain of words
          That shall be life, the acknowledged voice of life,
          Shall speak of what is done among the fields,
          Done truly there, or felt, of solid good
          And real evil, yet be sweet withal,
          More grateful, more harmonious than the breath,
          The idle breath of softest pipe attuned
          To pastoral fancies? Is there such a stream
          Pure and unsullied flowing from the heart                  410
          With motions of true dignity and grace?
          Or must we seek that stream where Man is not?
          Methinks I could repeat in tuneful verse,
          Delicious as the gentlest breeze that sounds
          Through that aerial fir-grove--could preserve
          Some portion of its human history
          As gathered from the Matron's lips, and tell
          Of tears that have been shed at sight of it,
          And moving dialogues between this Pair
          Who in their prime of wedlock, with joint hands            420
          Did plant the grove, now flourishing, while they
          No longer flourish, he entirely gone,
          She withering in her loneliness. Be this
          A task above my skill--the silent mind
          Has her own treasures, and I think of these,
          Love what I see, and honour humankind.
            No, we are not alone, we do not stand,
          My sister here misplaced and desolate,
          Loving what no one cares for but ourselves,
          We shall not scatter through the plains and rocks          430
          Of this fair Vale, and o'er its spacious heights,
          Unprofitable kindliness, bestowed
          On objects unaccustomed to the gifts
          Of feeling, which were cheerless and forlorn
          But few weeks past, and would be so again
          Were we not here; we do not tend a lamp
          Whose lustre we alone participate,
          Which shines dependent upon us alone,
          Mortal though bright, a dying, dying flame.
          Look where we will, some human hand has been               440
          Before us with its offering; not a tree
          Sprinkles these little pastures, but the same
          Hath furnished matter for a thought; perchance
          For some one serves as a familiar friend.
          Joy spreads, and sorrow spreads; and this whole Vale,
          Home of untutored shepherds as it is,
          Swarms with sensation, as with gleams of sunshine,
          Shadows or breezes, scents or sounds. Nor deem
          These feelings, though subservient more than ours
          To every day's demand for daily bread,                     450
          And borrowing more their spirit and their shape
          From self-respecting interests; deem them not
          Unworthy therefore, and unhallowed--no,
          They lift the animal being, do themselves
          By nature's kind and ever-present aid
          Refine the selfishness from which they spring,
          Redeem by love the individual sense
          Of anxiousness, with which they are combined.
          And thus it is that fitly they become
          Associates in the joy of purest minds:                     460
          They blend therewith congenially: meanwhile
          Calmly they breathe their own undying life
          Through this their mountain sanctuary; long
          Oh long may it remain inviolate,
          Diffusing health and sober cheerfulness,
          And giving to the moments as they pass
          Their little boons of animating thought
          That sweeten labour, make it seen and felt
          To be no arbitrary weight imposed,
          But a glad function natural to man.                        470
            Fair proof of this, newcomer though I be,
          Already have I gained; the inward frame,
          Though slowly opening, opens every day
          With process not unlike to that which cheers
          A pensive stranger journeying at his leisure
          Through some Helvetian Dell; when low-hung mists
          Break up and are beginning to recede;
          How pleased he is where thin and thinner grows
          The veil, or where it parts at once, to spy
          The dark pines thrusting forth their spiky heads;          480
          To watch the spreading lawns with cattle grazed;
          Then to be greeted by the scattered huts
          As they shine out; and 'see' the streams whose murmur
          Had soothed his ear while 'they' were hidden; how pleased
          To have about him which way e'er he goes
          Something on every side concealed from view,
          In every quarter something visible
          Half seen or wholly, lost and found again,
          Alternate progress and impediment,
          And yet a growing prospect in the main.                    490
            Such pleasure now is mine, albeit forced,
          Herein less happy than the Traveller,
          To cast from time to time a painful look
          Upon unwelcome things which unawares
          Reveal themselves, not therefore is my heart
          Depressed, nor does it fear what is to come;
          But confident, enriched at every glance,
          The more I see the more delight my mind
          Receives, or by reflection can create:
          Truth justifies herself, and as she dwells                 500
          With Hope, who would not follow where she leads?
            Nor let me pass unheeded other loves
          Where no fear is, and humbler sympathies.
          Already hath sprung up within my heart
          A liking for the small grey horse that bears
          The paralytic man, and for the brute
          In Scripture sanctified--the patient brute
          On which the cripple, in the quarry maimed,
          Rides to and fro: I know them and their ways.
          The famous sheep-dog, first in all the vale,               510
          Though yet to me a stranger, will not be
          A stranger long; nor will the blind man's guide,
          Meek and neglected thing, of no renown!
          Soon will peep forth the primrose, ere it fades
          Friends shall I have at dawn, blackbird and thrush
          To rouse me, and a hundred warblers more!
          And if those Eagles to their ancient hold
          Return, Helvellyn's Eagles! with the Pair
          From my own door I shall be free to claim
          Acquaintance, as they sweep from cloud to cloud.           520
          The owl that gives the name to Owlet-Crag
          Have I heard whooping, and he soon will be
          A chosen one of my regards. See there
          The heifer in yon little croft belongs
          To one who holds it dear; with duteous care
          She reared it, and in speaking of her charge
          I heard her scatter some endearing words
          Domestic, and in spirit motherly,
          She being herself a mother; happy Beast,
          If the caresses of a human voice                           530
          Can make it so, and care of human hands.
            And ye as happy under Nature's care,
          Strangers to me and all men, or at least
          Strangers to all particular amity,
          All intercourse of knowledge or of love
          That parts the individual from his kind.
          Whether in large communities ye keep
          From year to year, not shunning man's abode,
          A settled residence, or be from far
          Wild creatures, and of many homes, that come               540
          The gift of winds, and whom the winds again
          Take from us at your pleasure; yet shall ye
          Not want for this your own subordinate place
          In my affections. Witness the delight
          With which erewhile I saw that multitude
          Wheel through the sky, and see them now at rest,
          Yet not at rest upon the glassy lake:
          They 'cannot' rest--they gambol like young whelps;
          Active as lambs, and overcome with joy
          They try all frolic motions; flutter, plunge,              550
          And beat the passive water with their wings.
          Too distant are they for plain view, but lo!
          Those little fountains, sparkling in the sun,
          Betray their occupation, rising up
          First one and then another silver spout,
          As one or other takes the fit of glee,
          Fountains and spouts, yet somewhat in the guise
          Of plaything fireworks, that on festal nights
          Sparkle about the feet of wanton boys.
          --How vast the compass of this theatre,                    560
          Yet nothing to be seen but lovely pomp
          And silent majesty; the birch-tree woods
          Are hung with thousand thousand diamond drops
          Of melted hoar-frost, every tiny knot
          In the bare twigs, each little budding-place
          Cased with its several beads; what myriads these
          Upon one tree, while all the distant grove,
          That rises to the summit of the steep,
          Shows like a mountain built of silver light:
          See yonder the same pageant, and again                     570
          Behold the universal imagery
          Inverted, all its sun-bright features touched
          As with the varnish and the gloss of dreams.
          Dreamlike the blending also of the whole
          Harmonious landscape: all along the shore
          The boundary lost--the line invisible
          That parts the image from reality;
          And the clear hills, as high as they ascend
          Heavenward, so deep piercing the lake below.
          Admonished of the days of love to come                     580
          The raven croaks, and fills the upper air
          With a strange sound of genial harmony;
          And in and all about that playful band,
          Incapable although they be of rest,
          And in their fashion very rioters,
          There is a stillness, and they seem to make
          Calm revelry in that their calm abode.
          Them leaving to their joyous hours I pass,
          Pass with a thought the life of the whole year
          That is to come: the throng of woodland flowers            590
          And lilies that will dance upon the waves.
            Say boldly then that solitude is not
          Where these things are: he truly is alone,
          He of the multitude whose eyes are doomed
          To hold a vacant commerce day by day
          With Objects wanting life--repelling love;
          He by the vast metropolis immured,
          Where pity shrinks from unremitting calls,
          Where numbers overwhelm humanity,
          And neighbourhood serves rather to divide                  600
          Than to unite--what sighs more deep than his,
          Whose nobler will hath long been sacrificed;
          Who must inhabit under a black sky
          A city, where, if indifference to disgust
          Yield not to scorn or sorrow, living men
          Are ofttimes to their fellow-men no more
          Than to the forest Hermit are the leaves
          That hang aloft in myriads; nay, far less,
          For they protect his walk from sun and shower,
          Swell his devotion with their voice in storms,             610
          And whisper while the stars twinkle among them
          His lullaby. From crowded streets remote,
          Far from the living and dead Wilderness
          Of the thronged world, Society is here
          A true community--a genuine frame
          Of many into one incorporate.
          'That' must be looked for here: paternal sway,
          One household, under God, for high and low,
          One family and one mansion; to themselves
          Appropriate, and divided from the world,                   620
          As if it were a cave, a multitude
          Human and brute, possessors undisturbed
          Of this Recess--their legislative Hall,
          Their Temple, and their glorious Dwelling-place.
            Dismissing therefore all Arcadian dreams,
          All golden fancies of the golden age,
          The bright array of shadowy thoughts from times
          That were before all time, or are to be
          Ere time expire, the pageantry that stirs
          Or will be stirring, when our eyes are fixed               630
          On lovely objects, and we wish to part
          With all remembrance of a jarring world,
          --Take we at once this one sufficient hope,
          What need of more? that we shall neither droop
          Nor pine for want of pleasure in the life
          Scattered about us, nor through want of aught
          That keeps in health the insatiable mind.
          --That we shall have for knowledge and for love
          Abundance, and that feeling as we do
          How goodly, how exceeding fair, how pure                   640
          From all reproach is yon ethereal vault,
          And this deep Vale, its earthly counterpart,
          By which and under which we are enclosed
          To breathe in peace; we shall moreover find
          (If sound, and what we ought to be ourselves,
          If rightly we observe and justly weigh)
          The inmates not unworthy of their home,
          The Dwellers of their Dwelling.
                                           And if this
          Were otherwise, we have within ourselves
          Enough to fill the present day with joy,                   650
          And overspread the future years with hope,
          Our beautiful and quiet home, enriched
          Already with a stranger whom we love
          Deeply, a stranger of our Father's house,
          A never-resting Pilgrim of the Sea,
          Who finds at last an hour to his content
          Beneath our roof. And others whom we love
          Will seek us also, Sisters of our hearts,
          And one, like them, a Brother of our hearts,
          Philosopher and Poet, in whose sight                       660
          These mountains will rejoice with open joy.
          --Such is our wealth! O Vale of Peace we are
          And must be, with God's will, a happy Band.
            Yet 'tis not to enjoy that we exist,
          For that end only; something must be done:
          I must not walk in unreproved delight
          These narrow bounds, and think of nothing more,
          No duty that looks further, and no care.
          Each Being has his office, lowly some
          And common, yet all worthy if fulfilled                    670
          With zeal, acknowledgment that with the gift
          Keeps pace a harvest answering to the seed.
          Of ill-advised Ambition and of Pride
          I would stand clear, but yet to me I feel
          That an internal brightness is vouchsafed
          That must not die, that must not pass away.
          Why does this inward lustre fondly seek
          And gladly blend with outward fellowship?
          Why do 'they' shine around me whom I love?
          Why do they teach me, whom I thus revere?                  680
          Strange question, yet it answers not itself.
          That humble Roof embowered among the trees,
          That calm fireside, it is not even in them,
          Blest as they are, to furnish a reply
          That satisfies and ends in perfect rest.
          Possessions have I that are solely mine,
          Something within which yet is shared by none,
          Not even the nearest to me and most dear,
          Something which power and effort may impart;
          I would impart it, I would spread it wide:                 690
          Immortal in the world which is to come--
          Forgive me if I add another claim--
          And would not wholly perish even in this,
          Lie down and be forgotten in the dust,
          I and the modest Partners of my days
          Making a silent company in death;
          Love, knowledge, all my manifold delights,
          All buried with me without monument
          Or profit unto any but ourselves!
          It must not be, if I, divinely taught,                     700
          Be privileged to speak as I have felt
          Of what in man is human or divine.
            While yet an innocent little one, with a heart
          That doubtless wanted not its tender moods,
          I breathed (for this I better recollect)
          Among wild appetites and blind desires,
          Motions of savage instinct my delight
          And exaltation. Nothing at that time
          So welcome, no temptation half so dear
          As that which urged me to a daring feat,                   710
          Deep pools, tall trees, black chasms, and dizzy crags,
          And tottering towers: I loved to stand and read
          Their looks forbidding, read and disobey,
          Sometimes in act and evermore in thought.
          With impulses, that scarcely were by these
          Surpassed in strength, I heard of danger met
          Or sought with courage; enterprise forlorn
          By one, sole keeper of his own intent,
          Or by a resolute few, who for the sake
          Of glory fronted multitudes in arms.                       720
          Yea, to this hour I cannot read a Tale
          Of two brave vessels matched in deadly fight,
          And fighting to the death, but I am pleased
          More than a wise man ought to be; I wish,
          Fret, burn, and struggle, and in soul am there.
          But me hath Nature tamed, and bade to seek
          For other agitations, or be calm;
          Hath dealt with me as with a turbulent stream,
          Some nursling of the mountains which she leads
          Through quiet meadows, after he has learnt                 730
          His strength, and had his triumph and his joy,
          His desperate course of tu

CHARACTER OF THE HAPPY WARRIOR

          WHO is the happy Warrior? Who is he
          That every man in arms should wish to be?
          --It is the generous Spirit, who, when brought
          Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought
          Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought:
          Whose high endeavours are an inward light
          That makes the path before him always bright:
          Who, with a natural instinct to discern
          What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn;
          Abides by this resolve, and stops not there,                10
          But makes his moral being his prime care;
          Who, doomed to go in company with Pain,
          And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train!
          Turns his necessity to glorious gain;
          In face of these doth exercise a power
          Which is our human nature's highest dower;
          Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves
          Of their bad influence, and their good receives:
          By objects, which might force the soul to abate
          Her feeling, rendered more compassionate;                   20
          Is placable--because occasions rise
          So often that demand such sacrifice;
          More skilful in self-knowledge, even more pure,
          As tempted more; more able to endure,
          As more exposed to suffering and distress;
          Thence, also, more alive to tenderness.
          --'Tis he whose law is reason; who depends
          Upon that law as on the best of friends;
          Whence, in a state where men are tempted still
          To evil for a guard against worse ill,                      30
          And what in quality or act is best
          Doth seldom on a right foundation rest,
          He labours good on good to fix, and owes
          To virtue every triumph that he knows:
          --Who, if he rise to station of command,
          Rises by open means; and there will stand
          On honourable terms, or else retire,
          And in himself possess his own desire;
          Who comprehends his trust, and to the same
          Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim;                    40
          And therefore does not stoop, nor lie in wait
          For wealth, or honours, or for worldly state;
          Whom they must follow; on whose head must fall,
          Like showers of manna, if they come at all:
          Whose powers shed round him in the common strife,
          Or mild concerns of ordinary life,
          A constant influence, a peculiar grace;
          But who, if he be called upon to face
          Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined
          Great issues, good or bad for human kind,                   50
          Is happy as a Lover; and attired
          With sudden brightness, like a Man inspired;
          And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law
          In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw;
          Or if an unexpected call succeed,
          Come when it will, is equal to the need:
          --He who, though thus endued as with a sense
          And faculty for storm and turbulence,
          Is yet a Soul whose master-bias leans
          To homefelt pleasures and to gentle scenes;                 60
          Sweet images! which, wheresoe'er he be,
          Are at his heart; and such fidelity
          It is his darling passion to approve;
          More brave for this, that he hath much to love:--
          'Tis, finally, the Man, who, lifted high,
          Conspicuous object in a Nation's eye,
          Or left unthought-of in obscurity,--
          Who, with a toward or untoward lot,
          Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not--
          Plays, in the many games of life, that one                  70
          Where what he most doth value must be won:
          Whom neither shape of danger can dismay,
          Nor thought of tender happiness betray;
          Who, not content that former worth stand fast,
          Looks forward, persevering to the last,
          From well to better, daily self-surpast:
          Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth
          For ever, and to noble deeds give birth,
          Or he must fall, to sleep without his fame,
          And leave a dead unprofitable name--                        80
          Finds comfort in himself and in his cause;
          And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws
          His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause:
          This is the happy Warrior; this is He
          That every Man in arms should wish to be.
                                                              1806.

THE HORN OF EGREMONT CASTLE

          ERE the Brothers through the gateway
          Issued forth with old and young,
          To the Horn Sir Eustace pointed
          Which for ages there had hung.
          Horn it was which none could sound,
          No one upon living ground,
          Save He who came as rightful Heir
          To Egremont's Domains and Castle fair.

          Heirs from times of earliest record
          Had the House of Lucie born,                                10
          Who of right had held the Lordship
          Claimed by proof upon the Horn:
          Each at the appointed hour
          Tried the Horn,--it owned his power;
          He was acknowledged: and the blast,
          Which good Sir Eustace sounded, was the last.

          With his lance Sir Eustace pointed,
          And to Hubert thus said he,
          "What I speak this Horn shall witness
          For thy better memory.                                      20
          Hear, then, and neglect me not!
          At this time, and on this spot,
          The words are uttered from my heart,
          As my last earnest prayer ere we depart.

          "On good service we are going
          Life to risk by sea and land,
          In which course if Christ our Saviour
          Do my sinful soul demand,
          Hither come thou back straightway,
          Hubert, if alive that day;                                  30
          Return, and sound the Horn, that we
          May have a living House still left in thee!"

          "Fear not," quickly answered Hubert;
          "As I am thy Father's son,
          What thou askest, noble Brother,
          With God's favour shall be done."
          So were both right well content:
          Forth they from the Castle went,
          And at the head of their Array
          To Palestine the Brothers took their way.                   40

          Side by side they fought (the Lucies
          Were a line for valour famed),
          And where'er their strokes alighted,
          There the Saracens were tamed.
          Whence, then, could it come--the thought--
          By what evil spirit brought?
          Oh! can a brave Man wish to take
          His Brother's life, for Lands' and Castle's sake?

          "Sir!" the Ruffians said to Hubert,
          "Deep he lies in Jordan flood."                             50
          Stricken by this ill assurance,
          Pale and trembling Hubert stood.
          "Take your earnings."--Oh! that I
          Could have 'seen' my Brother die!
          It was a pang that vexed him then;
          And oft returned, again, and yet again.

          Months passed on, and no Sir Eustace!
          Nor of him were tidings heard;
          Wherefore, bold as day, the Murderer
          Back again to England steered.                              60
          To his Castle Hubert sped;
          Nothing has he now to dread.
          But silent and by stealth he came,
          And at an hour which nobody could name.

          None could tell if it were night-time,
          Night or day, at even or morn;
          No one's eye had seen him enter,
          No one's ear had heard the Horn.
          But bold Hubert lives in glee:
          Months and years went smilingly;                            70
          With plenty was his table spread;
          And bright the Lady is who shares his bed.

          Likewise he had sons and daughters;
          And, as good men do, he sate
          At his board by these surrounded,
          Flourishing in fair estate.
          And while thus in open day
          Once he sate, as old books say,
          A blast was uttered from the Horn,
          Where by the Castle-gate it hung forlorn.                   80

          'Tis the breath of good Sir Eustace!
          He is come to claim his right:
          Ancient castle, woods, and mountains
          Hear the challenge with delight.
          Hubert! though the blast be blown
          He is helpless and alone:
          Thou hast a dungeon, speak the word!
          And there he may be lodged, and thou be Lord.

          Speak!--astounded Hubert cannot;
          And, if power to speak he had,                              90
          All are daunted, all the household
          Smitten to the heart, and sad.
          'Tis Sir Eustace; if it be
          Living man, it must be he!
          Thus Hubert thought in his dismay,
          And by a postern-gate he slunk away.

          Long, and long was he unheard of:
          To his Brother then he came,
          Made confession, asked forgiveness,
          Asked it by a brother's name,                              100
          And by all the saints in heaven;
          And of Eustace was forgiven:
          Then in a convent went to hide
          His melancholy head, and there he died.

          But Sir Eustace, whom good angels
          Had preserved from murderers' hands,
          And from Pagan chains had rescued,
          Lived with honour on his lands.
          Sons he had, saw sons of theirs:
          And through ages, heirs of heirs,                          110
          A long posterity renowned,
          Sounded the Horn which they alone could sound.
                                                              1806.

A COMPLAINT

          THERE is a change--and I am poor;
          Your love hath been, not long ago,
          A fountain at my fond heart's door,
          Whose only business was to flow;
          And flow it did: not taking heed
          Of its own bounty, or my need.

          What happy moments did I count!
          Blest was I then all bliss above!
          Now, for that consecrated fount
          Of murmuring, sparkling, living love,                       10
          What have I? shall I dare to tell?
          A comfortless and hidden well.
          A well of love--it may be deep--
          I trust it is,--and never dry:
          What matter? if the waters sleep
          In silence and obscurity.
          --Such change, and at the very door
          Of my fond heart, hath made me poor.
                                                              1806.

STRAY PLEASURES

            "----Pleasure is spread through the earth
             In stray gifts to be claimed by whoever shall find."

                BY their floating mill,
                That lies dead and still,
          Behold yon Prisoners three,
          The Miller with two Dames, on the breast of the Thames!
          The platform is small, but gives room for them all;
          And they're dancing merrily.

                From the shore come the notes
                To their mill where it floats,
          To their house and their mill tethered fast:
          To the small wooden isle where, their work to beguile,      10
          They from morning to even take whatever is given;--
          And many a blithe day they have past.

                In sight of the spires,
                All alive with the fires
          Of the sun going down to his rest,
          In the broad open eye of the solitary sky,
          They dance,--there are three, as jocund as free,
          While they dance on the calm river's breast.

                Man and Maidens wheel,
                They themselves make the reel,                        20
          And their music's a prey which they seize;
          It plays not for them,--what matter? 'tis theirs;
          And if they had care, it has scattered their cares,
          While they dance, crying, "Long as ye please!"

                They dance not for me,
                Yet mine is their glee!
          Thus pleasure is spread through the earth
          In stray gifts to be claimed by whoever shall find;
          Thus a rich loving-kindness, redundantly kind,
          Moves all nature to gladness and mirth.                     30

                The showers of the spring
                Rouse the birds, and they sing;
          If the wind do but stir for his proper delight,
          Each leaf, that and this, his neighbour will kiss;
          Each wave, one and t' other, speeds after his brother:
          They are happy, for that is their right!
                                                              1806.

POWER OF MUSIC

      AN Orpheus! an Orpheus! yes, Faith may grow bold,
      And take to herself all the wonders of old;--
      Near the stately Pantheon you'll meet with the same
      In the street that from Oxford hath borrowed its name.

      His station is there; and he works on the crowd,
      He sways them with harmony merry and loud;
      He fills with his power all their hearts to the brim--
      Was aught ever heard like his fiddle and him?

      What an eager assembly! what an empire is this!
      The weary have life, and the hungry have bliss;                 10
      The mourner is cheered, and the anxious have rest;
      And the guilt-burthened soul is no longer opprest.

      As the Moon brightens round her the clouds of the night,
      So He, where he stands, is a centre of light;
      It gleams on the face, there, of dusky-browed Jack,
      And the pale-visaged Baker's, with basket on back.

      That errand-bound 'Prentice was passing in haste--
      What matter! he's caught--and his time runs to waste;
      The Newsman is stopped, though he stops on the fret;
      And the half-breathless Lamplighter--he's in the net!           20

      The Porter sits down on the weight which he bore;
      The Lass with her barrow wheels hither her store;--
      If a thief could be here he might pilfer at ease;
      She sees the Musician, 'tis all that she sees!

      He stands, backed by the wall;--he abates not his din
      His hat gives him vigour, with boons dropping in,
      From the old and the young, from the poorest; and there!
      The one-pennied Boy has his penny to spare.

      O blest are the hearers, and proud be the hand
      Of the pleasure it spreads through so thankful a band;          30
      I am glad for him, blind as he is!--all the while
      If they speak 'tis to praise, and they praise with a smile.

      That tall Man, a giant in bulk and in height,
      Not an inch of his body is free from delight;
      Can he keep himself still, if he would? oh, not he!
      The music stirs in him like wind through a tree.

      Mark that Cripple who leans on his crutch; like a tower
      That long has leaned forward, leans hour after hour!--
      That Mother, whose spirit in fetters is bound,
      While she dandles the Babe in her arms to the sound.            40

      Now, coaches and chariots! roar on like a stream;
      Here are twenty souls happy as souls in a dream:
      They are deaf to your murmurs--they care not for you,
      Nor what ye are flying, nor what ye pursue!
                                                              1806.

STAR-GAZERS

      WHAT crowd is this? what have we here! we must not pass it by;
      A Telescope upon its frame, and pointed to the sky:
      Long is it as a barber's pole, or mast of little boat,
      Some little pleasure-skiff, that doth on Thames's waters float.

      The Showman chooses well his place, 'tis Leicester's busy Square;
      And is as happy in his night, for the heavens are blue and fair;
      Calm, though impatient, is the crowd; each stands ready with the
          fee,
      And envies him that's looking;--what an insight must it be!

      Yet, Showman, where can lie the cause? Shall thy Implement have
          blame,
      A boaster, that when he is tried, fails, and is put to shame?   10
      Or is it good as others are, and be their eyes in fault?
      Their eyes, or minds? or, finally, is yon resplendent vault?

      Is nothing of that radiant pomp so good as we have here?
      Or gives a thing but small delight that never can be dear?
      The silver moon with all her vales, and hills of mightiest fame,
      Doth she betray us when they're seen? or are they but a name?

      Or is it rather that Conceit rapacious is and strong,
      And bounty never yields so much but it seems to do her wrong?
      Or is it, that when human Souls a journey long have had
      And are returned into themselves, they cannot but be sad?       20

      Or must we be constrained to think that these Spectators rude,
      Poor in estate, of manners base, men of the multitude,
      Have souls which never yet have risen, and therefore prostrate
          lie?
      No, no, this cannot be;--men thirst for power and majesty!

      Does, then, a deep and earnest thought the blissful mind employ
      Of him who gazes, or has gazed? a grave and steady joy,
      That doth reject all show of pride, admits no outward sign,
      Because not of this noisy world, but silent and divine!

      Whatever be the cause, 'tis sure that they who pry and pore
      Seem to meet with little gain, seem less happy than before:     30
      One after One they take their turn, nor have I one espied
      That doth not slackly go away, as if dissatisfied.
                                                              1806.