CHAPTER XXIV

PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE AND MAN

WORDSWORTH's genius, at its best, expressed itself in three large groups of poems corresponding more or less closely to three periods of his life. The poems of each group are related to one another, in that they refer to the same class of subjects and are bound together by a common purpose: the first group comprises most of his early works, their subjects being the unadorned features of nature and some of the common incidents of life which fell under the poet's observation, and the ruling purpose being the quite simple one of representing the truth, and of communicating the joy and strength which he derived from life. These poems were of a new kind. They represent the union of exact knowledge with creative imagination, of plain language with passionate feeling. They are at one and the same time science and art. They imitate nature without attempting to interpret her, implying thus the most profound reverence. Wordsworth as here we see him is almost unique among poets, and certainly supreme in this kind. Gray" will perhaps be remembered when all other English poetry of the century has been forgotten. The period ends almost abruptly in 1807.

"Lucy

The second group comprises those fine high endeavours of his to penetrate to a soul of things supposed to lie behind nature's impassive face. So long as Wordsworth remained faithful to his old ideals and constant in courage and self-confidence, his philosophy, too, is of the highest order of originality. We have in the "Intimations," for example, a kind of poetry entirely different in origin and purpose from the direct type just described; but it

1807-1817]

THREE GROUPS OF POEMS

153

is almost equally characteristic of Wordsworth, and almost as lonely in its excellence. The period when Wordsworth could produce such poetry extended scarcely farther than 1807.

Throughout the rest of his life, except for a few instances when the spirit of his youth revived, his observation was oblique, and his reflective powers were dominated by principles not formerly his own, and not easily reconcileable with the best that he had been. Of the immense number of poems which he wrote in these last forty years, nearly all are upon a high level of attainment; but standing alone they would not suffice to justify a claim of great superiority, except in one kind of work-that is, the historical and political sonnet. Large as is his achievement in this third kind of characteristic excellence, he is by no means so great here as in his poems of simple life and his poems of pure reflection. "The Prelude " stands in the centre of his life-work because it represents all three of these kinds. It is based on the sound habits of direct and unprejudiced observation which gave us the short poems in " Lyrical Ballads "and in the edition of 1807. It is full of youthful fervours, which not even the over-scrupulous revisions of later years could extinguish. The truly Wordsworthian philosophy still animates its reflective parts, even though half repressed in a system from which poetry instinctively withdraws. And it indicates in advance the course of Wordsworth's later sympathies. Even "The White Doe of Rylstone " and " The Excursion," which were finished seven years later, were conceived and in large part composed before the end of that fateful year 1807. Apart from a few surprises, such as "Laodamia," the muses held little in store for him except a vast number of splendid sonnets.

That beautiful poem, "The White Doe of Rylstone," has rarely been understood. It was begun in 1807, and completed and published in 1815. Based upon an ancient ballad in Percy's collection, "The Rising of the North," which commemorates the Catholic insurrection in the twelfth year of Elizabeth's reign, the period, the

characters, and the setting are all of a kind which appealed to the romantic spirit. Feudal pride and valour, the pathos of monastic ruins, a subtle suggestion of the preternatural, and an atmosphere of moonlight-all these elements of Romanticism are present here. Never before had Wordsworth accepted so fully the complete mechanism of Romance. It might plausibly be inferred that this poem in every respect marked a fresh departure in technical method and a changed estimate of human values. But if it be studied deeply, it will reveal a meaning so intimately associated with Wordsworth's old ideals, that questions of time and circumstance, of technique, form, and fashion, fall into secondary rank. 'The White Doe of Rylstone" is essentially one more great autobiographical poem. Though ostensibly objective and historical, it is the final message of Wordsworth's personal and original religion, the parting utterance of his poetic youth. The master of Rylstone Hall, with eight of his sons, joins the great Catholic earls, Percy and Neville. Francis Norton, his other son, endeavours in vain to dissuade them from taking up arms. The young man resolves not to fight on either side, but to follow the Northern levies, alone and weaponless, in order to be of service to his kindred in the hour of disaster. To his sister Emily, a Protestant like himself, he prophesies the coming desolation, but enjoins upon her a life of strict quietude at home. She is not to take sides, even in thought:

Farewell all wishes, all debate,

All prayers for this cause, or for that!
Weep, if that aid thee; but depend
Upon no help of outward friend;
Espouse thy doom at once, and cleave
To fortitude without reprieve.

The father and eight warrior sons are taken and slain. Francis, after comforting them in prison and trying to save their banner, which his sister's fingers had wrought, is likewise slain. The maid is left with nothing, seemingly, to live for-an exile, a wanderer

Driven forth like a withered leaf.

1807-1817]

"THE WHITE DOE"

155

Yet strength remained in her loneliness, a cold, high self-possession:

Her soul doth in itself stand fast,
Sustained by memory of the past
And strength of Reason; held above
The infirmities of mortal love;
Undaunted, lofty, calm, and stable,
And awfully impenetrable.

Returning to her father's ruined domain, she was surprised one day by a visit from a white doe, which had once been her playmate, and henceforth, from the companionship and love of this faithful creature, she drew, even on that "trouble-haunted ground," comfort and peace:

With her Companion, in such frame

Of mind, to Rylstone back she came;
And, ranging through the wasted groves,
Received the memory of old loves,
Undisturbed and undistrest,
Into a soul which now was blest
With a soft spring-day of holy,
Mild, and grateful melancholy:
Not sunless gloom or unenlightened,
But by tender fancies brightened.

This is the song of one who had hoped for the success of a lost cause, and had been heartbroken over the event-of one, however, who had found balm in the quiet exercise of reason and the visitings of imagination. Perhaps it is even possible that in the character of Francis, who abstains from violence for conscience' sake, Wordsworth paid tribute to the pacific principles of his own early manhood, when, as we have seen, the wickedness of war was an oft-recurring theme in his writings. There is more than this, a sense of the futility and transitoriness of action. A note of almost oriental renunciation runs through the poem. Human endeavour, the whole fabric of human deeds, are destined to pass away and leave no trace. Only Nature and Mind and the Peace of God endure. Salvation is found not through acting, but through suffering. The utmost that can be expected is consolation for hopes deceived, and this

consolation comes unbidden, with gentle soft approach, from inward springs. Thus comforted, but with its active instincts rebuked, the soul begins

its reascent in sanctity, From fair to fairer; day by day A more divine and loftier way.

We think at once of the concluding lines of the tenth stanza of the "Intimations "ode, realizing, however, that the poet has meanwhile risen to thinner air and a more attenuated philosophy:

We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
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,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

Disillusion, he seems to tell us, lurks at the end of all effort. But when the ruin is most complete, Imagination, the power by which the mind admits to itself the healing touch of nature, can half regain what was lost.

Is it not possible, too, that this mystical poem grew in part from his long brooding over the fate and office of woman? In a sense the lives of his sister and of Sara Hutchinson seemed to have been sacrificed. They could not look forward to the fulfilment of their destinies as wives and mothers. He must have known by this time (he was fully informed of the fact in 1811) that Coleridge loved Sara with hopeless and helpless adoration. For them, and indeed for Coleridge himself, no resource was left save those that comforted the meek lady in the poem, nothing but " a wise passiveness." Other meanings this wonderful poem may have, but surely it teaches that active life is vanity that passeth away, though the soul, through suffering and submission to nature, may yet win communion with what endures for ever. The essence of the whole poem lies in the lines prefixed to it, a quotation from "The Borderers":