<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=539932" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Book Eleventh: France [concluded]</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">FROM that time forth, Authority in France<br>Put on a milder face; Terror had ceased,<br>Yet everything was wanting that might give<br>Courage to them who looked for good by light<br>Of rational Experience, for the shoots<br>And hopeful blossoms of a second spring:<br>Yet, in me, confidence was unimpaired;<br>The Senate's language, and the public acts<br>And measures of the Government, though both<br>Weak, and of heartless omen, had not power <br>To daunt me; in the People was my trust:<br>And, in the virtues which mine eyes had seen,<br>I knew that wound external could not take<br>Life from the young Republic; that new foes<br>Would only follow, in the path of shame,<br>Their brethren, and her triumphs be in the end<br>Great, universal, irresistible.<br>This intuition led me to confound<br>One victory with another, higher far,--<br>Triumphs of unambitious peace at home, <br>And noiseless fortitude. Beholding still<br>Resistance strong as heretofore, I thought<br>That what was in degree the same was likewise<br>The same in quality,--that, as the worse<br>Of the two spirits then at strife remained<br>Untired, the better, surely, would preserve<br>The heart that first had roused him. Youth maintains,<br>In all conditions of society,<br>Communion more direct and intimate<br>With Nature,--hence, ofttimes, with reason too-- <br>Than age or manhood, even. To Nature, then,<br>Power had reverted: habit, custom, law,<br>Had left an interregnum's open space<br>For 'her' to move about in, uncontrolled.<br>Hence could I see how Babel-like their task,<br>Who, by the recent deluge stupified,<br>With their whole souls went culling from the day<br>Its petty promises, to build a tower<br>For their own safety; laughed with my compeers<br>At gravest heads, by enmity to France <br>Distempered, till they found, in every blast<br>Forced from the street-disturbing newsman's horn,<br>For her great cause record or prophecy<br>Of utter ruin. How might we believe<br>That wisdom could, in any shape, come near<br>Men clinging to delusions so insane?<br>And thus, experience proving that no few<br>Of our opinions had been just, we took<br>Like credit to ourselves where less was due,<br>And thought that other notions were as sound <br>Yea, could not but be right, because we saw<br>That foolish men opposed them.<br>To a strain<br>More animated I might here give way,<br>And tell, since juvenile errors are my theme,<br>What in those days, through Britain, was performed<br>To turn 'all' judgments out of their right course;<br>But this is passion over-near ourselves,<br>Reality too close and too intense,<br>And intermixed with something, in my mind,<br>Of scorn and condemnation personal, <br>That would profane the sanctity of verse.<br>Our Shepherds, this say merely, at that time<br>Acted, or seemed at least to act, like men<br>Thirsting to make the guardian crook of law<br>A tool of murder; they who ruled the State--<br>Though with such awful proof before their eyes<br>That he, who would sow death, reaps death, or worse,<br>And can reap nothing better--child-like longed<br>To imitate, not wise enough to avoid;<br>Or left (by mere timidity betrayed) <br>The plain straight road, for one no better chosen<br>Than if their wish had been to undermine<br>Justice, and make an end of Liberty.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But from these bitter truths I must return<br>To my own history. It hath been told<br>That I was led to take an eager part<br>In arguments of civil polity,<br>Abruptly, and indeed before my time:<br>I had approached, like other youths, the shield<br>Of human nature from the golden side, <br>And would have fought, even to the death, to attest<br>The quality of the metal which I saw.<br>What there is best in individual man,<br>Of wise in passion, and sublime in power,<br>Benevolent in small societies,<br>And great in large ones, I had oft revolved,<br>Felt deeply, but not thoroughly understood<br>By reason: nay, far from it; they were yet,<br>As cause was given me afterwards to learn,<br>Not proof against the injuries of the day; <br>Lodged only at the sanctuary's door,<br>Not safe within its bosom. Thus prepared,<br>And with such general insight into evil,<br>And of the bounds which sever it from good,<br>As books and common intercourse with life<br>Must needs have given--to the inexperienced mind,<br>When the world travels in a beaten road,<br>Guide faithful as is needed--I began<br>To meditate with ardour on the rule<br>And management of nations; what it is <br>And ought to be; and strove to learn how far<br>Their power or weakness, wealth or poverty,<br>Their happiness or misery, depends<br>Upon their laws, and fashion of the State.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O pleasant exercise of hope and joy!<br>For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood<br>Upon our side, us who were strong in love!<br>Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,<br>But to be young was very Heaven! O times,<br>In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways <br>Of custom, law, and statute, took at once<br>The attraction of a country in romance!<br>When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights<br>When most intent on making of herself<br>A prime enchantress--to assist the work,<br>Which then was going forward in her name!<br>Not favoured spots alone, but the whole Earth,<br>The beauty wore of promise--that which sets<br>(As at some moments might not be unfelt<br>Among the bowers of Paradise itself) <br>The budding rose above the rose full blown.<br>What temper at the prospect did not wake<br>To happiness unthought of? The inert<br>Were roused, and lively natures rapt away!<br>They who had fed their childhood upon dreams,<br>The play-fellows of fancy, who had made<br>All powers of swiftness, subtilty, and strength<br>Their ministers,--who in lordly wise had stirred<br>Among the grandest objects of the sense,<br>And dealt with whatsoever they found there <br>As if they had within some lurking right<br>To wield it;--they, too, who of gentle mood<br>Had watched all gentle motions, and to these<br>Had fitted their own thoughts, schemers more mild,<br>And in the region of their peaceful selves;--<br>Now was it that 'both' found, the meek and lofty<br>Did both find, helpers to their hearts' desire,<br>And stuff at hand, plastic as they could wish,--<br>Were called upon to exercise their skill,<br>Not in Utopia,--subterranean fields,-- <br>Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where!<br>But in the very world, which is the world<br>Of all of us,--the place where, in the end,<br>We find our happiness, or not at all!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Why should I not confess that Earth was then<br>To me, what an inheritance, new-fallen,<br>Seems, when the first time visited, to one<br>Who thither comes to find in it his home?<br>He walks about and looks upon the spot<br>With cordial transport, moulds it and remoulds, <br>And is half-pleased with things that are amiss,<br>'Twill be such joy to see them disappear.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">An active partisan, I thus convoked<br>From every object pleasant circumstance<br>To suit my ends; I moved among mankind<br>With genial feelings still predominant;<br>When erring, erring on the better part,<br>And in the kinder spirit; placable,<br>Indulgent, as not uninformed that men<br>See as they have been taught--Antiquity <br>Gives rights to error; and aware, no less<br>That throwing off oppression must be work<br>As well of License as of Liberty;<br>And above all--for this was more than all--<br>Not caring if the wind did now and then<br>Blow keen upon an eminence that gave<br>Prospect so large into futurity;<br>In brief, a child of Nature, as at first,<br>Diffusing only those affections wider<br>That from the cradle had grown up with me, <br>And losing, in no other way than light<br>Is lost in light, the weak in the more strong.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In the main outline, such it might be said<br>Was my condition, till with open war<br>Britain opposed the liberties of France.<br>This threw me first out of the pale of love;<br>Soured and corrupted, upwards to the source,<br>My sentiments; was not, as hitherto,<br>A swallowing up of lesser things in great,<br>But change of them into their contraries; <br>And thus a way was opened for mistakes<br>And false conclusions, in degree as gross,<br>In kind more dangerous. What had been a pride,<br>Was now a shame; my likings and my loves<br>Ran in new channels, leaving old ones dry;<br>And hence a blow that, in maturer age,<br>Would but have touched the judgment, struck more deep<br>Into sensations near the heart: meantime,<br>As from the first, wild theories were afloat,<br>To whose pretensions, sedulously urged, <br>I had but lent a careless ear, assured<br>That time was ready to set all things right,<br>And that the multitude, so long oppressed,<br>Would be oppressed no more.<br>But when events<br>Brought less encouragement, and unto these<br>The immediate proof of principles no more<br>Could be entrusted, while the events themselves,<br>Worn out in greatness, stripped of novelty,<br>Less occupied the mind, and sentiments<br>Could through my understanding's natural growth <br>No longer keep their ground, by faith maintained<br>Of inward consciousness, and hope that laid<br>Her hand upon her object--evidence<br>Safer, of universal application, such<br>As could not be impeached, was sought elsewhere.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But now, become oppressors in their turn,<br>Frenchmen had changed a war of self-defence<br>For one of conquest, losing sight of all<br>Which they had struggled for: up mounted now,<br>Openly in the eye of earth and heaven, <br>The scale of liberty. I read her doom,<br>With anger vexed, with disappointment sore,<br>But not dismayed, nor taking to the shame<br>Of a false prophet. While resentment rose<br>Striving to hide, what nought could heal, the wounds<br>Of mortified presumption, I adhered<br>More firmly to old tenets, and, to prove<br>Their temper, strained them more; and thus, in heat<br>Of contest, did opinions every day<br>Grow into consequence, till round my mind <br>They clung, as if they were its life, nay more,<br>The very being of the immortal soul.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">This was the time, when, all things tending fast<br>To depravation, speculative schemes--<br>That promised to abstract the hopes of Man<br>Out of his feelings, to be fixed thenceforth<br>For ever in a purer element--<br>Found ready welcome. Tempting region 'that'<br>For Zeal to enter and refresh herself,<br>Where passions had the privilege to work, <br>And never hear the sound of their own names.<br>But, speaking more in charity, the dream<br>Flattered the young, pleased with extremes, nor least<br>With that which makes our Reason's naked self<br>The object of its fervour. What delight!<br>How glorious! in self-knowledge and self-rule,<br>To look through all the frailties of the world,<br>And, with a resolute mastery shaking off<br>Infirmities of nature, time, and place,<br>Build social upon personal Liberty, <br>Which, to the blind restraints of general laws,<br>Superior, magisterially adopts<br>One guide, the light of circumstances, flashed<br>Upon an independent intellect.<br>Thus expectation rose again; thus hope,<br>From her first ground expelled, grew proud once more.<br>Oft, as my thoughts were turned to human kind,<br>I scorned indifference; but, inflamed with thirst<br>Of a secure intelligence, and sick<br>Of other longing, I pursued what seemed <br>A more exalted nature; wished that Man<br>Should start out of his earthy, worm-like state,<br>And spread abroad the wings of Liberty,<br>Lord of himself, in undisturbed delight--<br>A noble aspiration! 'yet' I feel<br>(Sustained by worthier as by wiser thoughts)<br>The aspiration, nor shall ever cease<br>To feel it;--but return we to our course.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Enough, 'tis true--could such a plea excuse<br>Those aberrations--had the clamorous friends <br>Of ancient Institutions said and done<br>To bring disgrace upon their very names;<br>Disgrace, of which, custom and written law,<br>And sundry moral sentiments as props<br>Or emanations of those institutes,<br>Too justly bore a part. A veil had been<br>Uplifted; why deceive ourselves? in sooth,<br>'Twas even so; and sorrow for the man<br>Who either had not eyes wherewith to see,<br>Or, seeing, had forgotten! A strong shock <br>Was given to old opinions; all men's minds<br>Had felt its power, and mine was both let loose,<br>Let loose and goaded. After what hath been<br>Already said of patriotic love,<br>Suffice it here to add, that, somewhat stern<br>In temperament, withal a happy man,<br>And therefore bold to look on painful things,<br>Free likewise of the world, and thence more bold,<br>I summoned my best skill, and toiled, intent<br>To anatomise the frame of social life; <br>Yea, the whole body of society<br>Searched to its heart. Share with me, Friend! the wish<br>That some dramatic tale, endued with shapes<br>Livelier, and flinging out less guarded words<br>Than suit the work we fashion, might set forth<br>What then I learned, or think I learned, of truth,<br>And the errors into which I fell, betrayed<br>By present objects, and by reasonings false<br>From their beginnings, inasmuch as drawn<br>Out of a heart that had been turned aside <br>From Nature's way by outward accidents,<br>And which was thus confounded, more and more<br>Misguided, and misguiding. So I fared,<br>Dragging all precepts, judgments, maxims, creeds,<br>Like culprits to the bar; calling the mind,<br>Suspiciously, to establish in plain day<br>Her titles and her honours; now believing,<br>Now disbelieving; endlessly perplexed<br>With impulse, motive, right and wrong, the ground<br>Of obligation, what the rule and whence <br>The sanction; till, demanding formal 'proof',<br>And seeking it in every thing, I lost<br>All feeling of conviction, and, in fine,<br>Sick, wearied out with contrarieties,<br>Yielded up moral questions in despair.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">This was the crisis of that strong disease,<br>This the soul's last and lowest ebb; I drooped,<br>Deeming our blessed reason of least use<br>Where wanted most: 'The lordly attributes<br>Of will and choice,' I bitterly exclaimed <br>'What are they but a mockery of a Being<br>Who hath in no concerns of his a test<br>Of good and evil; knows not what to fear<br>Or hope for, what to covet or to shun;<br>And who, if those could be discerned, would yet<br>Be little profited, would see, and ask<br>Where is the obligation to enforce?<br>And, to acknowledged law rebellious, still,<br>As selfish passion urged, would act amiss;<br>The dupe of folly, or the slave of crime.' </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Depressed, bewildered thus, I did not walk<br>With scoffers, seeking light and gay revenge<br>From indiscriminate laughter, nor sate down<br>In reconcilement with an utter waste<br>Of intellect; such sloth I could not brook,<br>(Too well I loved, in that my spring of life,<br>Pains-taking thoughts, and truth, their dear reward)<br>But turned to abstract science, and there sought<br>Work for the reasoning faculty enthroned<br>Where the disturbances of space and time-- <br>Whether in matters various, properties<br>Inherent, or from human will and power<br>Derived--find no admission. Then it was--<br>Thanks to the bounteous Giver of all good!--<br>That the beloved Sister in whose sight<br>Those days were passed, now speaking in a voice<br>Of sudden admonition--like a brook<br>That did but 'cross' a lonely road, and now<br>Is seen, heard, felt, and caught at every turn,<br>Companion never lost through many a league-- <br>Maintained for me a saving intercourse<br>With my true self; for, though bedimmed and changed<br>Much, as it seemed, I was no further changed<br>Than as a clouded and a waning moon:<br>She whispered still that brightness would return;<br>She, in the midst of all, preserved me still<br>A Poet, made me seek beneath that name,<br>And that alone, my office upon earth;<br>And, lastly, as hereafter will be shown,<br>If willing audience fail not, Nature's self, <br>By all varieties of human love<br>Assisted, led me back through opening day<br>To those sweet counsels between head and heart<br>Whence grew that genuine knowledge, fraught with peace,<br>Which, through the later sinkings of this cause,<br>Hath still upheld me, and upholds me now<br>In the catastrophe (for so they dream,<br>And nothing less), when, finally to close<br>And seal up all the gains of France, a Pope<br>Is summoned in, to crown an Emperor-- <br>This last opprobrium, when we see a people,<br>That once looked up in faith, as if to Heaven<br>For manna, take a lesson from the dog<br>Returning to his vomit; when the sun<br>That rose in splendour, was alive, and moved<br>In exultation with a living pomp<br>Of clouds--his glory's natural retinue--<br>Hath dropped all functions by the gods bestowed,<br>And, turned into a gewgaw, a machine,<br>Sets like an Opera phantom.<br>Thus, O Friend! <br>Through times of honour and through times of shame<br>Descending, have I faithfully retraced<br>The perturbations of a youthful mind<br>Under a long-lived storm of great events--<br>A story destined for thy ear, who now,<br>Among the fallen of nations, dost abide<br>Where Etna, over hill and valley, casts<br>His shadow stretching towards Syracuse,<br>The city of Timoleon! Righteous Heaven!<br>How are the mighty prostrated! They first, <br>They first of all that breathe should have awaked<br>When the great voice was heard from out the tombs<br>Of ancient heroes. If I suffered grief<br>For ill-requited France, by many deemed<br>A trifler only in her proudest day;<br>Have been distressed to think of what she once<br>Promised, now is; a far more sober cause<br>Thine eyes must see of sorrow in a land,<br>To the reanimating influence lost<br>Of memory, to virtue lost and hope, <br>Though with the wreck of loftier years bestrewn.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But indignation works where hope is not,<br>And thou, O Friend! wilt be refreshed. There is<br>One great society alone on earth:<br>The noble Living and the noble Dead.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thine be such converse strong and sanative,<br>A ladder for thy spirit to reascend<br>To health and joy and pure contentedness;<br>To me the grief confined, that thou art gone<br>From this last spot of earth, where Freedom now <br>Stands single in her only sanctuary;<br>A lonely wanderer, art gone, by pain<br>Compelled and sickness, at this latter day,<br>This sorrowful reverse for all mankind.<br>I feel for thee, must utter what I feel:<br>The sympathies erewhile in part discharged,<br>Gather afresh, and will have vent again:<br>My own delights do scarcely seem to me<br>My own delights; the lordly Alps themselves,<br>Those rosy peaks, from which the Morning looks <br>Abroad on many nations, are no more<br>For me that image of pure gladsomeness<br>Which they were wont to be. Through kindred scenes,<br>For purpose, at a time, how different!<br>Thou tak'st thy way, carrying the heart and soul<br>That Nature gives to Poets, now by thought<br>Matured, and in the summer of their strength.<br>Oh! wrap him in your shades, ye giant woods,<br>On Etna's side; and thou, O flowery field<br>Of Enna! is there not some nook of thine, <br>From the first play-time of the infant world<br>Kept sacred to restorative delight,<br>When from afar invoked by anxious love?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Child of the mountains, among shepherds reared,<br>Ere yet familiar with the classic page,<br>I learnt to dream of Sicily; and lo,<br>The gloom, that, but a moment past, was deepened<br>At thy command, at her command gives way;<br>A pleasant promise, wafted from her shores,<br>Comes o'er my heart: in fancy I behold <br>Her seas yet smiling, her once happy vales;<br>Nor can my tongue give utterance to a name<br>Of note belonging to that honoured isle,<br>Philosopher or Bard, Empedocles,<br>Or Archimedes, pure abstracted soul!<br>That doth not yield a solace to my grief:<br>And, O Theocritus, so far have some<br>Prevailed among the powers of heaven and earth,<br>By their endowments, good or great, that they<br>Have had, as thou reportest, miracles <br>Wrought for them in old time: yea, not unmoved,<br>When thinking on my own beloved friend,<br>I hear thee tell how bees with honey fed<br>Divine Comates, by his impious lord<br>Within a chest imprisoned; how they came<br>Laden from blooming grove or flowery field,<br>And fed him there, alive, month after month,<br>Because the goatherd, blessed man! had lips<br>Wet with the Muses' nectar.<br>Thus I soothe<br>The pensive moments by this calm fire-side, <br>And find a thousand bounteous images<br>To cheer the thoughts of those I love, and mine.<br>Our prayers have been accepted; thou wilt stand<br>On Etna's summit, above earth and sea,<br>Triumphant, winning from the invaded heavens<br>Thoughts without bound, magnificent designs,<br>Worthy of poets who attuned their harps<br>In wood or echoing cave, for discipline<br>Of heroes; or, in reverence to the gods,<br>'Mid temples, served by sapient priests, and choirs <br>Of virgins crowned with roses. Not in vain<br>Those temples, where they in their ruins yet<br>Survive for inspiration, shall attract<br>Thy solitary steps: and on the brink<br>Thou wilt recline of pastoral Arethuse;<br>Or, if that fountain be in truth no more,<br>Then, near some other spring--which, by the name<br>Thou gratulatest, willingly deceived--<br>I see thee linger a glad votary,<br>And not a captive pining for his home.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=William+Wordsworth">William Wordsworth</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=539932" data-title="Book Eleventh: France [concluded] de William Wordsworth" data-description="FROM that time forth, Authority in France Put on a milder face; Terror had ceased, Yet everything was wanting that might give Courage to them who looked for good by light Of rational Experience, for the shoots And hopeful blossoms of a second spri..."></div> </div> </div>

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