"These beauteous forms, Through a long absence, have not been to me As is a landscape to a blind man's eye: But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din Of towns and cities, I have owed to them, In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; And passing even into my purer mind, With tranquil restoration:-feelings, too, Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps, As have no slight or trivial influence On that best portion of a good man's life, His little, nameless, unremembered acts Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust, To them I may have owed another gift Of aspect more sublime; that blesses most In which the burthen of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lighten'd:-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, Has hung upon the beatings of my heart- How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
O silvan Wye! Thou wanderer through the woods, How often has my spirit turned to thee!
And now with gleams of half-extinguished thought, With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again : While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts, That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope,
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first I came among these hills.
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 varied moments all gone by) To me was all in all. I cannot paint
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, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye.
"That time is past, And all its aching joys are now no more, And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this Faint I, nor mourn, nor murmur; other gifts Have followed; for such loss I would believe Abundant recompense. For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes The still sad music of humanity,
Not harsh nor grating, but of amplest power To soften and subdue.
"And I have felt A passion that disturbed me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interposed, Whose dwelling is the light of setting sun, And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and on the mind of man: A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects and 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 recognise, 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."
What divine exaltation, and what divine composure! Poetry, philosophy, religion. And clear as light-harmonious as music-the perfectly beautiful language of the Revelation!
Or turn to that glorious passage in the Excursionbut the mountains all wear an unusual hush, and we shall give it utterance to glorify the gloom.
"Such was the boy-but for the growing youth What soul was his, when from the naked top Of some bold headland, he beheld the sun Rise up, and bathe the world in light! he looked- Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth
And ocean's liquid mass, beneath him lay
In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touched, And in their silent faces could he read Unutterable love. Sound needed none, Nor any voice of joy; his spirit drank The spectacle: sensation, soul and form All melted into him; they swallowed up His animal being; in them did he live, And by them did he live; they were his life In such access of mind, in such high hour Of visitation from the living God,
Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired. No thanks he breathed, he proffered no request; Rapt into still communion that transcends The imperfect offices of prayer and praise. His mind was a thanksgiving to the Power That made him; it was blessedness and love! A herdsman on the lonely mountain top, Such intercourse was his, and in this sort Was his existence oftentimes possessed. O then how beautiful, how bright appeared The written promise! Early had he learned To reverence the volume that displays The mystery, the life which cannot die; But in the mountains did he feel his faith.
All things, responsive to the writing, there Breathed immortality, revolving life, And greatness still revolving; infinite; There littleness was not; the least of things Seemed infinite; and then his spirit shaped Her prospects, nor did he believe, he saw What wonder if his being thus became Sublime and comprehensive! Low desires, Low thoughts had there no place; yet was his heart Lowly; for he was meek in gratitude,
Oft as he called those ecstasies to mind,
And whence they flowed; and from them he acquired Wisdom, which works through patience; thence he learned, In oft recurring hours of sober thought,
To look on nature with a humble heart, Self-questioned where it did not understand, And with a superstitious eye of love."
People say that, of all poets, Byron alone has fitly sung the sea. Let us recite the celebrated close of Childe
"Oh! that the desert were my dwelling-place, With one fair Spirit for my minister, That I might all forget the human race And, hating no one, love but only her! Ye elements!-in whose ennobling stir I feel myself exalted-Can ye not Accord me such a being? Do I err In deeming such inhabit many a spot? Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot.
"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar ; I love not man the less, but nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been of yore, To mingle with the universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
"Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean-roll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain; Man marks the earth with ruin-his control
Stops with the shore;-upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, When, for a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.
"His steps are not upon thy paths, thy fields Are not a spoil for him,-thou dost arise
And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields For earth's destruction thou dost all despise, Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, And send'st him shivering in thy playful spray And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies His petty hope in some near port or bay,
And dashest him again to earth:-there let him lay.
"The armaments which thunderstrike the walls Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake, And monarchs tremble in their capitals, The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make Their clay creator the vain title take Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war; These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, They melt into thy yest of waves, which mar Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.
"Thy shores are empires, changed in all save theeAssyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters wasted them while they were free, And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts:-not so thou, Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' playTime writes no wrinkle on thine azure browSuch as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.
"Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Classes itself in tempests; in all time,
Calm or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or storm, Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving;-boundless, endless, and sublime— The image of Eternity-the throne
Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime
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