O'er all that leaps and runs, and shouts and sings, This purpose and temper brought him out of sympathy not only, as has already been shown, with dialectic and logic, but even with morality, as morality is commonly understood. The behaviour of his fellows, especially where it immediately affects his own welfare, is the subject of all others which has the liveliest interest for man, and which often preoccupies him so entirely that it determines his view of the Universe and blinds him to what lies beyond itself. Such a blindness had fallen on John Stuart Mill at the time when the reading of Wordsworth's poems made an epoch in his life. "From them," he says, "I seemed to learn what would be the perennial sources of happiness, when all the greater evils of life shall have been removed." But even Mill postpones the happiness to the grim business of reform-as if a sick man should make a vow to taste no food till his recovery is complete. It is not the least of the sacrifices made by social reformers and those who do battle with the active evils of an age that they often disable their own capacity for simple happiness, so that if their ends were all attained, they would find nothing to occupy their thoughts. Like men who have spent a lifetime in accumulating wealth, they become unable to enjoy the fruits of their labours. And not reformers and rich men only, but many poets also would find their occupation gone if they lived in a golden world of peace and innocence. In such a world the poetic works of Alexander Pope—as much of them as would be appreciated-might be published in the outward form of a religious tract. But the Canticle of St. Francis and all the greatest poems of Wordsworth would not suffer the loss of a line. It is inevitable, while man lives in the world as it is, that his poetry should reflect the knowledge of good and evil. Morality colours all language, and lends to it the most delicate of its powers of distinction. Take from a poet his moral reflections, his saws, and his sentences; you rob him of his most effective instrument. It is by these, indeed, rather than by his constructive or exploratory powers, that Shakespeare holds his most popular title. A poet who coins proverbs and gives point and polish to moral truth is a poet whose fortune is quickly made. But how, except in some completely transcendental sense, expression be given to a sunset ? rounded period can reproduce that all its vague messages to the heart. this sort of power and this sort of beauty that was the inspiration of Wordsworth's poetry. He did not undervalue another sort of beauty, which K can a moral No clearly marvel, with And it was appeals chiefly to the intellect-the beauty of contrivance, of perfect adaptation to an end, which makes a steam-engine or a masterly game of chess a source of pure joy. But this is a beauty imposed by the active intelligence of man on the shapeless material that comes to his hand. So also does human morality, in so far as it takes its origin from the necessities of social life, impose itself on the raw material of society. There is no question here of the intuitions of a great prophet or teacher, but simply of that wide field of social judgment and social sanction, far wider than the operation of any definite enactments, where the moral sense of a community imposes itself on the tastes and habits of the individual and brings order out of chaos. But the contriving power of the intelligence and the assertive power of the will are equally at a loss in the presence of the mighty things of Nature. They cannot impose themselves on a sunset. Curious searchings and strenuous purposes must be laid aside if man is to approach Nature in the right humble temper-he must bring with him only "a heart that watches and receives." Four short poems written at Alfoxden in the spring of 1798-the Lines written in Early Spring, the verses To my Sister, and the twin poems called Expostulation and Reply and the Tables Turnedcontain the first full expression of this most essential part of Wordsworth's poetic teaching : Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife: And hark! how blithe the throstle sings! Let Nature be your teacher. She has a world of ready wealth, Our minds and hearts to bless- One impulse from a vernal wood Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can. Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; Our meddling intellect Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:— The last three stanzas are a condensed and profound expression of a thought that Wordsworth never tired of repeating; the Prelude and the Excursion are very largely commentaries on this text. Mr. John Morley, it is true, will have it that these verses are only the poet's fun. "It is best," he says, "to be entirely sceptical as to the existence of system and ordered philosophy in Wordsworth. When he tells us that "One impulse from a vernal wood such a proposition cannot be seriously taken as more than a half-playful sally for the benefit of some too bookish friend. No impulse from a vernal wood can teach us anything at all of moral evil and of good." If this be so, then Wordsworth himself can teach us nothing at all of moral evil and of good. The secret of his strength is stolen from him. It was this very entanglement, which ties up all moral teaching to the dry bones of system and ordered philosophy, that Wordsworth tried to cut through. It is best, at any rate, and wisest to disbelieve any one who says that a great poet does not mean that which he many times solemnly asserts. The thought recurs in the verses To my Sister: Love, now a universal birth, From heart to heart is stealing, From earth to man, from man to earth: -It is the hour of feeling. One moment now may give us more Than years of toiling reason: Our minds shall drink at every pore The spirit of the season. Some silent laws our hearts will make, Which they shall long obey: |