<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=539933" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Book Fifth-Books</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">WHEN Contemplation, like the night-calm felt<br>Through earth and sky, spreads widely, and sends deep<br>Into the soul its tranquillising power,<br>Even then I sometimes grieve for thee, O Man,<br>Earth's paramount Creature! not so much for woes<br>That thou endurest; heavy though that weight be,<br>Cloud-like it mounts, or touched with light divine<br>Doth melt away; but for those palms achieved<br>Through length of time, by patient exercise<br>Of study and hard thought; there, there, it is <br>That sadness finds its fuel. Hitherto,<br>In progress through this Verse, my mind hath looked<br>Upon the speaking face of earth and heaven<br>As her prime teacher, intercourse with man<br>Established by the sovereign Intellect,<br>Who through that bodily image hath diffused,<br>As might appear to the eye of fleeting time,<br>A deathless spirit. Thou also, man! hast wrought,<br>For commerce of thy nature with herself,<br>Things that aspire to unconquerable life; <br>And yet we feel--we cannot choose but feel--<br>That they must perish. Tremblings of the heart<br>It gives, to think that our immortal being<br>No more shall need such garments; and yet man,<br>As long as he shall be the child of earth,<br>Might almost 'weep to have' what he may lose,<br>Nor be himself extinguished, but survive,<br>Abject, depressed, forlorn, disconsolate.<br>A thought is with me sometimes, and I say,--<br>Should the whole frame of earth by inward throes <br>Be wrenched, or fire come down from far to scorch<br>Her pleasant habitations, and dry up<br>Old Ocean, in his bed left singed and bare,<br>Yet would the living Presence still subsist<br>Victorious, and composure would ensue,<br>And kindlings like the morning--presage sure<br>Of day returning and of life revived.<br>But all the meditations of mankind,<br>Yea, all the adamantine holds of truth<br>By reason built, or passion, which itself <br>Is highest reason in a soul sublime;<br>The consecrated works of Bard and Sage,<br>Sensuous or intellectual, wrought by men,<br>Twin labourers and heirs of the same hopes;<br>Where would they be? Oh! why hath not the Mind<br>Some element to stamp her image on<br>In nature somewhat nearer to her own?<br>Why, gifted with such powers to send abroad<br>Her spirit, must it lodge in shrines so frail?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">One day, when from my lips a like complaint <br>Had fallen in presence of a studious friend,<br>He with a smile made answer, that in truth<br>'Twas going far to seek disquietude;<br>But on the front of his reproof confessed<br>That he himself had oftentimes given way<br>To kindred hauntings. Whereupon I told,<br>That once in the stillness of a summer's noon,<br>While I was seated in a rocky cave<br>By the sea-side, perusing, so it chanced,<br>The famous history of the errant knight <br>Recorded by Cervantes, these same thoughts<br>Beset me, and to height unusual rose,<br>While listlessly I sate, and, having closed<br>The book, had turned my eyes toward the wide sea.<br>On poetry and geometric truth,<br>And their high privilege of lasting life,<br>From all internal injury exempt,<br>I mused; upon these chiefly: and at length,<br>My senses yielding to the sultry air,<br>Sleep seized me, and I passed into a dream. <br>I saw before me stretched a boundless plain<br>Of sandy wilderness, all black and void,<br>And as I looked around, distress and fear<br>Came creeping over me, when at my side,<br>Close at my side, an uncouth shape appeared<br>Upon a dromedary, mounted high.<br>He seemed an Arab of the Bedouin tribes:<br>A lance he bore, and underneath one arm<br>A stone, and in the opposite hand a shell<br>Of a surpassing brightness. At the sight <br>Much I rejoiced, not doubting but a guide<br>Was present, one who with unerring skill<br>Would through the desert lead me; and while yet<br>I looked and looked, self-questioned what this freight<br>Which the new-comer carried through the waste<br>Could mean, the Arab told me that the stone<br>(To give it in the language of the dream)<br>Was 'Euclid's Elements,' and 'This,' said he,<br>'Is something of more worth;' and at the word<br>Stretched forth the shell, so beautiful in shape, <br>In colour so resplendent, with command<br>That I should hold it to my ear. I did so,<br>And heard that instant in an unknown tongue,<br>Which yet I understood, articulate sounds,<br>A loud prophetic blast of harmony;<br>An Ode, in passion uttered, which foretold<br>Destruction to the children of the earth<br>By deluge, now at hand. No sooner ceased<br>The song, than the Arab with calm look declared<br>That all would come to pass of which the voice <br>Had given forewarning, and that he himself<br>Was going then to bury those two books:<br>The one that held acquaintance with the stars,<br>And wedded soul to soul in purest bond<br>Of reason, undisturbed by space or time;<br>The other that was a god, yea many gods,<br>Had voices more than all the winds, with power<br>To exhilarate the spirit, and to soothe,<br>Through every clime, the heart of human kind.<br>While this was uttering, strange as it may seem, <br>I wondered not, although I plainly saw<br>The one to be a stone, the other a shell;<br>Nor doubted once but that they both were books,<br>Having a perfect faith in all that passed.<br>Far stronger, now, grew the desire I felt<br>To cleave unto this man; but when I prayed<br>To share his enterprise, he hurried on<br>Reckless of me: I followed, not unseen,<br>For oftentimes he cast a backward look,<br>Grasping his twofold treasure.--Lance in rest, <br>He rode, I keeping pace with him; and now<br>He, to my fancy, had become the knight<br>Whose tale Cervantes tells; yet not the knight,<br>But was an Arab of the desert too;<br>Of these was neither, and was both at once.<br>His countenance, meanwhile, grew more disturbed;<br>And, looking backwards when he looked, mine eyes<br>Saw, over half the wilderness diffused,<br>A bed of glittering light: I asked the cause:<br>'It is,' said he, 'the waters of the deep <br>Gathering upon us;' quickening then the pace<br>Of the unwieldy creature he bestrode,<br>He left me: I called after him aloud;<br>He heeded not; but, with his twofold charge<br>Still in his grasp, before me, full in view,<br>Went hurrying o'er the illimitable waste,<br>With the fleet waters of a drowning world<br>In chase of him; whereat I waked in terror,<br>And saw the sea before me, and the book,<br>In which I had been reading, at my side. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Full often, taking from the world of sleep<br>This Arab phantom, which I thus beheld,<br>This semi-Quixote, I to him have given<br>A substance, fancied him a living man,<br>A gentle dweller in the desert, crazed<br>By love and feeling, and internal thought<br>Protracted among endless solitudes;<br>Have shaped him wandering upon this quest!<br>Nor have I pitied him; but rather felt<br>Reverence was due to a being thus employed; <br>And thought that, in the blind and awful lair<br>Of such a madness, reason did lie couched.<br>Enow there are on earth to take in charge<br>Their wives, their children, and their virgin loves,<br>Or whatsoever else the heart holds dear;<br>Enow to stir for these; yea, will I say,<br>Contemplating in soberness the approach<br>Of an event so dire, by signs in earth<br>Or heaven made manifest, that I could share<br>That maniac's fond anxiety, and go <br>Upon like errand. Oftentimes at least<br>Me hath such strong entrancement overcome,<br>When I have held a volume in my hand,<br>Poor earthly casket of immortal verse,<br>Shakespeare, or Milton, labourers divine!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Great and benign, indeed, must be the power<br>Of living nature, which could thus so long<br>Detain me from the best of other guides<br>And dearest helpers, left unthanked, unpraised,<br>Even in the time of lisping infancy; <br>And later down, in prattling childhood even,<br>While I was travelling back among those days,<br>How could I ever play an ingrate's part?<br>Once more should I have made those bowers resound,<br>By intermingling strains of thankfulness<br>With their own thoughtless melodies; at least<br>It might have well beseemed me to repeat<br>Some simply fashioned tale, to tell again,<br>In slender accents of sweet verse, some tale<br>That did bewitch me then, and soothes me now. <br>O Friend! O Poet! brother of my soul,<br>Think not that I could pass along untouched<br>By these remembrances. Yet wherefore speak?<br>Why call upon a few weak words to say<br>What is already written in the hearts<br>Of all that breathe?--what in the path of all<br>Drops daily from the tongue of every child,<br>Wherever man is found? The trickling tear<br>Upon the cheek of listening Infancy<br>Proclaims it, and the insuperable look <br>That drinks as if it never could be full.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That portion of my story I shall leave<br>There registered: whatever else of power<br>Or pleasure sown, or fostered thus, may be<br>Peculiar to myself, let that remain<br>Where still it works, though hidden from all search<br>Among the depths of time. Yet is it just<br>That here, in memory of all books which lay<br>Their sure foundations in the heart of man,<br>Whether by native prose, or numerous verse, <br>That in the name of all inspired souls--<br>From Homer the great Thunderer, from the voice<br>That roars along the bed of Jewish song,<br>And that more varied and elaborate,<br>Those trumpet-tones of harmony that shake<br>Our shores in England,--from those loftiest notes<br>Down to the low and wren-like warblings, made<br>For cottagers and spinners at the wheel,<br>And sun-burnt travellers resting their tired limbs,<br>Stretched under wayside hedge-rows, ballad tunes, <br>Food for the hungry ears of little ones,<br>And of old men who have survived their joys--<br>'Tis just that in behalf of these, the works,<br>And of the men that framed them, whether known<br>Or sleeping nameless in their scattered graves,<br>That I should here assert their rights, attest<br>Their honours, and should, once for all, pronounce<br>Their benediction; speak of them as Powers<br>For ever to be hallowed; only less,<br>For what we are and what we may become, <br>Than Nature's self, which is the breath of God,<br>Or His pure Word by miracle revealed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Rarely and with reluctance would I stoop<br>To transitory themes; yet I rejoice,<br>And, by these thoughts admonished, will pour out<br>Thanks with uplifted heart, that I was reared<br>Safe from an evil which these days have laid<br>Upon the children of the land, a pest<br>That might have dried me up, body and soul.<br>This verse is dedicate to Nature's self, <br>And things that teach as Nature teaches: then,<br>Oh! where had been the Man, the Poet where,<br>Where had we been, we two, beloved Friend!<br>If in the season of unperilous choice,<br>In lieu of wandering, as we did, through vales<br>Rich with indigenous produce, open ground<br>Of Fancy, happy pastures ranged at will,<br>We had been followed, hourly watched, and noosed,<br>Each in his several melancholy walk<br>Stringed like a poor man's heifer at its feed, <br>Led through the lanes in forlorn servitude;<br>Or rather like a stalled ox debarred<br>From touch of growing grass, that may not taste<br>A flower till it have yielded up its sweets<br>A prelibation to the mower's scythe.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Behold the parent hen amid her brood,<br>Though fledged and feathered, and well pleased to part<br>And straggle from her presence, still a brood,<br>And she herself from the maternal bond<br>Still undischarged; yet doth she little more <br>Than move with them in tenderness and love,<br>A centre to the circle which they make;<br>And now and then, alike from need of theirs<br>And call of her own natural appetites,<br>She scratches, ransacks up the earth for food,<br>Which they partake at pleasure. Early died<br>My honoured Mother, she who was the heart<br>And hinge of all our learnings and our loves:<br>She left us destitute, and, as we might,<br>Trooping together. Little suits it me <br>To break upon the sabbath of her rest<br>With any thought that looks at others' blame;<br>Nor would I praise her but in perfect love.<br>Hence am I checked: but let me boldly say,<br>In gratitude, and for the sake of truth,<br>Unheard by her, that she, not falsely taught,<br>Fetching her goodness rather from times past,<br>Than shaping novelties for times to come,<br>Had no presumption, no such jealousy,<br>Nor did by habit of her thoughts mistrust <br>Our nature, but had virtual faith that He<br>Who fills the mother's breast with innocent milk,<br>Doth also for our nobler part provide,<br>Under His great correction and control,<br>As innocent instincts, and as innocent food;<br>Or draws, for minds that are left free to trust<br>In the simplicities of opening life,<br>Sweet honey out of spurned or dreaded weeds.<br>This was her creed, and therefore she was pure<br>From anxious fear of error or mishap, <br>And evil, overweeningly so called;<br>Was not puffed up by false unnatural hopes,<br>Nor selfish with unnecessary cares,<br>Nor with impatience from the season asked<br>More than its timely produce; rather loved<br>The hours for what they are, than from regard<br>Glanced on their promises in restless pride.<br>Such was she--not from faculties more strong<br>Than others have, but from the times, perhaps,<br>And spot in which she lived, and through a grace <br>Of modest meekness, simple-mindedness,<br>A heart that found benignity and hope,<br>Being itself benign.<br>My drift I fear<br>Is scarcely obvious; but, that common sense<br>May try this modern system by its fruits,<br>Leave let me take to place before her sight<br>A specimen pourtrayed with faithful hand.<br>Full early trained to worship seemliness,<br>This model of a child is never known<br>To mix in quarrels; that were far beneath <br>Its dignity; with gifts he bubbles o'er<br>As generous as a fountain; selfishness<br>May not come near him, nor the little throng<br>Of flitting pleasures tempt him from his path;<br>The wandering beggars propagate his name,<br>Dumb creatures find him tender as a nun,<br>And natural or supernatural fear,<br>Unless it leap upon him in a dream,<br>Touches him not. To enhance the wonder, see<br>How arch his notices, how nice his sense <br>Of the ridiculous; not blind is he<br>To the broad follies of the licensed world,<br>Yet innocent himself withal, though shrewd,<br>And can read lectures upon innocence;<br>A miracle of scientific lore,<br>Ships he can guide across the pathless sea,<br>And tell you all their cunning; he can read<br>The inside of the earth, and spell the stars;<br>He knows the policies of foreign lands;<br>Can string you names of districts, cities, towns, <br>The whole world over, tight as beads of dew<br>Upon a gossamer thread; he sifts, he weighs;<br>All things are put to question; he must live<br>Knowing that he grows wiser every day<br>Or else not live at all, and seeing too<br>Each little drop of wisdom as it falls<br>Into the dimpling cistern of his heart:<br>For this unnatural growth the trainer blame,<br>Pity the tree.--Poor human vanity,<br>Wert thou extinguished, little would be left <br>Which he could truly love; but how escape?<br>For, ever as a thought of purer birth<br>Rises to lead him toward a better clime,<br>Some intermeddler still is on the watch<br>To drive him back, and pound him, like a stray,<br>Within the pinfold of his own conceit.<br>Meanwhile old grandame earth is grieved to find<br>The playthings, which her love designed for him,<br>Unthought of: in their woodland beds the flowers<br>Weep, and the river sides are all forlorn. <br>Oh! give us once again the wishing-cap<br>Of Fortunatus, and the invisible coat<br>Of Jack the Giant-killer, Robin Hood,<br>And Sabra in the forest with St. George!<br>The child, whose love is here, at least, doth reap<br>One precious gain, that he forgets himself.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">These mighty workmen of our later age,<br>Who, with a broad highway, have overbridged<br>The froward chaos of futurity,<br>Tamed to their bidding; they who have the skill <br>To manage books, and things, and make them act<br>On infant minds as surely as the sun<br>Deals with a flower; the keepers of our time,<br>The guides and wardens of our faculties,<br>Sages who in their prescience would control<br>All accidents, and to the very road<br>Which they have fashioned would confine us down,<br>Like engines; when will their presumption learn,<br>That in the unreasoning progress of the world<br>A wiser spirit is at work for us, <br>A better eye than theirs, most prodigal<br>Of blessings, and most studious of our good,<br>Even in what seem our most unfruitful hours?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">There was a Boy: ye knew him well, ye cliffs<br>And islands of Winander!--many a time<br>At evening, when the earliest stars began<br>To move along the edges of the hills,<br>Rising or setting, would he stand alone<br>Beneath the trees or by the glimmering lake,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And there, with fingers interwoven, both hands <br>Pressed closely palm to palm, and to his mouth<br>Uplifted, he, as through an instrument,<br>Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls,<br>That they might answer him; and they would shout<br>Across the watery vale, and shout again,<br>Responsive to his call, with quivering peals,<br>And long halloos and screams, and echoes loud,<br>Redoubled and redoubled, concourse wild<br>Of jocund din; and, when a lengthened pause<br>Of silence came and baffled his best skill, <br>Then sometimes, in that silence while he hung<br>Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise<br>Has carried far into his heart the voice<br>Of mountain torrents; or the visible scene<br>Would enter unawares into his mind,<br>With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,<br>Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received<br>Into the bosom of the steady lake.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">This Boy was taken from his mates, and died<br>In childhood, ere he was full twelve years old. <br>Fair is the spot, most beautiful the vale<br>Where he was born; the grassy churchyard hangs<br>Upon a slope above the village school,<br>And through that churchyard when my way has led<br>On summer evenings, I believe that there<br>A long half hour together I have stood<br>Mute, looking at the grave in which he lies!<br>Even now appears before the mind's clear eye<br>That self-same village church; I see her sit<br>(The throned Lady whom erewhile we hailed) <br>On her green hill, forgetful of this Boy<br>Who slumbers at her feet,--forgetful, too,<br>Of all her silent neighbourhood of graves,<br>And listening only to the gladsome sounds<br>That, from the rural school ascending, play<br>Beneath her and about her. May she long<br>Behold a race of young ones like to those<br>With whom I herded!--(easily, indeed,<br>We might have fed upon a fatter soil<br>Of arts and letters--but be that forgiven)-- <br>A race of real children; not too wise,<br>Too learned, or too good; but wanton, fresh,<br>And bandied up and down by love and hate;<br>Not unresentful where self-justified;<br>Fierce, moody, patient, venturous, modest, shy;<br>Mad at their sports like withered leaves in winds;<br>Though doing wrong and suffering, and full oft<br>Bending beneath our life's mysterious weight<br>Of pain, and doubt, and fear, yet yielding not<br>In happiness to the happiest upon earth. <br>Simplicity in habit, truth in speech,<br>Be these the daily strengtheners of their minds;<br>May books and Nature be their early joy!<br>And knowledge, rightly honoured with that name--<br>Knowledge not purchased by the loss of power!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Well do I call to mind the very week<br>When I was first intrusted to the care<br>Of that sweet Valley; when its paths, its shores,<br>And brooks were like a dream of novelty<br>To my half-infant thoughts; that very week, <br>While I was roving up and down alone,<br>Seeking I knew not what, I chanced to cross<br>One of those open fields, which, shaped like ears,<br>Make green peninsulas on Esthwaite's Lake:<br>Twilight was coming on, yet through the gloom<br>Appeared distinctly on the opposite shore<br>A heap of garments, as if left by one<br>Who might have there been bathing. Long I watched,<br>But no one owned them; meanwhile the calm lake<br>Grew dark with all the shadows on its breast, <br>And, now and then, a fish up-leaping snapped<br>The breathless stillness. The succeeding day,<br>Those unclaimed garments telling a plain tale<br>Drew to the spot an anxious crowd; some looked<br>In passive expectation from the shore,<br>While from a boat others hung o'er the deep,<br>Sounding with grappling irons and long poles.<br>At last, the dead man, 'mid that beauteous scene<br>Of trees and hills and water, bolt upright<br>Rose, with his ghastly face, a spectre shape <br>Of terror; yet no soul-debasing fear,<br>Young as I was, a child not nine years old,<br>Possessed me, for my inner eye had seen<br>Such sights before, among the shining streams<br>Of faery land, the forest of romance.<br>Their spirit hallowed the sad spectacle<br>With decoration of ideal grace;<br>A dignity, a smoothness, like the works<br>Of Grecian art, and purest poesy.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A precious treasure had I long possessed, <br>A little yellow, canvas-covered book,<br>A slender abstract of the Arabian tales;<br>And, from companions in a new abode,<br>When first I learnt, that this dear prize of mine<br>Was but a block hewn from a mighty quarry--<br>That there were four large volumes, laden all<br>With kindred matter, 'twas to me, in truth,<br>A promise scarcely earthly. Instantly,<br>With one not richer than myself, I made<br>A covenant that each should lay aside <br>The moneys he possessed, and hoard up more,<br>Till our joint savings had amassed enough<br>To make this book our own. Through several months,<br>In spite of all temptation, we preserved<br>Religiously that vow; but firmness failed,<br>Nor were we ever masters of our wish.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And when thereafter to my father's house<br>The holidays returned me, there to find<br>That golden store of books which I had left,<br>What joy was mine! How often in the course <br>Of those glad respites, though a soft west wind<br>Ruffled the waters to the angler's wish,<br>For a whole day together, have I lain<br>Down by thy side, O Derwent! murmuring stream,<br>On the hot stones, and in the glaring sun,<br>And there have read, devouring as I read,<br>Defrauding the day's glory, desperate!<br>Till with a sudden bound of smart reproach,<br>Such as an idler deals with in his shame,<br>I to the sport betook myself again. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">A gracious spirit o'er this earth presides,<br>And o'er the heart of man; invisibly<br>It comes, to works of unreproved delight,<br>And tendency benign, directing those<br>Who care not, know not, think not, what they do.<br>The tales that charm away the wakeful night<br>In Araby, romances; legends penned<br>For solace by dim light of monkish lamps;<br>Fictions, for ladies of their love, devised<br>By youthful squires; adventures endless, spun <br>By the dismantled warrior in old age,<br>Out of the bowels of those very schemes<br>In which his youth did first extravagate;<br>These spread like day, and something in the shape<br>Of these will live till man shall be no more.<br>Dumb yearnings, hidden appetites, are ours,<br>And 'they must' have their food. Our childhood sits,<br>Our simple childhood, sits upon a throne<br>That hath more power than all the elements.<br>I guess not what this tells of Being past, <br>Nor what it augurs of the life to come;<br>But so it is; and, in that dubious hour--<br>That twilight--when we first begin to see<br>This dawning earth, to recognise, expect,<br>And, in the long probation that ensues,<br>The time of trial, ere we learn to live<br>In reconcilement with our stinted powers;<br>To endure this state of meagre vassalage,<br>Unwilling to forego, confess, submit,<br>Uneasy and unsettled, yoke-fellows <br>To custom, mettlesome, and not yet tamed<br>And humbled down--oh! then we feel, we feel,<br>We know where we have friends. Ye dreamers, then,<br>Forgers of daring tales! we bless you then,<br>Impostors, drivellers, dotards, as the ape<br>Philosophy will call you: 'then' we feel<br>With what, and how great might ye are in league,<br>Who make our wish, our power, our thought a deed,<br>An empire, a possession,--ye whom time<br>And seasons serve; all Faculties to whom <br>Earth crouches, the elements are potter's clay,<br>Space like a heaven filled up with northern lights,<br>Here, nowhere, there, and everywhere at once.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Relinquishing this lofty eminence<br>For ground, though humbler, not the less a tract<br>Of the same isthmus, which our spirits cross<br>In progress from their native continent<br>To earth and human life, the Song might dwell<br>On that delightful time of growing youth,<br>When craving for the marvellous gives way <br>To strengthening love for things that we have seen;<br>When sober truth and steady sympathies,<br>Offered to notice by less daring pens,<br>Take firmer hold of us, and words themselves<br>Move us with conscious pleasure.<br>I am sad<br>At thought of rapture now for ever flown;<br>Almost to tears I sometimes could be sad<br>To think of, to read over, many a page,<br>Poems withal of name, which at that time<br>Did never fail to entrance me, and are now <br>Dead in my eyes, dead as a theatre<br>Fresh emptied of spectators. Twice five years<br>Or less I might have seen, when first my mind<br>With conscious pleasure opened to the charm<br>Of words in tuneful order, found them sweet<br>For their own 'sakes', a passion, and a power;<br>And phrases pleased me chosen for delight,<br>For pomp, or love. Oft, in the public roads<br>Yet unfrequented, while the morning light<br>Was yellowing the hill tops, I went abroad <br>With a dear friend, and for the better part<br>Of two delightful hours we strolled along<br>By the still borders of the misty lake,<br>Repeating favourite verses with one voice,<br>Or conning more, as happy as the birds<br>That round us chaunted. Well might we be glad,<br>Lifted above the ground by airy fancies,<br>More bright than madness or the dreams of wine;<br>And, though full oft the objects of our love<br>Were false, and in their splendour overwrought, <br>Yet was there surely then no vulgar power<br>Working within us,--nothing less, in truth,<br>Than that most noble attribute of man,<br>Though yet untutored and inordinate,<br>That wish for something loftier, more adorned,<br>Than is the common aspect, daily garb,<br>Of human life. What wonder, then, if sounds<br>Of exultation echoed through the groves!<br>For, images, and sentiments, and words,<br>And everything encountered or pursued <br>In that delicious world of poesy,<br>Kept holiday, a never-ending show,<br>With music, incense, festival, and flowers!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Here must we pause: this only let me add,<br>From heart-experience, and in humblest sense<br>Of modesty, that he, who in his youth<br>A daily wanderer among woods and fields<br>With living Nature hath been intimate,<br>Not only in that raw unpractised time<br>Is stirred to ecstasy, as others are, <br>By glittering verse; but further, doth receive,<br>In measure only dealt out to himself,<br>Knowledge and increase of enduring joy<br>From the great Nature that exists in works<br>Of mighty Poets. Visionary power<br>Attends the motions of the viewless winds,<br>Embodied in the mystery of words:<br>There, darkness makes abode, and all the host<br>Of shadowy things work endless changes,--there,<br>As in a mansion like their proper home, <br>Even forms and substances are circumfused<br>By that transparent veil with light divine,<br>And, through the turnings intricate of verse,<br>Present themselves as objects recognised,<br>In flashes, and with glory not their own.</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=539933" data-title="Book Fifth-Books de William Wordsworth" data-description="WHEN Contemplation, like the night-calm felt Through earth and sky, spreads widely, and sends deep Into the soul its tranquillising power, Even then I sometimes grieve for thee, O Man, Earth's paramount Creature! not so much for woes That thou end..."></div> </div> </div>

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