ON THE POWER OF SOUND.

Of memory?-O that ye might stoop to bear
Chains, such precious chains of sight
As laboured minstrelsies through ages wear!
O for a balance fit the truth to tell

Of the Unsubstantial, pondered well!

201

1

By one pervading spirit

XII.

Of tones and numbers all things are controlled,
As sages taught, where faith was found to merit
Initiation in that mystery old.1*

The heavens, whose aspect makes our minds as still
As they themselves appear to be,

Innumerable voices fill

With everlasting harmony;

The towering headlands, crowned with mist,

Their feet among the billows, know

That Ocean is a mighty harmonist; †

1835.

There is a world of spirit,

By tones and numbers guided and controlled;
And glorious privilege have they who merit
Initiation in that mystery old.

MS. Copy by Dorothy Wordsworth.

* The fundamental idea, both in the intellectual and moral philosophy of the Pythagoreans, was that of harmony or proportion. Their natural science or cosmology was dominated by the same idea, that as the world and all spheres within the universe were constructed symetrically, and moved around a central focus, the forms and the proportions of things were best expressed by number. All good was due to the principle of order; all evil to disorder. In accordance with the mathematical conception of the universe which ruled the Pythagoreans, justice was equality (lobrns), that is to say it consisted in each one receiving equally according to his deserts. Friendship too was equality of feeling and relationship; harmony being the radical idea, alike in the ethics and in the cosmology of the school.-ED.

+ Compare Keats to his friend Bailey in 1817: "The great elements we know of are no mean comforters; the open sky sits upon our senses like a sapphire crown; the air is our robe of state; the earth is our throne; and the sea a mighty minstrel playing before it."-ED.

Thy pinions, universal Air,

Ever waving to and fro,

Are delegates of harmony, and bear

Strains that support the Seasons in their round;
Stern Winter loves a dirge-like sound.

XIII.

Break forth into thanksgiving,

Ye banded instruments of wind and chords;
Unite, to magnify the Ever-living,*

Your inarticulate notes with the voice of words!
Nor hushed be service from the lowing mead,

Nor mute the forest hum of noon;

Thou too be heard, lone eagle !† freed

From snowy peak and cloud, attune

Thy hungry barkings to the hymn

Of joy, that from her utmost walls
The six-days' Work,t by flaming Seraphim
Transmits to Heaven! As Deep to Deep
Shouting through one valley calls,

All worlds, all natures, mood and measure keep
For praise and ceaseless gratulation, poured
Into the ear of God, their Lord!

XIV.

A Voice to Light gave Being;§

To Time, and Man his earth-born chronicler;

*

Compare

"Choral song, or burst

Sublime of instrumental harmony

To glorify the Eternal."

-The Excursion, Book IV., 1170 (Vol. V. p. 192).—Ed.

+ See the Fenwick note prefixed to this poem.-ED.

Gen. i.-Ed.

"And God said, Let there be light, and there was light" (Gen. i. 3). -ED.

ON THE POWER OF SOUND.

A Voice shall finish doubt and dim foreseeing,
And sweep away life's visionary stir;
The trumpet (we, intoxicate with pride,
Arm at its blast for deadly wars)
To archangelic lips applied,

The grave shall open, quench the stars.*
O Silence! are Man's noisy years

No more than moments of thy life?†

Is Harmony, blest queen of smiles and tears,
With her smooth tones and discords just,
Tempered into rapturous strife,

203

Thy destined bond-slave? No though earth be dust.
And vanish, though the heavens dissolve, her stay

Is in the WORD that shall not pass away.‡

* 1 Cor. xv. 52.-ED.

↑ Compare

"Our noisy years seem moments in the being

Of the eternal Silence,"

-Ode on Immortality, st. ix. (Vol. IV. p. 54).—ED.

St Luke xxi. 33.-ED.

1829.

The Poems of 1829 were few; and were, for the most part, suggested by incidents or occurrences at Rydal Mount.

GOLD AND SILVER FISHES IN A VASE.

Comp. 1829.

Pub. 1835.

[They were a present from Miss Jewsbury, of whom mention is made in the note at the end of the next poem. The fish were healthy to all appearance in their confinement for a long time, but at last, for some cause we could not make out, they languished, and, one of them being all but dead, they were taken to the pool under the old Pollardoak. The apparently dying one lay on its side unable to move. I used to watch it, and about the tenth day it began to right itself, and in a few days more was able to swim about with its companions. For many months they continued to prosper in their new place of abode; but one night by an unusually great flood they were swept out of the pool, and perished to our great regret.]

THE soaring lark is blest as proud
When at heaven's gate she sings;

The roving bee proclaims aloud
Her flight by vocal wings;
While Ye, in lasting durance pent,
Your silent lives employ
For something more than dull content,
Though haply less than joy.

Yet might your glassy prison seem
A place where joy is known,
Where golden flash and silver gleam
Have meanings of their own;
While, high and low, and all about,
Your motions, glittering Elves!

Ye weave no danger from without,
And peace among yourselves.

GOLD AND SILVER FISHES IN A VASE.

205

Type of a sunny human breast

Is your transparent cell;

Where Fear is but a transient guest,

No sullen Humours dwell;

Where, sensitive of every ray

That smites this tiny sea,
Your scaly panoplies repay
The loan with usury.

How beautiful!-Yet none knows why
This ever-graceful change,
Renewed-renewed incessantly-
Within your quiet range.

Is it that ye with conscious skill
For mutual pleasure glide;

And sometimes, not without your will,
Are dwarfed, or magnified?

Fays, Genii of gigantic size!

And now, in twilight dim,
Clustering like constellated eyes
In wings of Cherubim,

When the fierce orbs abate their glare ;-1
Whate'er your forms express,
Whate'er ye seem, whate'er ye are-

All leads to gentleness.

Cold though your nature be, 'tis pure;
Your birthright is a fence

From all that haughtier kinds endure
Through tyranny of sense.

When they abate their fiery glare:

1835.