Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub
[blocks in formation]

Up with me! up with me into the clouds!
For thy song, Lark, is strong;

Up with me, up with me into the clouds!
Singing, singing,

With clouds and sky about thee ringing,
Lift me, guide me till I find

That spot which seems so to thy mind!

I have walked through wildernesses dreary And to-day my heart is weary;

Had I now the wings of a Faery,

Up to thee would I fly.

There is madness about thee, and joy divine In that song of thine;

Lift me, guide me high and high

To thy banqueting-place in the sky.

Joyous as morning

Thou art laughing and scorning;

Thou hast a nest for thy love and thy rest.
And, though little troubled with sloth,
Drunken Lark! thou would'st be loth
To be such a traveller as I.

Happy, happy Liver,

With a soul as strong as a mountain river Pouring out praise to the Almighty Giver, Joy and jollity be with us both!

10

20

INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD*

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. It is not now as it hath been of yore;Turn wheresoe'er I may,

By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can see no

more.

"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. 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."-Extract from Wordsworth's note. Compare Henry Vaughan's The Retreat, p. 223.

II

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,

10

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,

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:

That there hath past away a glory from the Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

earth.

[blocks in formation]

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.

VI

60

71

[blocks in formation]

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-learned 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 "humorous1
stage"

That Life brings with her in her equipage;
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,

As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitatior

1 humorsome

90

100

VIII

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie Thy Soul's immensity;

Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,

110

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, And see the Children sport upon the shore,

That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. 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, 120
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!

[blocks in formation]

The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction; not indeed

For that which is most worthy to be blest-
Delight and liberty, the simple creed

Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,

[blocks in formation]

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,

Forebode not any severing of our loves!

With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;

breast::

Not for these I raise

[blocks in formation]

The song of thanks and praise;

But for those obstinate questionings

Of sense and outward things,

Fallings from us, vanishings;

Blank misgivings of a Creature

Moving about in worlds not realized,

High instincts before which our mortal Nature Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised:

150

But for those first affections, Those shadowy recollections, Which, be they what they may, 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 Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,

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!

fret,

Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;

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.

Thanks to the human heart by which we live, Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

COMPOSED UPON WESTMINSTER
BRIDGE, SEPTEMBER 3, 1802

Earth has not anything to show more fair: 160 Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty:

200

This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

IT IS A BEAUTEOUS EVENING,
CALM AND FREE

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,
The holy time is quiet as a Nun
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquillity;

The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea:
Listen! the mighty Being is awake,
And doth with his eternal motion make
A sound like thunder-everlastingly.

LONDON, 1802+

Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee; she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart:
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the

sea:

Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, So didst thou travel on life's common way, In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours;

Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! here,

If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,
Thy nature is not therefore less divine:
Thou liest in Abraham's bosom2 all the year;
And worship'st at the Temple's inner shrine,
God being with thee when we know it not.

ON THE EXTINCTION OF THE
VENETIAN REPUBLIC*

Once did She hold the gorgeous east in fee;
And was the safeguard of the west: the worth
Of Venice did not fall below her birth,
Venice, the eldest Child of Liberty.
She was a maiden City, bright and free;
No guile seduced, no force could violate;
And when she took unto herself a Mate,
She must espouse the everlasting Sea.†
And what if she had seen those glories fade,
Those titles vanish, and that strength decay;
Yet shall some tribute of regret be paid
When her long life hath reached its final day:
Men are we, and must grieve when even the

Shade

Of that which once was great, is passed away.

1 Wordsworth's sister, Dorothy. 2 See Luke xvi, 22.

Venice threw off the yoke of the Eastern Empire as early as 809 and remained a republic or an oligarchy until conquered by Napoleon in 1797. At one time she had extensive possessions and colonies in the Levant. †The ancient Doges annually, on Ascension Day. threw a ring into the Adriatic in formal token of this espousal, or of perpetual dominion.

The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.-Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathéd horn.

AFTER-THOUGHTS

I thought of Thee, my partner and my guide,
As being past away.-Vain sympathies!
For, backward, Duddon, as I cast my eyes,
I see what was, and is, and will abide;
Still glides the Stream, and shall forever glide;
The Form remains, the Function never dies;
While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise,
We Men, who in our morn of youth defied
The elements, must vanish;-be it so!
Enough, if something from our hands have

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

20

A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer

30

40

In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid, And on her dulcimer she played, Coleridge says this poem was composed when he had fallen asleep just after reading from Marco Polo in Purchas's Pilgrimage how "In Xandu did Cublai Can build a stately pal ace," etc. There were more lines which he failed to record. Charles Lamb spoke of the poem as "a vision which he [Coleridge] repeats so enchantingly that it irradiates and brings heaven and elysian bowers into my parlour when he sings or says it."

1 A region in Tartary. 2 Kubla the Cham, or Emperor.

Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

50

THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER†

IN SEVEN PARTS

ARGUMENT

How a Ship having passed the Line was driven by Storms to the cold Country towards the South Pole and how from thence she made her course

to the Tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific Ocean; and of the strange things that befell; and in what manner the Ancyent Marinere came back to his own Country.

PART I.

It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.

"By thy long gray beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp'st thou me!

1-12. An ancient Mariner meeteth three Gallants bidden to a wedding-feast, and detaineth one.

From the publication, in 1798, of the Lyrical Ballads, the joint production of Coleridge and Wordsworth, may be dated very definitely the recognition of the new spirit in English literature which is commonly spoken of as the Romantic Revival. See Eng. Lit.. pp. 232-235. Coleridge, in the fourteenth chapter of his Biographia Literaria, writes of the occasion of the Lyrical Ballads as follows: "During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of the imagination. The sudden charm, which accidents of light and shade, which moonlight or sunset, diffused over a known and familiar landscape, appeared to represent the practicability of combining both. These are the poetry of nature. The thought suggested itself (to which of us I do not recollect) that a series of poems might be composed of two sorts. the one, the incidents and agents were to be. in part at least, supernatural; and the excellence aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions as would naturally accompany such situations. supposing them real. And real in this sense they have been to every human being who, from what. ever source of delusion, has at any time believed

In

« AnteriorContinuar »