Volume 8 — 1846
Reading edition
The poems written in 1846 were six sonnets, the lines beginning, “I know an aged man constrained to dwell,” an “Evening Voluntary,” and other two short pieces.—Ed.
SONNET[301]
Composed 1846.—Published 1850
This was placed among the “Epitaphs and Elegiac Poems.”—Ed.
Why should we weep or mourn, Angelic boy, For such thou wert ere from our sight removed, Holy, and ever dutiful—beloved From day to day with never-ceasing joy, And hopes as dear as could the heart employ 5 In aught to earth pertaining? Death has proved His might, nor less his mercy, as behoved— Death conscious that he only could destroy The bodily frame. That beauty is laid low To moulder in a far-off field of Rome; 10 But Heaven is now, blest Child, thy Spirit’s home: When such divine communion, which we know, Is felt, thy Roman-burial place will be Surely a sweet remembrancer of Thee.
“WHERE LIES THE TRUTH? HAS MAN, IN WISDOM’S CREED”
Composed 1846.—Published 1850
One of the “Evening Voluntaries.”—Ed.
Where lies the truth? has Man, in wisdom’s creed, A pitiable doom; for respite brief A care more anxious, or a heavier grief? Is he ungrateful, and doth little heed God’s bounty, soon forgotten; or indeed, 5 Must Man, with labour born, awake to sorrow[302] When Flowers rejoice and Larks with rival speed Spring from their nests to bid the Sun good morrow? They mount for rapture as their[303] songs proclaim Warbled in hearing both of earth and sky; 10 But o’er the contrast wherefore heave a sigh? Like those aspirants let us soar—our aim, Through life’s worst trials, whether shocks or snares, A happier, brighter, purer Heaven than theirs.[304]
TO LUCCA GIORDANO[305]
Composed 1846.—Published 1850
One of the “Evening Voluntaries.”—Ed.
Giordano, verily thy Pencil’s skill Hath here portrayed with Nature’s happiest grace The fair Endymion couched on Latmos-hill; And Dian gazing on the Shepherd’s face In rapture,—yet suspending her embrace, 5 As not unconscious with what power the thrill Of her most timid touch his sleep would chase, And, with his sleep, that beauty calm and still. O may this work have found its last retreat Here in a Mountain-bard’s secure abode, 10 One to whom, yet a School-boy, Cynthia showed A face of love which he in love would greet, Fixed, by her smile, upon some rocky seat; Or lured along where green-wood paths he trod. Rydal Mount, 1846.
“WHO BUT IS PLEASED TO WATCH THE MOON ON HIGH”
Composed 1846.—Published 1850
One of the “Evening Voluntaries.”—Ed.
Who but is pleased to watch the moon on high Travelling where she from time to time enshrouds Her head, and nothing loth her Majesty Renounces, till among the scattered clouds One with its kindling edge declares that soon 5 Will reappear before the uplifted eye A Form as bright, as beautiful a moon, To glide in open prospect through clear sky. Pity that such a promise e’er should prove False in the issue, that yon seeming space 10 Of sky should be in truth the stedfast face Of a cloud flat and dense, through which must move (By transit not unlike man’s frequent doom) The Wanderer lost in more determined gloom.
ILLUSTRATED BOOKS AND NEWSPAPERS
Composed 1846.—Published 1850
One of the “Poems of Sentiment and Reflection.”—Ed.
Discourse was deemed Man’s noblest attribute, And written words the glory of his hand; Then followed Printing with enlarged command For thought—dominion vast and absolute For spreading truth, and making love expand. 5 Now prose and verse sunk into disrepute Must lacquey a dumb Art that best can suit The taste of this once-intellectual Land. A backward movement surely have we here,[306] From manhood—back to childhood; for the age— 10 Back towards caverned life’s first rude career. Avaunt this vile abuse of pictured page! Must eyes be all in all, the tongue and ear Nothing? Heaven keep us from a lower stage!
SONNET To an Octogenarian
Composed 1846.—Published 1850
Affections lose their object; Time brings forth No successors; and, lodged in memory, If love exist no longer, it must die,— Wanting accustomed food must pass from earth, Or never hope to reach a second birth.[307] 5 This sad belief, the happiest that is left To thousands, share not Thou; howe’er bereft, Scorned, or neglected, fear not such a dearth. Though poor and destitute of friends thou art, Perhaps the sole survivor of thy race, 10 One to whom Heaven assigns that mournful part The utmost solitude of age to face, Still shall be left some corner of the heart Where Love for living Thing can find a place.
“I KNOW AN AGED MAN CONSTRAINED TO DWELL”
Composed 1846.—Published 1850
One of the “Miscellaneous Poems.”—Ed.
I know an aged Man constrained to dwell In a large house of public charity, Where he abides, as in a Prisoner’s cell, With numbers near, alas! no company. When he could creep about, at will, though poor 5 And forced to live on alms, this old Man fed A Redbreast, one that to his cottage door Came not, but in a lane partook his bread. There, at the root of one particular tree, An easy seat this worn-out Labourer found 10 While Robin pecked the crumbs upon his knee Laid one by one, or scattered on the ground. Dear intercourse was theirs, day after day; What signs of mutual gladness when they met! Think of their common peace, their simple play, 15 The parting moment and its fond regret. Months passed in love that failed not to fulfil, In spite of season’s change, its own demand, By fluttering pinions here and busy bill; There by caresses from a tremulous hand. 20 Thus in the chosen spot a tie so strong Was formed between the solitary pair, That when his fate had housed him ’mid a throng The Captive shunned all converse proffered there. Wife, children, kindred, they were dead and gone; 25 But, if no evil hap his wishes crossed, One living Stay was left, and on[308] that one Some recompense for all that he had lost. O that the good old Man had power to prove, By message sent through air or visible token, 30 That still he loves the Bird, and still must love; That friendship lasts though fellowship is broken!
“THE UNREMITTING VOICE OF NIGHTLY STREAMS”
Composed 1846.—Published 1850
One of the “Poems of Sentiment and Reflection.”—Ed.
The unremitting voice of nightly streams That wastes so oft, we think, its tuneful powers, If neither soothing to the worm that gleams Through dewy grass, nor small birds hushed in bowers, Nor unto silent leaves and drowsy flowers,— 5 That voice of unpretending harmony (For who what is shall measure by what seems To be, or not to be,[309] Or tax high Heaven with prodigality?) Wants not a healing influence that can creep 10 Into the human breast, and mix with sleep To regulate the motion of our dreams For kindly issues—as through every clime Was felt near murmuring brooks in earliest time; As at this day, the rudest swains who dwell 15 Where torrents roar, or hear the tinkling knell Of water-breaks, with grateful heart could tell.
“HOW BEAUTIFUL THE QUEEN OF NIGHT, ON HIGH”
Composed 1846.—Published 1850
One of the “Miscellaneous Poems.”—Ed.
How beautiful the Queen of Night, on high Her way pursuing among scattered clouds, Where, ever and anon, her head she shrouds Hidden from view in dense obscurity. But look, and to the watchful eye A brightening edge will indicate that soon We shall behold the struggling Moon Break forth,—again to walk the clear blue sky.
ON THE BANKS OF A ROCKY STREAM
Composed 1846.—Published 1850
Behold an emblem of our human mind Crowded with thoughts that need a settled home Yet, like to eddying balls of foam Within this whirlpool, they each other chase Round and round, and neither find An outlet nor a resting-place! Stranger, if such disquietude be thine, Fall on thy knees and sue for help divine.
ODE INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD
Composed 1803-6.—Published 1807
[This was composed during my residence at Town-end, Grasmere. Two years at least passed between the writing of the four first stanzas and the remaining part. To the attentive and competent reader the whole sufficiently explains itself; but there may be no harm in adverting here to particular feelings or experiences of my own mind on which the structure of the poem partly rests. Nothing was more difficult for me in childhood than to admit the notion of death as a state applicable to my own being. I have said elsewhere—
A simple child, That lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb, What should it know of death!—
But it was not so much from feelings of animal vivacity that my difficulty came as from a sense of the indomitableness of the Spirit within me. I used to brood over the stories of Enoch and Elijah, and almost to persuade myself that, whatever might become of others, I should be translated, in something of the same way, to heaven. With a feeling congenial to this, I was often unable to think of external things as having external existence, and I communed with all that I saw as something not apart from, but inherent in, my own immaterial nature. Many times while going to school have I grasped at a wall or tree to recall myself from this abyss of idealism to the reality. At that time I was afraid of such processes. In later periods of life I have deplored, as we have all reason to do, a subjugation of an opposite character, and have rejoiced over the remembrances, as is expressed in the lines—
Obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings, etc.
To that dream-like vividness and splendour which invest objects of sight in childhood, every one, I believe, if he would look back, could bear testimony, and I need not dwell upon it here; but having in the poem regarded it as presumptive evidence of a prior state of existence, I think it right to protest against a conclusion, which has given pain to some good and pious persons, that I meant to inculcate such a belief. It is far too shadowy a notion to be recommended to faith, as more than an element in our instincts of immortality. But let us bear in mind that, though the idea is not advanced in revelation, there is nothing there to contradict it, and the fall of man presents an analogy in its favour. Accordingly, a pre-existent state has entered into the popular creeds of many nations; and, among all persons acquainted with classic literature, is known as an ingredient in Platonic philosophy. Archimedes said that he could move the world if he had a point whereon to rest his machine. Who has not felt the same aspirations as regards the world of his own mind?[310] Having to wield some of its elements when I was impelled to write this poem on the “Immortality of the Soul,” I took hold of the notion of pre-existence as having sufficient foundation in humanity for authorizing me to make for my purpose the best use of it I could as a poet.—I.F.]
The Child is Father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.[311]
I There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. 5 It is not now as it hath[312] been of yore;— Turn wheresoe’er I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more. II The Rainbow comes and goes, 10 And lovely is the Rose, The Moon doth with delight Look round her when the heavens are bare, Waters on a starry night Are beautiful and fair; 15 The sunshine is a glorious birth; But yet I know, where’er I go, That there hath passed away a glory from the earth. III Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song, And while the young lambs bound 20 As to the tabor’s sound, To me alone there came a thought of grief: A timely utterance gave that thought relief, And I again am strong: The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep; 25 No more shall grief of mine the season wrong; I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng, The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep, And all the earth is gay; Land and sea 30 Give themselves up to jollity, And with the heart of May Doth every Beast keep holiday;— Thou Child of Joy, Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy! 35 IV Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call Ye to each other make; I see The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee; My heart is at your festival, My head hath its coronal,[313] 40 The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.[314] Oh evil day! if I were sullen While Earth herself is adorning,[315] This sweet May-morning, And the Children are culling[316] 45 On every side, In a thousand valleys far and wide, Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm, And the Babe leaps up on his Mother’s arm:— I hear, I hear, with joy I hear! 50 —But there’s a Tree, of many, one, A single Field which I have looked upon, Both of them speak of something that is gone: The Pansy at my feet Doth the same tale repeat: 55 Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now,[317] the glory and the dream? V Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, 60 And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: 65 Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing Boy, But He beholds the light, and whence it flows He sees it in his joy; 70 The Youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature’s Priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended; At length the Man perceives it[318] die away, 75 And fade into the light of common day.[319] VI Earth fills her lap with pleasures[320] of her own; Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, And, even with something of a Mother’s mind, And no unworthy aim, 80 The homely Nurse doth all she can To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man, Forget the glories he hath known, And that imperial palace whence he came. VII Behold the Child among his new-born blisses, 85 A six years’ Darling[321] of a pigmy size! See, where ’mid work of his own hand he lies, Fretted by sallies of his mother’s kisses, With light upon him from his father’s eyes! See, at his feet, some little plan or chart, 90 Some fragment from his dream of human life, Shaped by himself with newly-learned art; A wedding or a festival, A mourning or a funeral; And this hath now his heart, 95 And unto this he frames his song: Then will he fit his tongue To dialogues of business, love, or strife; But it will not be long Ere this be thrown aside, 100 And with new joy and pride The little Actor cons another part; Filling from time to time his “humorous stage”[322] With all the Persons, down to palsied Age, That Life brings with her in her equipage; 105 As if his whole vocation Were endless imitation. VIII Thou, whose exterior semblance[323] doth belie Thy Soul’s immensity; Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep 110 Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind, That, deaf and silent, read’st the eternal deep, Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,— Mighty Prophet! Seer blest! On whom those truths do rest, 115 Which we are toiling all our lives to find, In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;[324] Thou, over whom thy Immortality Broods like the Day, a Master o’er a Slave, A Presence which is not to be put by;[325] 120 Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might Of heaven-born freedom on thy being’s height,[326] Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke The years to bring the inevitable yoke, Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? 125 Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight, And custom[327] lie upon thee with a weight,[328] Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life! IX O joy! that in our embers Is something that doth live, 130 That nature yet remembers What was so fugitive! The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benediction;[329] not indeed For that which is most worthy to be blest; 135 Delight and liberty, the simple creed Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest, With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—[330] Not for these I raise The song of thanks and praise; 140 But for those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings; Blank misgivings of a Creature Moving about in worlds not realised, 145 High instincts before which our mortal Nature Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised: But for those first affections, Those shadowy recollections, Which, be they what they may, 150 Are yet the fountain light of all our day, Are yet a master light of all our seeing; Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make[331] Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake, 155 To perish never; Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, Nor Man nor Boy, Nor all that is at enmity with joy, Can utterly abolish or destroy! 160 Hence in a season of calm weather, Though inland far we be, Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither, Can in a moment travel thither, 165 And see the Children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. X Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song! And let the young Lambs bound As to the tabor’s sound! 170 We in thought will join your throng, Ye that pipe and ye that play, Ye that through your hearts to-day Feel the gladness of the May! What though the radiance which was once so bright 175 Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind; 180 In the primal sympathy Which having been must ever be; In the soothing thoughts that spring Out of human suffering; In the faith that looks through death, 185 In years that bring the philosophic mind. XI And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves, Forebode not any severing[332] of our loves! Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might; I only have relinquished one delight 190 To live beneath your more habitual sway. I love the Brooks which down their channels fret, Even more than when I tripped lightly as they; The innocent brightness of a new-born Day Is lovely yet; 195 The Clouds that gather round the setting sun Do take a sober colouring from an eye That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality; Another race hath been, and other palms are won.[333] Thanks to the human heart by which we live, 200 Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, To me the meanest flower that blows[334] can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.[335]
This great Ode was first printed as the last poem in the second volume of the edition of 1807. At that date Wordsworth gave it the simple title Ode, prefixing to it the motto, “Paulò majora canamus.” In 1815, when he revised the poem throughout, he named it—in the characteristic manner of many of his titles—diffuse and yet precise, Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood; and he then prefixed to it the lines of his own earlier poem on the Rainbow (March 1802):—
The Child is Father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.
It retained this longer title and motto in all subsequent editions. In the editions 1807 to 1820, it was placed by itself at the end of the poems, and formed their natural conclusion and climax. In the editions 1827 and 1832, it was inappropriately put amongst “Epitaphs and Elegiac Poems.” The evident mistake of placing it amongst these seems to have suggested to Wordsworth, in 1836, its having a place by itself,—which he gave it then and retained in the subsequent editions of 1842 and 1849,—when it closed the series of minor poems in Volume V., and preceded the Excursion in Volume VI. The same arrangement was adopted in the double-columned single volume edition of 1845.
Mr. Aubrey de Vere has urged me to take it out of its chronological place, and let it conclude the whole series of Wordsworth’s poems, as the greatest, and that to which all others lead up. Mr. De Vere’s wish is based on conversations which he had with the poet himself.
The Ode, Intimations of Immortality, was written at intervals, between the years 1803 and 1806; and it was subjected to frequent and careful revision. No poem of Wordsworth’s bears more evident traces in its structure at once of inspiration and elaboration; of original flight of thought and afflatus on the one hand, and on the other of careful sculpture and fastidious choice of phrase. But it is remarkable that there are very few changes of text in the successive editions. Most of the alterations were made before 1815, and the omission of some feeble lines which originally stood in stanza viii. in the editions of 1807 and 1815, was a great advantage in disencumbering the poem. The main revision and elaboration of this Ode, however—an elaboration which suggests the passage of the glacier ice over the rocks of White Moss Common, where the poem was murmured out stanza by stanza—was all finished before it first saw the light in 1807. In form it is irregular and original. And perhaps the most remarkable thing in its structure, is the frequent change of the keynote, and the skill and delicacy with which the transitions are made. “The feet throughout are iambic. The lines vary in length from the Alexandrine to the line with two accents. There is a constant ebb and flow in the full tide of song, but scarce two waves are alike.” (Hawes Turner, Selections from Wordsworth.)
In the “notes” to the Selections just referred to on Immortality, there is an excellent commentary on this Ode, almost every line of which is worthy of minute analysis and study. Some of the following are suggested by Mr. Turner’s notes.
(1) The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep.
The morning breeze blowing from the fields that were dark during the hours of sleep.
(2) —But there’s a Tree, of many, one.
Compare Browning’s May and Death—
Only one little sight, one plant Woods have in May, etc.
(3) The Pansy at my feet Doth the same tale repeat.
French “Pensée.” “Pansies, that’s for thoughts.” Ophelia in Hamlet.
(4) Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.
This thought Wordsworth owed, consciously or unconsciously, to Plato. Though he tells us in the Fenwick note that he did not mean to inculcate the belief, there is no doubt that he clung to the notion of a life pre-existing the present, on grounds similar to those on which he believed in a life to come. But there are some differences in the way in which the idea commended itself to Plato and to Wordsworth. The stress was laid by Wordsworth on the effect of terrestrial life in putting the higher faculties to sleep, and making us “forget the glories we have known.” Plato, on the other hand, looked upon the mingled experiences of mundane life as inducing a gradual but slow remembrance (ἀνάμνεσις) of the past. Compare Tennyson’s Two Voices, and Wordsworth’s sonnet, beginning—
Man’s life is like a sparrow, mighty king.
(5) Filling from time to time his “humorous stage” With all the Persons,
i.e. with the dramatis personæ.
(6) … thou Eye among the blind, That, deaf and silent, read’st the eternal deep.
There is an admirable parallel illustration of Wordsworth’s use of this figure (describing one sense in terms of another), in the lines in Airey-Force Valley—
A soft eye-music of slow-waving boughs.
(7) Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight, And custom lie upon thee with a weight, Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
Compare with this, the lines in the fourth book of The Excursion, beginning—
Alas! the endowment of immortal power Is matched unequally with custom, time.
(8) Fallings from us, vanishings.
The outward sensible universe, visible and tangible, seeming to fall away from us, as unreal, to vanish in unsubstantially. See the explanation of this youthful experience in the Fenwick note. That confession of his boyish days at Hawkshead, “many times, while going to school, have I grasped at a wall or tree, to recall myself from this abyss of idealism to the reality” (by which he explains those—
Fallings from us, vanishings, etc.),
suggests a similar experience and confession of Cardinal Newman’s in his Apologia (see p. 67).
The late Rev. Robert Perceval Graves, of Windermere, and afterwards of Dublin, wrote to me in 1850:—“I remember Mr. Wordsworth saying, that at a particular stage of his mental progress, he used to be frequently so rapt into an unreal transcendental world of ideas that the external world seemed no longer to exist in relation to him, and he had to reconvince himself of its existence by clasping a tree, or something that happened to be near him. I could not help connecting this fact with that obscure passage in his great Ode on the Intimations of Immortality, in which he speaks of—
Those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things; Fallings from us, vanishings; etc.”
Professor Bonamy Price further confirms the explanation which Wordsworth gave of the passage, in a letter written to me in 1881, giving an account of a conversation he had with the poet, as follows:—
“Oxford, April 21, 1881.
“My dear Sir,—You will be glad, I am sure, to receive an interpretation, which chance enabled me to obtain from Wordsworth himself of a passage in the immortal Ode on Immortality.…
“It happened one day that the poet, my wife, and I were taking a walk together by the side of Rydal Water. We were then by the sycamores under Nab Scar. The aged poet was in a most genial mood, and it suddenly occurred to me that I might, without unwarrantable presumption, seize the golden opportunity thus offered, and ask him to explain these mysterious words. So I addressed him with an apology, and begged him to explain, what my own feeble mother-wit was unable to unravel, and for which I had in vain sought the assistance of others, what were those ‘fallings from us, vanishings,’ for which, above all other things, he gave God thanks. The venerable old man raised his aged form erect; he was walking in the middle, and passed across me to a five-barred gate in the wall which bounded the road on the side of the lake. He clenched the top bar firmly with his right hand, pushed strongly against it, and then uttered these ever-memorable words: ‘There was a time in my life when I had to push against something that resisted, to be sure that there was anything outside of me. I was sure of my own mind; everything else fell away, and vanished into thought.’ Thought, he was sure of; matter for him, at the moment, was an unreality—nothing but a thought. Such natural spontaneous idealism has probably never been felt by any other man.
“Bonamy Price.”
This, however, was not an experience peculiar to Wordsworth, as Professor Price imagined—and its value would be much lessened if it had been so—but was one to which (as the poet said to Miss Fenwick) “every one, if he would look back, could bear testimony.”
The following is from S.T. Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria (chap. xxii. p. 29, edition 1817)—
“To the Ode on the Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, the poet might have prefixed the lines which Dante addresses to one of his own Canzoni—
Canzone, i’ credo, che saranno radi Color che tua ragione intendan bene: Tanto lor sei faticoso ed alto. O lyric song, there will be few, think I, Who may thy import understand aright: Thou art for them so arduous and so high!
But the Ode was intended for such readers only as had been accustomed to watch the flux and reflux of their inmost nature, to venture at times into the twilight realms of consciousness, and to feel a deep interest in modes of inmost being, to which they know that the attributes of time and space are inapplicable and alien, but which yet cannot be conveyed, save in symbols of time and space. For such readers the sense is sufficiently plain, and they will be as little disposed to charge Mr. Wordsworth with believing the Platonic pre-existence in the ordinary interpretation of the words, as I am to believe, that Plato himself ever meant or taught it.
πολλά μοι ὑπ’ ἀγκῶνος ὠκέα βέλη ἔνδον ἐντὶ φαρέτρας φωνᾶντα συνετοῖσιν ἐς δὲ τὸ πᾶν ἑρμηνέων χατίζει. σοφὸς ὁ πολλὰ εἰδὼς φυᾷ. μαθόντες δὲ λάβροι παγγλωσσίᾳ, κόρακες ὥς, ἄκραντα γαρύετον Διὸς πρὸς ὄρνιχα θεῖον. Pindar, Olymp. ii.”[336]
The following parallel passages from The Excursion, The Prelude, Ruskin’s Modern Painters, Keble’s Praelectiones de Poeticae vi Medica (p. 788, Prael. xxxix.), and the Silex Scintillans of Henry Vaughan, are quoted, in an interesting note to the Ode on Immortality, in Professor Henry Reed’s American edition of the Poems (1851).
I Ah! why in age Do we revert so fondly to the walks Of childhood—but that there the Soul discerns The dear memorial footsteps unimpaired Of her own native vigour—thence can hear Reverberations; and a choral song, Commingling with the incense that ascends, Undaunted, toward the imperishable heavens, From her own lonely altar? The Excursion, book ix. ll. 36-44.
II Our childhood sits, Our simple childhood, sits upon a throne That hath more power than all the elements. I guess not what this tells of Being past, Nor what it augurs of the life to come; etc. The Prelude, book v. ll. 507-511.
III
“ … There was never yet the child of any promise (so far as the theoretic faculties are concerned) but awaked to the sense of beauty with the first gleam of reason; and I suppose there are few, among those who love Nature otherwise than by profession and at second-hand, who look not back to their youngest and least learned days as those of the most intense, superstitious, insatiable, and beatific perception of her splendours. And the bitter decline of this glorious feeling, though many note it not, partly owing to the cares and weight of manhood, which leave them not the time nor the liberty to look for their lost treasure, and partly to the human and divine affections which are appointed to take its place, yet have formed the subject, not indeed of lamentation, but of holy thankfulness for the witness it bears to the immortal origin and end of our nature, to one whose authority is almost without appeal in all questions relating to the influence of external things upon the pure human soul.
Not for these I raise The song of thanks and praise But for those obstinate questionings, etc. etc.
And if it were possible for us to recollect all the unaccountable and happy instincts of the careless time, and to reason upon them with the maturer judgment, we might arrive at more right results than either the philosophy or the sophisticated practice of art has yet attained. But we love the perceptions before we are capable of methodising or comparing them.” (Ruskin’s Modern Painters, vol. ii. p. 36, part iii. ch. v. sec. i.)
“ … Etenim qui velit acutius indagare causas propensae in antiqua saecula voluntatis, mirum ni conjectura incidat aliquando in commentum illud Pythagorae, docentis, animarum nostrarum non tum fieri initium, cum in hoc mundo nascimur; immo ex ignota quadam regione venire eas, in sua quamque corpora; neque tam penitus Lethaeo potu imbui, quin permanet quasi quidam anteactae aetatis sapor; hunc autem excitari identidem, et nescio quo sensu percipi, tacito quidem illo et obscuro, sed percipi tamen. Atque hac ferme sententia extat summi hac memoria Poetae nobilissimum carmen; nempe non aliam ob causam tangi pueritiae recordationem exquisita illa ac pervagata dulcedine, quam propter debilem quendam prioris aevi Deique propioris sensum.
Quamvis autem hanc opinionem vix ferat divinae philosophiae ratio, fatemur tamen eam eatenus ad verum accedere, quo sanctum aliquod et grave tribuit memoriae et caritati puerilium annorum. Nosmet certe infantes novimus quam prope tetigerit Divina benignitas; quis porro scit, an omnis illa temporis anteacti dulcedo habeat quandam significationem Illius Praesentiae?” (Keble, Praelectiones de Poeticae vi Medica, p. 788, Prael. xxxix.)
“Corruption Sure, it was so. Man in those early days Was not all stone and earth; He shined a little, and by those weak rays, Had some glimpse of his birth. He saw Heaven o’er his head, and knew from whence He came condemned hither, And, as first Love draws strongest, so from hence His mind sure progressed thither.” Henry Vaughan, Silex Scintillans.
Mr. Reed also quotes a passage from Vaughan’s poem Childehood; but a more apposite passage may be found in The Retreate, in Silex Scintillans.
Happy those early dayes, when I Shined in my Angell-infancy! Before I understood this place Appointed for my second race, Or taught my soul to fancy ought But a white celestiall thought; When yet I had not walkt above A mile or two from my first Love, And looking back, at that short space, Could see a glimpse of his bright face; When on some gilded Cloud or Flowre My gazing soul would dwell an houre, And in those weaker glories spy Some shadows of eternity; … But felt through all this fleshly dresse Bright shootes of everlastingnesse.
The extent of Wordsworth’s debt to Vaughan has been discussed a good deal. There was no copy of the Silex Scintillans in the Rydal Mount sale-catalogue. I believe that he had read The Retreate, and forgotten it more completely perhaps than Coleridge forgot Sir John Davies’ Orchestra, a Poem on Dancing, when he wrote The Ancient Mariner.
The following may be added from The Friend (the edition of 1818), vol. i. p. 183:—“To find no contradiction in the union of old and new to contemplate the Ancient of Days with feelings as fresh as if they then sprang forth at his own fiat, this characterizes the minds that feel the riddle of the world, and may help to unravel it! To carry on the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood, to combine the child’s sense of wonder and novelty with the appearances which every day, for perhaps 40 years, had rendered familiar,
With sun and moon and stars throughout the year And man and woman——
This is the character and privilege of genius, and one of the marks which distinguish genius from talent.”—Ed.
POEMS BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH AND BY DOROTHY WORDSWORTH NOT INCLUDED IN THE EDITION OF 1849-50