IX.

O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!

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,

With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:
Not for these I raise

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 realised;

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

6 These "questionings of sense and outward things" are, I suppose, the ques. tions which the soul puts to its visible surroundings, ever seeking from them what they have not to give: that is, the soul is so unable to acquiesce in death as the end of its being, that it cannot choose but keep interrogating the world of sense for answers which must come from a higher source; and this is taken as arguing that the soul is itself framed and attuned to a world above and beyond the present. Thus the poet finds cause to rejoice in the moral disappointments he has sustained,-to rejoice that the glories he saw in childhood have fallen away from him, and van. ished under the pressure of experience; because all this is a sort of pledge that his being has in it something greater and better than this world; that the soul's true home is in a world where life is unfailing and death is unknown. And so, in his view, for the purpose in question, the "philosophic mind" more than compensates the loss of the instinctive faith of childhood. Wordsworth here shows that the thought is at least a good one for poetical use; and I think it may be shown to be a good one for practical use. For, in fact, the strongest natural argument for a future life is, that the higher needs and instincts of our moral being are not met in this world: in other words, conscience and the present state of thing do not go together; the one does not answer to the other; and the world is full of beginnings that are to be finished elsewhere, if finished at all. See page 214, note 4.

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,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

X.

Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young Lambs bound

As to the tabor's sound!

We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,

Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
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.

XI.

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquish'd one delight

To live beneath your more habitual sway.

I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripp'd 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."

THE PRELUDE,

OR GROWTH OF A POET'S MIND.

[1803--6.

PREFATORY NOTE.-This poem was begun carly in 1799, and was finished in the Summer of 1805. During that time, the author, as he himself tells us, was meditating a much larger work, of which The Excursion forms a part; and by way of preparation for this work, "he undertook to record, in verse, the origin and progress of his own powers, so far as he was acquainted with them." And he adds the following: "The preparatory poem is autobiographical, and conducts the history of the author's mind to the point when he was emboldened to hope that his faculties were sufliciently matured for entering upon the arduous labour which he had proposed to himself; and the two works have the same kind of relation to each other, if he may so express himself, as the Ante-chapel has to the body of a Gothic Church."- The Prelude was addressed to Coleridge, who was residing in Malta for the restoration of his health when the greater part of it was composed. On his return to England, Wordsworth read the poem to him; and the impression it made upon him is set forth in some very noble verses addressed to Wordsworth, which will be found among the poems by Coleridge given in this volume. Wordsworth speaks of The Prelude as being "addressed to a dear friend, most distinguished for his knowledge and genius, and to whom the author's intellect is deeply indebted."-The poem was not published till 1850, soon after the author's death. On its first appearance, it was, I think, rather disappointing to the lovers of Wordsworth; but it wears well, and, if my own experiênce be any test, never fails to improve on further acquaintance.-The whole poem consists of fourteen Books. Of these, I give the first two Books entire, and portions of several others; which is all I can make room for, without excluding other pieces that seem better suited to the purpose of this volume.

BOOK FIRST.

INTRODUCTION-CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-TIME.

O, THERE is blessing in this gentle breeze,
A visitant that while it fans my cheek
Doth seem half-conscious of the joy it brings
From the green fields, and from yon azure sky.
Whate'er its mission, the soft breeze can come
To none more grateful than to me; escaped

7 This great Ode is now commonly accepted as the crowning effort of modern Imaginative discourse; but I suspect that few have grown to a full comprehension of its meaning. So deep and strong, indeed, is the undercurrent of thought, and so rich and varied the imagery and expression by which those depths are symbolized, that one may converse with it every day for a lifetime, without exhausting its sig nificance. I must dismiss it with a brief comment from Coleridge: "To the Ode on the Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, the poet might have prefixed the lines which Dante addressed to one of his own Canzoni:

O lyric song, there will be few, think I,
Who may thy import understand aright;
Thou art for them so arduous and so high!'

But the Ode was intended for such readers only as had been accustomed to watch the flux and reflux of their inmost nature, to venture at times into the twilight realms of consciousness, and to feel a deep interest in modes of inmost being, to which they know that the attributes of time and space are inapplicable and alien, but which yet cannot be conveyed save in symbols of time and space. For such readers the sense is sufficiently plain."