Classic Poem

What sounds are those, Helvellyn, which are heard
Up to thy summit, through the depth of air
Ascending, as if distance had the power
To make the sounds more audible? What crowd
Is yon, assembled in the gay green field?
Crowd seems it, solitary hill! to thee,
Though but a little family of men,
Twice twenty, with their children and their wives,
And here and there a stranger interspersed.
It is a summer festival — a fair,
Such as, on this side now, and now on that,
Repeated through his tributary vales,
Helvellyn, in the silence of his rest,
Sees annually, if storms be not abroad,
And mists have left him an unshrouded head.
Delightful day it is for all who dwell
In this secluded glen, and eagerly
They give it welcome. Long ere heat of noon,
Behold the cattle are driven down; the sheep
That have for traffic been culled out are penned
In cotes that stand together on the plain
Ranged side by side; the chaffering is begun.
The heifer lows, uneasy at the voice
Of a new master; bleat the flocks aloud.
Booths are there none; a stall or two is here;
A lame man or a blind, the one to beg,
The other to make music; hither, too,
From far, with basket, slung upon her arm,
Of hawker's wares — books, pictures, combs, and pins —
Some aged woman finds her way again,
Year after year a punctual visitant!
The showman with his freight upon his back,
And once, perchance, in lapse of many years
Prouder itinerant, mountebank, or he
Whose wonders in a covered wain lie hid.
But one is here, the loveliest of them all,
Some sweet lass of the valley, looking out
For gains, and who that sees her would not buy?
Fruits of her father's orchard, apples, pears,
(On that day only to such office stooping)
She carries in her basket, and walks round
Among the crowd, half pleased with, half ashamed
Of her new calling, blushing restlessly.
The children now are rich, the old man now
Is generous; so gaiety prevails
Which all partake of, young and old — Immense
Is the recess, the circumambient world
Magnificent, by which they are embraced:
They move about upon the soft green field:
How little they, they and their doings, seem,
Their herds and flocks about them, they themselves,
And all which they can further or obstruct!
Through utter weakness pitiably dear
As tender infants are: and yet how great!
For all things serve them: them the morning light
Loves, as it glistens on the silent rocks;
And them the silent rocks, which now from high
Look down upon them; the reposing clouds,
The lurking brooks from their invisible haunts;
And old Helvellyn, conscious of the stir,
And the blue sky that roofs their calm abode.

With deep devotion, Nature, did I feel,
In that great City, what I owed to thee,
High thoughts of God and Man, and love of Man,
Triumphant over all those loathsome sights
Of wretchedness and vice; a watchful eye,
Which with the outside of our human life
Not satisfied, must read the inner mind;
For I already had been taught to love
My fellow-beings, to such habits trained
Among the woods and mountains, where I found
In thee a gracious guide, to lead me forth
Beyond the bosom of my family,
My friends and youthful playmates. 'Twas thy power
That raised the first complacency in me,
And noticeable kindliness of heart,
Love human to the creature in himself
As he appeared, a stranger in my path,
Before my eyes a brother of this world;
Thou first didst with those motions of delight
Inspire me. — I remember, far from home
Once having strayed, while yet a very child,
I saw a sight, and with what joy and love!
It was a day of exhalations, spread
Upon the mountains, mists and steam-like fogs
Redounding everywhere, not vehement,
But calm and mild, gentle and beautiful,
With gleams of sunshine on the eyelet spots
And loop-holes of the hills, wherever seen,
Hidden by quiet process, and as soon
Unfolded, to be huddled up again:
Along a narrow valley and profound
I journeyed, when, aloft above my head,
Emerging from the silvery vapours, lo!
A shepherd and his dog! in open day:
Girt round with mists they stood and looked about
From that enclosure small, inhabitants
Of an aerial island floating on,
As seemed, with that abode in which they were,
A little pendant area of grey rocks,
By the soft wind breathed forward. With delight
As bland almost, one evening I beheld,
And at as early age (the spectacle
Is common, but by me was then first seen)
A shepherd in the bottom of a vale
Towards the centre standing, who with voice,
And hand waved to and fro as need required,
Gave signal to his dog, thus teaching him
To chase along the mazes of steep crags
The flock he could not see: and so the brute,
Dear creature! with a man's intelligence
Advancing, or retreating on his steps,
Through every pervious strait, to right or left,
Thridded a way unbaffled; while the flock
Fled upwards from the terror of his bark
Through rocks and seams of turf with liquid gold
Irradiate, that deep farewell light by which
The setting sun proclaims the love he bears
To mountain regions.
Beauteous the domain
Where to the sense of beauty first my heart
Was opened, tract more exquisitely fair
Than is that paradise of ten thousand trees,
Or Gehol's famous gardens, in a clime
Chosen from widest empire, for delight
Of the Tartarian dynasty composed
(Beyond that mighty wall, not fabulous,
China's stupendous mound) by patient skill
Of myriads and boon Nature's lavish help;
Scene linked to scene, and evergrowing change,
Soft, grand, or gay! with palaces and domes
Of pleasure spangled over, shady dells
For eastern monasteries, sunny mounds
With temples crested, bridges, gondolas,
Rocks, dens, and groves of foliage taught to melt
Into each other their obsequious hues,
Going and gone again, in subtle chase,
Too fine to be pursued; or standing forth
In no discordant opposition, strong
And gorgeous as the colours side by side
Bedded among rich plumes of tropic birds;
And mountains over all, embracing all;
And all the landscape endlessly enriched
With waters running, falling, or asleep.

But lovelier far than this, the paradise
Where I was reared; in Nature's primitive gifts
Favoured no less, and more to every sense
Delicious, seeing that the sun and sky,
The elements, and seasons in their change,
Do find their dearest fellow-labourer there —
The heart of man, a district on all sides
The fragrance breathing of humanity,
Man free, man working for himself, with choice
Of time, and place, and object; by his wants,
His comforts, native occupations, cares,
Conducted on to individual ends
Or social, and still followed by a train
Unwooed, unthought-of even — simplicity,
And beauty, and inevitable grace.

Yea, doubtless, at an age when but a glimpse
Of those resplendent gardens, with their frame
Imperial, and elaborate ornaments,
Would to a child be transport over-great,
When but a half-hour's roam through such a place
Would leave behind a dance of images,
That shall break in upon his sleep for weeks;
Even then the common haunts of the green earth,
With the ordinary human interests
Which they embosom, all without regard
As both may seem, are fastening on the heart
Insensibly, each with the other's help,
So that we love, not knowing that we love,
And feel, not knowing whence our feeling comes.

Such league have these two principles of joy
In our affections. I have singled out
Some moments, the earliest that I could, in which
Their several currents blended into one,
Weak yet, and gathering imperceptibly,
Flowed in by gushes. My first human love,
As hath been mentioned, did incline to those
Whose occupations and concerns were most
Illustrated by Nature and adorned,
And Shepherds were the men who pleased me first;
Not such as in Arcadian fastnesses
Sequestered, handed down among themselves,
So ancient poets sing, the golden age;
Nor such, a second race, allied to these,
As Shakespeare in the wood of Arden placed
Where Phoebe sighed for the false Ganymede,
Or there where Florizel and Perdita
Together danced, Queen of the feast, and King;
Nor such as Spenser fabled. True it is,
That I had heard (what he perhaps had seen)
Of maids at sunrise bringing in from far
Their May-bush, and along the streets in flocks
Parading with a song of taunting rhymes,
Aimed at the laggards slumbering within doors;
Had also heard, from those who yet remembered,
Tales of the May-pole dance, and flowers that decked
The posts and the kirk-pillars; and of youths,
That each one with his maid, at break of day,
By annual custom issued forth in troops,
To drink the waters of some favourite well,
And hang it round with garlands. This, alas!
Was but a dream; the times had scattered all
These lighter graces, and the rural custom
And manners which it was my chance to see
In childhood were severe and unadorned,
The unluxuriant produce of a life
Intent on little but substantial needs,
Yet beautiful, and beauty that was felt.
But images of danger and distress,
And suffering, these took deepest hold of me,
Man suffering among awful Powers and Forms;
Of this I heard, and saw enough to make
The imagination restless; nor was free
Myself from frequent perils; nor were tales
Wanting, — the tragedies of former times,
Or hazards and escapes, which in my walks
I carried with me among crags and woods
And mountains; and of these may here be told
One, as recorded by my household Dame.

At the first falling of autumnal snow
A shepherd and his son one day went forth
(Thus did the Matron's tale begin) to seek
A straggler of their flock. They both had ranged
Upon this service the preceding day
All over their own pastures and beyond,
And now at sunrise sallying out again
Renewed their search begun where from Dove Crag,
Ill home for bird so gentle, they looked down
On Deep-dale Head, and Brothers-water, named
From those two brothers that were drowned therein.
Thence, northward, having passed by Arthur's Seat,
To Fairfield's highest summit; on the right
Leaving St Sunday's Pike, to Grisedale Tarn
They shot, and over that cloud-loving hill,
Seat Sandal, a fond lover of the clouds;
Thence up Helvellyn, a superior mount
With prospect underneath of Striding-Edge,
And Grisedale's houseless vale, along the brink
Of Russet Cove, and those two other coves,
Huge skeletons of crags, which from the trunk
Of old Helvellyn spread their arms abroad,
And make a stormy harbour for the winds
Far went those shepherds in their devious quest,
From mountain ridges peeping as they passed
Down into every glen: at length the boy
Said, " Father, with your leave I will go back,
And range the ground which we have searched before."
So speaking, southward down the hill the lad
Sprang like a gust of wind, crying aloud
" I know where I shall find him." " For take note,"
Said here my grey-haired Dame, " that though the storm
Drive one of these poor creatures miles and miles,
If he can crawl he will return again
To his own hills, the spots where, when a lamb,
He learnt to pasture at his mother's side."
After so long a labour, suddenly
Bethinking him of this, the boy
Pursued his way towards a brook whose course
Was through that unfenced tract of mountain-ground
Which to his father's little farm belonged,
The home and ancient birth-right of their flock.
Down the deep channel of the stream he went,
Prying through every nook; meanwhile the rain
Began to fall upon the mountain tops,
Thick storm and heavy which for three hours' space
Abated not; and all that time the boy
Was busy in his search until at length
He spied the sheep upon a plot of grass,
An island in the brook. It was a place
Remote and deep, piled round with rocks where foot
Of man or beast was seldom used to tread;
But now, when everywhere the summer grass
Had failed, this one adventurer, hunger-pressed,
Had left his fellows, and made his way alone
To the green plot of pasture in the brook
Before the boy knew well what he had seen
He leapt upon the island with proud heart
And with a prophet's joy. Immediately
The sheep sprang forward to the further shore
And was borne headlong by the roaring flood.
At this the boy looked round him, and his heart
Fainted with fear; thrice did he turn his face
To either brink; nor could he summon up
The courage that was needful to leap back
Cross the tempestuous torrent; so he stood,
A prisoner on the island, not without
More than one thought of death and his last hour.
Meanwhile the father had returned alone
To his own house; and now at the approach
Of evening he went forth to meet his son,
Conjecturing vainly for what cause the boy
Had stayed so long. The shepherd took his way
Up his own mountain grounds, where, as he walked
Along the steep that overhung the brook,
He seemed to hear a voice, which was again
Repeated, like the whistling of a kite.
At this, not knowing why, as oftentimes
Long afterwards he has been heard to say,
Down to the brook he went, and tracked its course
Upwards among the o'erhanging rocks; nor thus
Had he gone far, ere he espied the boy
Where on that little plot of ground he stood
Right in the middle of the roaring stream,
Now stronger every moment and more fierce.
The sight was such as no one could have seen
Without distress and fear. The shepherd heard
The outcry of his son, he stretched his staff
Towards him, bade him leap, which word scarce said,
The boy was safe within his father's arms.

Smooth life had flock and shepherd in old time,
Long springs and tepid winters, on the banks
Of delicate Galesus; and no less
Those scattered along Adria's myrtle shores:
Smooth life the herdsman, and his snow-white herd
To triumphs and to sacrificial rites
Devoted, on the inviolable stream
Of rich Clitumnus; and the goat-herd lived
As sweetly, underneath the pleasant brows
Of cool Lucretilis, where the pipe was heard
Of Pan, the invisible God, thrilling the rocks
With tutelary music, from all harm
The fold protecting. I myself, mature
In manhood then, have seen a pastoral tract
Like one of these, where Fancy might run wild,
Though under skies less generous and serene:
Yet there, as for herself, had Nature framed
A pleasure-ground, diffused a fair expanse
Of level pasture, islanded with groves
And banked with woody risings; but the Plain
Endless, here opening widely out, and there
Shut up in lesser lakes or beds of lawn
And intricate recesses, creek or bay
Sheltered within a shelter, where at large
The shepherd strays, a rolling hut his home.
Thither he comes with spring-time, there abides
All summer, and at sunrise ye may hear
His flute or flageolet resounding far.
There's not a nook or hold of that vast space,
Nor strait where passage is, but it shall have
In turn its visitant, telling there his hours
In unlaborious pleasure, with no task
More toilsome than to carve a beechen bowl
For spring or fountain, which the traveller finds,
When through the region he pursues at will
His devious course. A glimpse of such sweet life
I saw when, from the melancholy walls
Of Goslar, once imperial, I renewed
My daily walk along that cheerful plain,
Which, reaching to her gates, spreads east and west
And northwards, from beneath the mountainous verge
Of the Hercynian forest. Yet, hail to you,
Your rocks and precipices! Ye that seize
The heart with firmer grasp! Your snows and streams
Ungovernable, and your terrifying winds,
That howled so dismally when I have been
Companionless among your solitudes!
There, 'tis the shepherd's task the winter long
To wait upon the storms: of their approach
Sagacious, from the height he drives his flock
Down into sheltering coves, and feeds them there
Through the hard time, long as the storm is locked,
(So do they phrase it) bearing from the stalls
A toilsome burden up the craggy ways,
To strew it on the snow. And when the spring
Looks out, and all the mountains dance with lambs,
He through the enclosures won from the steep waste,
And through the lower heights hath gone his rounds;
And when the flock, with warmer weather, climbs
Higher and higher, him his office leads
To range among them, through the hills dispersed,
And watch their goings, whatsoever track
Each wanderer chooses for itself; a work
That lasts the summer through. He quits his home
At day-spring, and no sooner doth the sun
Begin to strike him with a fire-like heat,
Than he lies down upon some shining place,
And breakfasts with his dog. When he hath stayed,
As for the most he doth, beyond his time,
He springs up with a bound, and then away!
Ascending fast with his long pole in hand,
Or winding in and out among the crags.
What need to follow him through what he does
Or sees in his day's march? He feels himself,
In those vast regions where his service is,
A Freeman, wedded to his life of hope
And hazard, and hard labour interchanged
With that majestic indolence so dear
To native man. A rambling schoolboy, thus
Have I beheld him, without knowing why
Having felt his presence in his own domain,
As of a lord and master, or a power,
Or genius, under Nature, under God,
Presiding; and severest solitude
Seemed more commanding oft when he was there.
Seeking the raven's nest, and suddenly
Surprised with vapours, or on rainy days
When I have angled up the lonely brooks,
Mine eyes have glanced upon him few steps off,
In size a giant, stalking through the fog,
His sheep like Greenland bears; at other times
When round some shady promontory turning,
His form hath flashed upon me, glorified
By the deep radiance of the setting sun:
Or him have I descried in distant sky,
A solitary object and sublime,
Above all height! like an aerial cross,
As it is stationed on some spiry rock
Of the Chartreuse, for worship. Thus was man
Ennobled outwardly before mine eyes,
And thus my heart at first was introduced
To an unconscious love and reverence
Of human nature; hence the human form
To me was like an index of delight,
Of grace and honour, power and worthiness.
Meanwhile this creature — spiritual almost
As those of books, but more exalted far;
Far more of an imaginative form,
Was not a Corin of the groves, who lives
For his own fancies, or to dance by the hour,
In coronal, with Phyllis in the midst,
But, for the purposes of kind, a man
With the most common; husband, father; learned,
Could teach, admonish; suffered with the rest
From vice and folly, wretchedness and fear;
Of this I little saw, cared less for it,
But something must have felt.
Call ye these appearances —
Which I beheld of shepherds in my youth,
This sanctity of Nature given to man —
A shadow, a delusion, ye who are fed
By the dead letter, not the spirit of things;
Whose truth is not a motion or a shape
Instinct with vital functions, but a block
Or waxen image which yourselves have made,
And ye adore. But blessed be the God
Of Nature and of Man that this was so;
That men did at the first present themselves
Before my untaught eyes thus purified,
Removed, and at a distance that was fit:
And so we all of us in some degree
Are led to knowledge, whencesoever led,
And howsoever; were it otherwise,
And we found evil fast as we find good
In our first years, or think that it is found,
How could the innocent heart bear up and live!
But doubly fortunate my lot; not here
Alone, that something of a better life
Perhaps was round me than it is the privilege
Of most to move in, but that first I looked
At Man through objects that were great and fair;
First communed with him by their help. And thus
Was founded a sure safeguard and defence
Against the weight of meanness, selfish cares,
Coarse manners, vulgar passions, that beat in
On all sides from the ordinary world
In which we traffic. Starting from this point,
I had my face towards the truth, began
With an advantage; furnished with that kind
Of prepossession without which the soul
Receives no knowledge that can bring forth good,
No genuine insight ever comes to her.
Happy in this, that I with nature walked,
Not having a too early intercourse
With the deformities of crowded life,
And those ensuing laughters and contempts,
Self-pleasing, which, if we would wish to think
With admiration and respect of man,
Will not permit us; but pursue the mind,
That to devotion willingly would be raised,
Into the temple and the temple's heart.

Yet do not deem, my Friend! though thus I speak
Of Man as having taken in my mind
A place thus early which might almost seem
Pre-eminent, that it was really so.
Nature herself was, at this unripe time,
But secondary to my own pursuits
And animal activities, and all
Their trivial pleasures; and long afterwards
When these had died away, and Nature did
For her own sake become my joy, even then —
And upwards through late youth, until not less
Than three-and-twenty summers had been told —
Was Man in my affections and regards
Subordinate to her, her awful forms
And viewless agencies: a passion, she,
A rapture often, and immediate joy
Ever at hand; he distant, but a grace
Occasional, an accidental thought,
His hour being not yet come. Far less had then
The inferior creatures, beast or bird, attuned
My spirit to that gentleness of love,
Won from me those minute obeisances
Of tenderness, which I may number now
With my first blessings. Nevertheless, on these
The light of beauty did not fall in vain,
Or grandeur circumfuse them to no end.

Why should I speak of tillers of the soil?
The ploughman and his team; or men and boys
In festive summer busy with the rake,
Old men and ruddy maids, and little ones
All out together, and in sun and shade
Dispersed among the hay-grounds alder-fringed,
The quarry-man, far heard! that blasts the rock,
The fishermen in pairs, the one to row,
And one to drop the net, plying their trade
" 'Mid tossing lakes and tumbling boats" and winds
Whistling; the miner, melancholy man!
That works by taper light, while all the hills
Are shining with the glory of the day.

But when that first poetic faculty
Of plain Imagination and severe,
No longer a mute influence of the soul,
An element of the nature's inner self,
Began to have some promptings to put on
A visible shape, and to the works of art,
The notions and the images of books,
Did knowingly conform itself, by these
Enflamed, and proud of that her new delight,
There came among those shapes of human life
A wilfulness of fancy and conceit
Which gave them new importance to the mind:
And Nature and her objects beautified
These fictions, as in some sort, in their turn,
They burnished her. From touch of this new power
Nothing was safe: the elder-tree that grew
Beside the well-known charnel-house had then
A dismal look: the yew-tree had its ghost,
That took its station there for ornament:
Then common death was none, common mishap,
But matter for this humour everywhere,
The tragic super-tragic, else left short.
Then, if a widow, staggering with the blow
Of her distress, was known to have made her way
To the cold grave in which her husband slept,
One night, or haply more than one, through pain
Or half-insensate impotence of mind,
The fact was caught at greedily, and there
She was a visitant the whole year through,
Wetting the turf with never-ending tears,
And all the storms of heaven must beat on her.

Through wild obliquities could I pursue
Among all objects of the fields and groves
These cravings; when the foxglove, one by one,
Upwards through every stage of its tall stem,
Had shed its bells, and stood by the wayside
Dismantled, with a single one, perhaps,
Left at the ladder's top, with which the plant
Appeared to stoop, as slender blades of grass
Tipped with a bead of rain or dew, behold!
If such a sight were seen, would Fancy bring
Some vagrant thither with her babes, and seat her.
Upon the turf beneath the stately flower
Drooping in sympathy, and making so
A melancholy crest above the head
Of the lorn creature, while her little ones,
All unconcerned with her unhappy plight,
Were sporting with the purple cups that lay
Scattered upon the ground.
There was a copse,
An upright bank of wood and woody rock,
That opposite our rural dwelling stood,
In which a sparkling patch of diamond light
Was in bright weather duly to be seen
On summer afternoons, within the wood
At the same place. 'Twas doubtless nothing more
Than a black rock, which, wet with constant springs,
Glistered far seen from out its lurking-place
As soon as ever the declining sun
Had smitten it. Beside our cottage hearth
Sitting, with open door, a hundred times
Upon this lustre have I gazed, that seemed
To have some meaning which I could not find;
And now it was a burnished shield, I fancied,
Suspended over a knight's tomb, who lay
Inglorious, buried in the dusky wood:
An entrance now into some magic cave
Or palace for a fairy of the rock;
Nor would I, though not certain whence the cause
Of the effulgence, thither have repaired
Without a precious bribe, and day by day
And month by month I saw the spectacle,
Nor ever once have visited the spot
Unto this hour. Thus sometimes were the shapes
Of wilful Fancy grafted upon feelings
Of the Imagination, and they rose
In worth accordingly. My present theme
Is to retrace the way that led me on
Through Nature to the love of human kind;
Nor could I with such object overlook
The influence of this Power which turned itself
Instinctively to human passions, things
Least understood; of this adulterate Power,
For so it may be called, and without wrong,
When with that first compared. Yet in the midst
Of these vagaries, with an eye so rich
As mine was through the chance on me not wasted
Of having been brought up in such a grand
And lovely region, I had forms distinct
To steady me: these thoughts did oft revolve
About some centre palpable, which at once
Incited them to motion, and controlled,
And whatsoever shape the fit might take,
And whencesoever it might come, I still
At all times had a real solid world
Of images about me; did not pine
As one in cities bred might do; as thou,
Beloved Friend! hast told me that thou didst,
Great Spirit as thou art, in endless dreams
Of sickliness, disjoining, joining, things
Without the light of knowledge. Where the harm,
If, when the woodman languished with disease
From sleeping night by night among the woods
Within his sod-built cabin, Indian-wise,
I called the pangs of disappointed love
And all the long etcetera of such thought,
To help him to his grave? Meanwhile the man,
If not already from the woods retired
To die at home, was haply, as I knew,
Pining alone among the gentle airs,
Birds, running streams, and hills so beautiful
On golden evenings, while the charcoal pile
Breathed up its smoke, an image of his ghost
Or spirit that was soon to take its flight.

There came a time of greater dignity
Which had been gradually prepared, and now
Rushed in as if on wings, the time in which
The pulse of Being everywhere was felt,
When all the several frames of things, like stars,
Through every magnitude distinguishable,
Were half confounded in each other's blaze,
One galaxy of life and joy. Then rose
Man, inwardly contemplated, and present
In my own being, to a loftier height,
As, of all visible natures, crown; and first
In capability of feeling what
Was to be felt; in being rapt away
By the divine effect of power and love;
As, more than anything we know, instinct
With godhead, and, by reason and by will,
Acknowledging dependency sublime.

Ere long transported hence as in a dream
I found myself begirt with temporal shapes
Of vice and folly thrust upon my view,
Objects of sport, and ridicule, and scorn,
Manners and characters discriminate,
And little busy passions that eclipsed,
As well they might, the impersonated thought,
The idea, or abstraction of the kind.
An idler among academic bowers,
Such was my new condition, as at large
Hath been set forth; yet here the vulgar light
Of present, actual, superficial life,
Gleaming through colouring of other times,
Old usages and local privilege,
Thereby was softened, almost solemnized,
And rendered apt and pleasing to the view.
This notwithstanding, being brought more near,
As I was now, to guilt and wretchedness,
I trembled, — thought of human life, at times,
With an indefinite terror and dismay,
Such as the storms and angry elements
Had bred in me; but gloomier far, a dim
Analogy to uproar and misrule,
Disquiet, danger, and obscurity.

It might be told (but wherefore speak of things
Common to all?) that, seeing, I essayed
To give relief, began to deem myself
A moral agent — judging between good
And evil, not as for the mind's delight
But for her safety — one who was to act,
As sometimes, to the best of my weak means,
I did, by human sympathy impelled:
And, through dislike and most offensive pain,
Was to the truth conducted; of this faith
Never forsaken, that, by acting well,
And understanding, I should learn to love
The end of life, and every thing we know.

Preceptress stern, that didst instruct me next,
London! to thee I willingly return.
Erewhile my verse played only with the flowers
Enwrought upon thy mantle; satisfied
With this amusement, and a simple look
Of child-like inquisition now and then
Cast upwards on thine eye, to puzzle out
Some inner meanings which might harbour there.
Yet did I not give way to this light mood
Wholly beguiled, as one incapable
Of higher things, and ignorant that high things
Were round me. Never shall I forget the hour,
The moment rather say, when, having thridded
The labyrinth of suburban villages,
At length I did unto myself first seem
To enter the great city. On the roof
Of an itinerant vehicle I sate,
With vulgar men about me, vulgar forms
Of houses, pavements, streets, of men and things, —
Mean shapes on every side: but, at the time,
When to myself it fairly might be said,
The very moment that I seemed to know,
The threshold now is overpast, great God!
That aught external to the living mind
Should have such mighty sway! yet so it was
A weight of ages did at once descend
Upon my heart; no thought embodied, no
Distinct remembrances, but weight and power, —
Power growing with the weight: alas! I feel
That I am trifling: 'twas a moment's pause, —
All that took place within me came and went
As in a moment, and I only now
Remember that it was a thing divine.

As when a traveller hath from open day
With torches passed into some vault of earth,
The Grotto of Antiparos, or the Den
Of Yordas among Craven's mountain tracts;
He looks and sees the cavern spread and grow,
Widening itself on all sides; sees, or thinks
He sees, ere long, the roof above his head,
Which instantly unsettles and recedes, —
Substance and shadow, light and darkness, all
Commingled, making up a canopy
Of shapes and forms and tendencies to shape
That shift and vanish, change and interchange
Like spectres, — ferment quiet and sublime!
Which after a short space works less and less,
Till, every effort, every motion gone,
The scene before him lies in perfect view
Exposed, and lifeless as a written book!
But let him pause awhile, and look again,
And a new quickening shall succeed, at first
Beginning timidly, then creeping fast
Through all which he beholds; the senseless mass,
In its projections, wrinkles, cavities,
Through all its surface, with all colours streaming,
Like a magician's airy pageant, parts,
Unites, embodying everywhere some pressure
Or image, recognized or new, some type
Or picture of the world; forests and lakes,
Ships, rivers, towers, the warrior clad in mail,
The prancing steed, the pilgrim with his staff,
The mitred bishop and the throned king,
A spectacle to which there is no end.

No otherwise had I at first been moved
With such a swell of feeling, followed soon
By a blank sense of greatness passed away,
And afterwards continued to be moved
In presence of that vast metropolis,
The fountain of my country's destiny
And of the destiny of earth itself;
That great emporium, chronicle at once
And burial-place of passions, and their home
Imperial, and chief living residence.

With strong sensations teeming as it did
Of past and present, such a place must needs
Have pleased me, in those times; I sought not then
Knowledge; but craved for power, and power I found
In all things; nothing had a circumscribed
And narrow influence; but all objects, being
Themselves capacious, also found in me
Capaciousness and amplitude of mind;
Such is the strength and glory of our youth!
The human nature unto which I felt
That I belonged, and which I loved and reverenced,
Was not a punctual presence, but a spirit
Living in time and space, and far diffused.
In this my joy, in this my dignity
Consisted; the external universe,
By striking upon what is found within,
Had given me this conception, with the help
Of books and what they picture and record.

'Tis true, the history of my native land,
With those of Greece compared and popular Rome,
Events not lovely nor magnanimous,
But harsh and unaffecting in themselves
And in our high-wrought modern narratives
Stript of their harmonizing soul, the life
Of manners and familiar incidents,
Had never much delighted me. And less
Than other minds I had been used to owe
The pleasure which I found in place or thing
To extrinsic transitory accidents,
To records or traditions; but a sense
Of what had been here done, and suffered here
Through ages, and was doing, suffering, still,
Weighed with me, could support the test of thought,
Was like the enduring majesty and power
Of independent nature; and not seldom
Even individual remembrances,
By working on the shapes before my eyes,
Became like vital functions of the soul;
And out of what had been, what was, the place
Was thronged with impregnations, like those Wilds
In which my early feelings had been nursed,
And naked valleys, full of caverns, rocks,
And audible seclusions, dashing lakes,
Echoes and waterfalls, and pointed crags
That into music touch the passing wind.
Thus here imagination also found
An element that pleased her, tried her strength,
Among new objects simplified, arranged,
Impregnated my knowledge, made it live,
And the result was elevating thoughts
Of human nature. Neither guilt nor vice,
Debasement of the body or the mind,
Nor all the misery forced upon my sight,
Which was not lightly passed, but often scanned
Most feelingly, could overthrow my trust
In what we may become; induce belief
That I was ignorant, had been falsely taught,
A solitary, who with vain conceits
Had been inspired, and walked about in dreams.
When from that awful prospect overcast
And in eclipse my meditations turned,
Lo! every thing that was indeed divine
Retained its purity inviolate
And unencroached upon, nay, seemed brighter far
For this deep shade in counterview, that gloom
Of opposition, such as showed itself
To the eyes of Adam, yet in Paradise
Though fallen from bliss, when in the East he saw
Darkness ere day's mid course, and morning light
More orient in the western cloud, that drew
O'er the blue firmament a radiant white,
Descending slow with something heavenly fraught.

Add also, that among the multitudes
Of that great city, oftentimes was seen
Affectingly set forth, more than elsewhere
Is possible, the unity of man,
One spirit over ignorance and vice
Predominant, in good and evil hearts
One sense for moral judgements, as one eye
For the sun's light. When strongly breathed upon
By this sensation, whencesoe'er it comes,
Of union or communion, doth the soul
Rejoice as in her highest joy: for there,
There chiefly, hath she feeling whence she is,
And passing through all Nature rests with God.

And is not, too, that vast abiding-place
Of human creatures, turn where'er we may,
Profusely sown with individual sights
Of courage, and integrity, and truth
And tenderness, which, here set off by foil,
Appears more touching. In the tender scenes
Chiefly was my delight, and one of these
Never will be forgotten. 'Twas a man,
Whom I saw sitting in an open square
Close to an iron paling that fenced in
The spacious grass-plot; on the corner-stone
Of the low wall in which the pales were fixed
Sate this One Man, and with a sickly babe
Upon his knee, whom he had thither brought
For sunshine, and to breathe the fresher air.
Of those who passed, and me who looked at him,
He took no note; but in his brawny arms
(The Artificer was to the elbow bare,
And from his work this moment had been stolen)
He held the child, and, bending over it,
As if he were afraid both of the sun
And of the air, which he had come to seek,
He eyed it with unutterable love.

Thus were my thoughts attracted more and more
By slow gradations towards human-kind,
And to the good and ill of human life;
Nature had led me on, and now I seemed
To travel independent of her help,
As if I had forgotten her; but no,
My fellow beings still were unto me
Far less than she was; though the scale of love
Were filling fast, 'twas light, as yet, compared
With that in which her mighty objects lay.