Wordsworth (4 page)

All things that love the sun are out of doors;

The sky rejoices in the morning’s birth;

The grass is bright with rain-drops; – on the moors

The hare is running races in her mirth;

And with her feet she from the plashy earth

Raises a mist; that, glittering in the sun,

Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run.

I was a Traveller then upon the moor;

I saw the hare that raced about with joy;

I heard the woods and distant waters roar;

Or heard them not, as happy as a boy:

The pleasant season did my heart employ:

My old remembrances went from me wholly;

And all the ways of men, so vain and melancholy.

But, as it sometimes chanceth, from the might

Of joy in minds that can no further go,

As high as we have mounted in delight

In our dejection do we sink as low;

To me that morning did it happen so;

And fears and fancies thick upon me came;

Dim sadness – and blind thoughts, I knew not, nor could name.

I heard the sky-lark warbling in the sky;

And I bethought me of the playful hare:

Even such a happy Child of earth am I;

Even as these blissful creatures do I fare;

Far from the world I walk, and from all care;

But there may come another day to me –

Solitude, pain of heart, distress and poverty.

My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought,

As if life’s business were a summer mood;

As if all needful things would come unsought

To genial faith, still rich in genial good;

But how can He expect that others should

Build for him, sow for him, and at his call

Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all?

I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy,

The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride;

Of Him who walked in glory and in joy

Following his plough, along the mountain-side:

By our own spirits are we deified:

We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;

But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.

Now, whether it were by peculiar grace,

A leading from above, something given,

Yet it befell, that, in this lonely place,

When I with these untoward thoughts had striven,

Beside a pool bare to the eye of heaven

I saw a Man before me unawares:

The oldest man he seemed that ever wore grey hairs.

As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie

Couched on the bald top of an eminence;

Wonder to all who do the same espy,

By what means it could thither come, and whence;

So that it seems a thing endued with sense:

Like a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a shelf

Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun itself;

Such seemed this Man, not all alive nor dead,

Nor all asleep – in his extreme old age:

His body was bent double, feet and head

Coming together in life’s pilgrimage;

As if some dire constraint of pain, or rage

Of sickness felt by him in times long past,

A more than human weight upon his frame had cast.

Himself he propped, his limbs, body, and pale face,

Upon a long grey staff of shaven wood:

And, still as I drew near with gentle pace,

Upon the margin of that moorish flood

Motionless as a cloud the old Man stood,

That heareth not the loud winds when they call;

And moveth all together, if it move at all.

At length, himself unsettling, he the pond

Stirred with his staff, and fixedly did look

Upon the muddy water, which he conned,

As if he had been reading in a book:

And now a stranger’s privilege I took;

And, drawing to his side, to him did say,

‘This morning gives us promise of a glorious day.’

A gentle answer did the old Man make,

In courteous speech which forth he slowly drew:

And him with further words I thus bespake,

‘What occupation do you there pursue?

This is a lonesome place for one like you.’

Ere he replied, a flash of mild surprise

Broke from the sable orbs of his yet-vivid eyes.

His words came feebly, from a feeble chest,

But each in solemn order followed each,

With something of a lofty utterance drest –

Choice word and measured phrase, above the reach

Of ordinary men; a stately speech;

Such as grave Livers do in Scotland use,

Religious men, who give to God and man their dues.

He told, that to these waters he had come

To gather leeches, being old and poor:

Employment hazardous and wearisome!

And he had many hardships to endure:

From pond to pond he roamed, from moor to moor;

Housing, with God’s good help, by choice or chance;

And in this way he gained an honest maintenance.

The old Man still stood talking by my side;

But now his voice to me was like a stream

Scarce heard; nor word from word could I divide;

And the whole body of the Man did seem

Like one whom I had met with in a dream;

Or like a man from some far region sent,

To give me human strength, by apt admonishment.

My former thoughts returned: the fear that kills;

And hope that is unwilling to be fed;

Cold, pain, and labour, and all fleshly ills;

And mighty Poets in their misery dead.

– Perplexed, and longing to be comforted,

My question eagerly did I renew,

‘How is it that you live, and what is it you do?’

He with a smile did then his words repeat;

And said that, gathering leeches, far and wide

He travelled; stirring thus about his feet

The waters of the pools where they abide.

‘Once I could meet with them on every side;

But they have dwindled long by slow decay;

Yet still I persevere, and find them where I may.’

While he was talking thus, the lonely place,

The old Man’s shape, and speech – all troubled me:

In my mind’s eye I seemed to see him pace

About the weary moors continually,

Wandering about alone and silently.

While I these thoughts within myself pursued,

He, having made a pause, the same discourse renewed.

And soon with this he other matter blended,

Cheerfully uttered, with demeanour kind,

But stately in the main; and when he ended,

I could have laughed myself to scorn to find

In that decrepit Man so firm a mind.

‘God,’ said I, ‘be my help and stay secure;

I’ll think of the Leech-gatherer on the lonely moor!’

The Child is Father of the Man;

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.

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.

It is not now as it hath been of yore; –

               Turn whereso’er I may,

                         By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

                         The Rainbow comes and goes,

                         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;

    The sunshine is a glorious birth;

    But yet I know, where’er I go,

That there hath past away a glory from the earth.

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,

    And while the young lambs bound

               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;

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

    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!

Ye blessèd 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,

The fulness of your bliss, I feel – I feel it all.

               Oh evil day! if I were sullen

               While Earth herself is adorning,

                         This sweet May-morning,

               And the Children are culling

                         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!

    – 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:

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?

Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,

               Hath had elsewhere its setting,

                         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:

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;

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 die away,

And fade into the light of common day.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;

Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,

And, even with something of a Mother’s mind,

               And no unworthy aim,

               
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.

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,

A six years’ Darling 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,

Some fragment from his dream of human life,

Shaped by himself with newly-learnèd art;

               A wedding or a festival,

               A mourning or a funeral;

                         And this hath now his heart,

               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,

               And with new joy and pride

The little Actor cons another part;

Filling from time to time his ‘humorous stage’

With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,

That Life brings with her in her equipage;

               
As if his whole vocation

               Were endless imitation.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie

               Thy Soul’s immensity;

Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep

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,

Which we are toiling all our lives to find,

In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;

Thou, over whom thy Immortality

Broods like the Day, a Master o’er a Slave,

A Presence which is not to be put by;

Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might

Of heaven-born freedom on thy being’s height,

Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke

The years to bring the inevitable yoke,

Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?

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!