Ye Genii! to his covert speed;
And wake him with such gentle heed As may attune his soul to meet the dower Bestowed on this transcendent hour!
Such hues from their celestial Urn Were wont to stream before my eye, Where'er it wandered in the morn Of blissful infancy.
This glimpse of glory, why renewed? Nay, rather speak with gratitude;
For, if a vestige of those gleams dreams.
Survived, it was only in my Dread Power! whom peace and calmness serve No less than Nature's threatening voice,
If aught unworthy be my choice, From TUKE if I would swerve,
Oh, let thy grace remind me of the light Full early lost, and fruitlessly deplored; Which, at this moment, on my waking sight Appears to shine, by miracle restored! My soul, though yet confined to earth, Rejoices in a second birth;
-T is past, the visionary splendour fades; And night approaches with her shades.
Note. The multiplication of mountain-ridges, described, at the commencement of the third stanza of this Ode, as a kind of Jacob's Ladder, leading to Heaven, is produced either by watery vapours, or sunny haze-in the present instance, by the latter cause. All
tons to the Ode entitled Intimations of Immortality, pervade the last stanza of the foregoing Poem.
COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING A TOUR.
Five years have past; five summers, with the length Of five long winters! and again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a sweet inlaud murmur. '—Once again Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, That on a wild secluded scene impress Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect The landscape with the quiet of the sky. The day is come when I again repose Here, under this dark sycamore, and view These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts, Which at this season, with their uuripe fruits, Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves Among the woods and copses, nor disturb The wild green landscape. Once again I see These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms, Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke Sent up, in silence, from among the trees! With some uncertain notice, as might seem, Of vagrant Dwellers in the houseless woods, Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire The Hermit sits alone.
Through a long absence, have not been to me As is a landscape to a blind man's eye;
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din Of towns and cities, I have owed to them, In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; And passing even into my purer mind, With tranquil restoration:-feelings too Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps, As have no slight or trivial influence On that best portion of a good man's life, His little, nameless, unremembered acts Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust, To them I may have owed another gift, Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood, In which the burthen of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened:-that serene and blessed mood, In which the affections gently lead us on,- Until, the breath of this corporeal frame And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul: While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things.
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft, In darkness, and amid the many shapes Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, Have hung upon the beatings of my heart, How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee, O sylvan Wye! Thou wanderer thro' the woods, How often has my spirit turned to thee!
And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought, With many recognitions dim and faint, And somewhat of sad perplexity, The Picture of the mind revives again: While here I stand, not only with the sense Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts That in this moment there is life and food For future
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first I came among these hills; when like a roe I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams, Wherever nature led more like a man Flying from something that he dreads, than one Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then (The coarser pleasures of my boyish days, And their glad animal movements all gone by) To me was all in all.—I cannot paint What then I was. The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colours and their forms, were then to me An appetite a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, or any interest Unborrowed from the eye.-That time is past, And all its aching joys are now no more, And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
The river is not affected by the tides a few miles above Tin- Ilave followed, for such loss, I would believe,
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man : A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods, And mountains; and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye and ear, both what they half create, And what perceive; well pleased to recognize In nature and the language of the sense, The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being.
If I were not thus taught, should I the more Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me, here upon the banks Of this fair river; thou, my dearest Friend, My dear, dear Friend, and in thy voice I catch The language of my former heart, and read My former pleasures in the shooting lights Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while May I behold in thee what I was once, My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make, Knowing that Nature never did betray The heart that loved her; 't is her privilege, Through all the years of this our life, to lead From joy to joy for she can so inform The mind that is within us, so impress With quietness and beauty, and so feed With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all The dreary intercourse of daily life, Shall c'er prevail against us, or disturb Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon Shine on thee in thy solitary walk; And let the misty mountain winds be free To blow against thee: and, in after years, When these wild ecstasies shall be matured Into a sober pleasure, when thy mind Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms, Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then, If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts Of tender joy wilt thou remember me, And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance, If I should be where I no more can hear Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams Of past existence, wilt thou then forget
THE Tale of Peter Bell, which I now introduce to your notice, and to that of the Public, has, in its Manuscript state, nearly survived its minority;-for it first saw the light in the summer of 1798. During this long interval, pains have been taken at different times to make the production less unworthy of a favourable reception; or, rather, to fit it for filling permanently a station, however humble, in the Literature of my Country. This las, indeed, been the aim of all my endeavours in Poetry, which, you know, have been sufficiently laborious to prove that I deem the Art not lightly to be approached; and that the attainment of excellence in it, may laudably be made the principal object of intellec tual pursuit by any man, who, with reasonable consideration of circumstances, has faith in his own impulses.
The Poem of Peter Bell, as the Prologue will shew, was composed under a belief that the Imagination not only does not require for its exercise the intervention of supernatural agency, but that, though such agency be excluded, the faculty may be called forth as imperiously, and for kindred results of pleasure, by incidents, within the compass of poetic probability, in the humblest departments of daily life. Since that Prologue was written, you have exhibited most splendid effects of judicious daring, in the opposite and usual course, Let this acknowledgment make my peace with the lovers of the supernatural; and I am persuaded it will be admitted, that to you, as a Master in that province of the art, the following Tale, whether from contrast or congruity, is not an unappropriate offering. Accept it, then, as a public testimony of affectionate admiration from one with whose name yours has been often coupled (to use your own words) for evil and for good; and believe me to be, with earnest wishes that life and health may be granted you to complete the many important works in which you are engaged, and with high respect, Most faithfully yours,
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
This line has a close resemblance to an admirable line of Young, RYDAL MOUNT, April 7, 1819. the exact expression of which I cannot recollect.
THERE's something in a flying horse, There's something in a huge balloon; But through the clouds I'll never float Until I have a little Boat,
Whose shape is like the crescent-moon.
And now I have a little Boat, In shape a very crescent-moon :-
Fast through the clouds my Boat can sail; But if perchance your faith should fail, Look up-and you shall see me soon!
The woods, my Friends, are round you roaring, Rocking and roaring like a sea; The noise of danger fills your ears, And ye have all a thousand fears Both for my little Boat and me!
Meanwhile untroubled I admire The pointed horns of my canoe; And, did not pity touch my breast, To see how ye are all distrest, Till my ribs ached, I'd laugh at you!
Away we go, my Boat and I- Frail man ne'er sate in such another; Whether among the winds we strive, Or deep into the clouds we dive, Each is contented with the other.
Away we go-and what care we For treasons, tumults, and for wars? We are as calm in our delight As is the crescent-moon so bright Among the scattered stars.
Up goes my Boat among the stars Through many a breathless field of light, Through many a long blue field of ether, Leaving ten thousand stars beneath her. Up goes my little Boat so bright!
The Crab-the Scorpion-and the Bull- We pry among them all-have shot High o'er the red-haired race of Mars, Covered from top to toe with scars; Such company I like it not!
The towns in Saturn are decayed, And melancholy Spectres throng them; The Pleiads, that appear to kiss Each other in the vast abyss, With joy I sail among them! Swift Mercury resounds with mirth, Great Jove is full of stately bowers; But these, and all that they contain, What are they to that tiny grain, That little Earth of ours?
Then back to Earth, the dear green Earth; Whole ages if I here should roam, The world for my remarks and me Would not a whit the better be;
I've left my heart at home.
Nay, start not!-wedded wives-and twelve! But how one wife could e'er come near him, In simple truth I cannot tell; For, be it said of Peter Bell, To see him was to fear him.
Though Nature could not touch his heart
By lovely forms and silent weather, And tender sounds, yet you might see At once, that Peter Bell and she Had often been together.
wildness round him hung As of a dweller out of doors;
In his whole figure and his mien
A savage character was seen,
Of mountains and of dreary moors.
To all the unshaped half-human thoughts Which solitary Nature feeds
'Mid summer storms or winter's ice, Had Peter joined whatever vice The cruel city breeds.
His face was keen as is the wind That cuts along the hawthorn fence; Of courage you saw little there, But, in its stead, a medley air Of cunning and of impudence.
He had a dark and sidelong walk, And long and slouching was his gait; Beneath his looks so bare and bold, You might perceive, his spirit cold Was playing with some inward bait.
His forehead wrinkled was and furred; A work, one half of which was done By thinking of his whens and hows; And half, by knitting of his brows Beneath the glaring sun.
There was a hardness in his cheek, There was a hardness in his eye, As if the man had fixed his face, In many a solitary place, Against the wind and open sky!
ONE NIGHT, (and now, my little Bess! We've reached at last the promised Tale;) One beautiful November night, When the full moon was shining bright Upon the rapid river Swale,
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