<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=539938" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Book Second [School-Time Continued]</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">THUS far, O Friend! have we, though leaving much<br>Unvisited, endeavoured to retrace<br>The simple ways in which my childhood walked;<br>Those chiefly that first led me to the love<br>Of rivers, woods, and fields. The passion yet<br>Was in its birth, sustained as might befall<br>By nourishment that came unsought; for still<br>From week to week, from month to month, we lived<br>A round of tumult. Duly were our games<br>Prolonged in summer till the daylight failed: <br>No chair remained before the doors; the bench<br>And threshold steps were empty; fast asleep<br>The labourer, and the old man who had sate<br>A later lingerer; yet the revelry<br>Continued and the loud uproar: at last,<br>When all the ground was dark, and twinkling stars<br>Edged the black clouds, home and to bed we went,<br>Feverish with weary joints and beating minds.<br>Ah! is there one who ever has been young,<br>Nor needs a warning voice to tame the pride <br>Of intellect and virtue's self-esteem?<br>One is there, though the wisest and the best<br>Of all mankind, who covets not at times<br>Union that cannot be;--who would not give<br>If so he might, to duty and to truth<br>The eagerness of infantine desire?<br>A tranquillising spirit presses now<br>On my corporeal frame, so wide appears<br>The vacancy between me and those days<br>Which yet have such self-presence in my mind, <br>That, musing on them, often do I seem<br>Two consciousnesses, conscious of myself<br>And of some other Being. A rude mass<br>Of native rock, left midway in the square<br>Of our small market village, was the goal<br>Or centre of these sports; and when, returned<br>After long absence, thither I repaired,<br>Gone was the old grey stone, and in its place<br>A smart Assembly-room usurped the ground<br>That had been ours. There let the fiddle scream, <br>And be ye happy! Yet, my Friends! I know<br>That more than one of you will think with me<br>Of those soft starry nights, and that old Dame<br>From whom the stone was named, who there had sate,<br>And watched her table with its huckster's wares<br>Assiduous, through the length of sixty years.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We ran a boisterous course; the year span round<br>With giddy motion. But the time approached<br>That brought with it a regular desire<br>For calmer pleasures, when the winning forms <br>Of Nature were collaterally attached<br>To every scheme of holiday delight<br>And every boyish sport, less grateful else<br>And languidly pursued.<br>When summer came,<br>Our pastime was, on bright half-holidays,<br>To sweep along the plain of Windermere<br>With rival oars; and the selected bourne<br>Was now an Island musical with birds<br>That sang and ceased not; now a Sister Isle<br>Beneath the oaks' umbrageous covert, sown <br>With lilies of the valley like a field;<br>And now a third small Island, where survived<br>In solitude the ruins of a shrine<br>Once to Our Lady dedicate, and served<br>Daily with chaunted rites. In such a race<br>So ended, disappointment could be none,<br>Uneasiness, or pain, or jealousy:<br>We rested in the shade, all pleased alike,<br>Conquered and conqueror. Thus the pride of strength,<br>And the vain-glory of superior skill, <br>Were tempered; thus was gradually produced<br>A quiet independence of the heart;<br>And to my Friend who knows me I may add,<br>Fearless of blame, that hence for future days<br>Ensued a diffidence and modesty,<br>And I was taught to feel, perhaps too much,<br>The self-sufficing power of Solitude.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Our daily meals were frugal, Sabine fare!<br>More than we wished we knew the blessing then<br>Of vigorous hunger--hence corporeal strength <br>Unsapped by delicate viands; for, exclude<br>A little weekly stipend, and we lived<br>Through three divisions of the quartered year<br>In penniless poverty. But now to school<br>From the half-yearly holidays returned,<br>We came with weightier purses, that sufficed<br>To furnish treats more costly than the Dame<br>Of the old grey stone, from her scant board, supplied.<br>Hence rustic dinners on the cool green ground,<br>Or in the woods, or by a river side <br>Or shady fountains, while among the leaves<br>Soft airs were stirring, and the mid-day sun<br>Unfelt shone brightly round us in our joy.<br>Nor is my aim neglected if I tell<br>How sometimes, in the length of those half-years,<br>We from our funds drew largely;--proud to curb,<br>And eager to spur on, the galloping steed;<br>And with the courteous inn-keeper, whose stud<br>Supplied our want, we haply might employ<br>Sly subterfuge, if the adventure's bound <br>Were distant: some famed temple where of yore<br>The Druids worshipped, or the antique walls<br>Of that large abbey, where within the Vale<br>Of Nightshade, to St. Mary's honour built,<br>Stands yet a mouldering pile with fractured arch,<br>Belfry, and images, and living trees;<br>A holy scene!--Along the smooth green turf<br>Our horses grazed. To more than inland peace,<br>Left by the west wind sweeping overhead<br>From a tumultuous ocean, trees and towers <br>In that sequestered valley may be seen,<br>Both silent and both motionless alike;<br>Such the deep shelter that is there, and such<br>The safeguard for repose and quietness.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Our steeds remounted and the summons given,<br>With whip and spur we through the chauntry flew<br>In uncouth race, and left the cross-legged knight,<br>And the stone-abbot, and that single wren<br>Which one day sang so sweetly in the nave<br>Of the old church, that--though from recent showers <br>The earth was comfortless, and, touched by faint<br>Internal breezes, sobbings of the place<br>And respirations, from the roofless walls<br>The shuddering ivy dripped large drops--yet still<br>So sweetly 'mid the gloom the invisible bird<br>Sang to herself, that there I could have made<br>My dwelling-place, and lived for ever there<br>To hear such music. Through the walls we flew<br>And down the valley, and, a circuit made<br>In wantonness of heart, through rough and smooth <br>We scampered homewards. Oh, ye rocks and streams,<br>And that still spirit shed from evening air!<br>Even in this joyous time I sometimes felt<br>Your presence, when with slackened step we breathed<br>Along the sides of the steep hills, or when<br>Lighted by gleams of moonlight from the sea<br>We beat with thundering hoofs the level sand.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Midway on long Winander's eastern shore,<br>Within the crescent of pleasant bay,<br>A tavern stood; no homely-featured house, <br>Primeval like its neighbouring cottages,<br>But 'twas a splendid place, the door beset<br>With chaises, grooms, and liveries, and within<br>Decanters, glasses, and the blood-red wine.<br>In ancient times, and ere the Hall was built<br>On the large island, had this dwelling been<br>More worthy of a poet's love, a hut,<br>Proud of its own bright fire and sycamore shade.<br>But--though the rhymes were gone that once inscribed<br>The threshold, and large golden characters, <br>Spread o'er the spangled sign-board, had dislodged<br>The old Lion and usurped his place, in slight<br>And mockery of the rustic painter's hand--<br>Yet, to this hour, the spot to me is dear<br>With all its foolish pomp. The garden lay<br>Upon a slope surmounted by a plain<br>Of a small bowling-green; beneath us stood<br>A grove, with gleams of water through the trees<br>And over the tree-tops; nor did we want<br>Refreshment, strawberries and mellow cream. <br>There, while through half an afternoon we played<br>On the smooth platform, whether skill prevailed<br>Or happy blunder triumphed, bursts of glee<br>Made all the mountains ring. But, ere night-fall,<br>When in our pinnace we returned at leisure<br>Over the shadowy lake, and to the beach<br>Of some small island steered our course with one,<br>The Minstrel of the Troop, and left him there,<br>And rowed off gently, while he blew his flute<br>Alone upon the rock--oh, then, the calm <br>And dead still water lay upon my mind<br>Even with a weight of pleasure, and the sky,<br>Never before so beautiful, sank down<br>Into my heart, and held me like a dream!<br>Thus were my sympathies enlarged, and thus<br>Daily the common range of visible things<br>Grew dear to me: already I began<br>To love the sun; a boy I loved the sun,<br>Not as I since have loved him, as a pledge<br>And surety of our earthly life, a light <br>Which we behold and feel we are alive;<br>Nor for his bounty to so many worlds--<br>But for this cause, that I had seen him lay<br>His beauty on the morning hills, had seen<br>The western mountain touch his setting orb,<br>In many a thoughtless hour, when, from excess<br>Of happiness, my blood appeared to flow<br>For its own pleasure, and I breathed with joy.<br>And, from like feelings, humble though intense,<br>To patriotic and domestic love <br>Analogous, the moon to me was dear;<br>For I could dream away my purposes,<br>Standing to gaze upon her while she hung<br>Midway between the hills, as if she knew<br>No other region, but belonged to thee,<br>Yea, appertained by a peculiar right<br>To thee and thy grey huts, thou one dear Vale!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Those incidental charms which first attached<br>My heart to rural objects, day by day<br>Grew weaker, and I hasten on to tell <br>How Nature, intervenient till this time<br>And secondary, now at length was sought<br>For her own sake. But who shall parcel out<br>His intellect by geometric rules,<br>Split like a province into round and square?<br>Who knows the individual hour in which<br>His habits were first sown, even as a seed?<br>Who that shall point as with a wand and say<br>'This portion of the river of my mind<br>Came from yon fountain?' Thou, my Friend! art one <br>More deeply read in thy own thoughts; to thee<br>Science appears but what in truth she is,<br>Not as our glory and our absolute boast,<br>But as a succedaneum, and a prop<br>To our infirmity. No officious slave<br>Art thou of that false secondary power<br>By which we multiply distinctions, then<br>Deem that our puny boundaries are things<br>That we perceive, and not that we have made.<br>To thee, unblinded by these formal arts, <br>The unity of all hath been revealed,<br>And thou wilt doubt, with me less aptly skilled<br>Than many are to range the faculties<br>In scale and order, class the cabinet<br>Of their sensations, and in voluble phrase<br>Run through the history and birth of each<br>As of a single independent thing.<br>Hard task, vain hope, to analyse the mind,<br>If each most obvious and particular thought,<br>Not in a mystical and idle sense, <br>But in the words of Reason deeply weighed,<br>Hath no beginning.<br>Blest the infant Babe,<br>(For with my best conjecture I would trace<br>Our Being's earthly progress,) blest the Babe,<br>Nursed in his Mother's arms, who sinks to sleep<br>Rocked on his Mother's breast; who with his soul<br>Drinks in the feelings of his Mother's eye!<br>For him, in one dear Presence, there exists<br>A virtue which irradiates and exalts<br>Objects through widest intercourse of sense. <br>No outcast he, bewildered and depressed:<br>Along his infant veins are interfused<br>The gravitation and the filial bond<br>Of nature that connect him with the world.<br>Is there a flower, to which he points with hand<br>Too weak to gather it, already love<br>Drawn from love's purest earthly fount for him<br>Hath beautified that flower; already shades<br>Of pity cast from inward tenderness<br>Do fall around him upon aught that bears <br>Unsightly marks of violence or harm.<br>Emphatically such a Being lives,<br>Frail creature as he is, helpless as frail,<br>An inmate of this active universe:<br>For, feeling has to him imparted power<br>That through the growing faculties of sense<br>Doth like an agent of the one great Mind<br>Create, creator and receiver both,<br>Working but in alliance with the works<br>Which it beholds.--Such, verily, is the first <br>Poetic spirit of our human life,<br>By uniform control of after years,<br>In most, abated or suppressed; in some,<br>Through every change of growth and of decay,<br>Pre-eminent till death.<br>From early days,<br>Beginning not long after that first time<br>In which, a Babe, by intercourse of touch<br>I held mute dialogues with my Mother's heart,<br>I have endeavoured to display the means<br>Whereby this infant sensibility, <br>Great birthright of our being, was in me<br>Augmented and sustained. Yet is a path<br>More difficult before me; and I fear<br>That in its broken windings we shall need<br>The chamois' sinews, and the eagle's wing:<br>For now a trouble came into my mind<br>From unknown causes. I was left alone<br>Seeking the visible world, nor knowing why.<br>The props of my affections were removed,<br>And yet the building stood, as if sustained <br>By its own spirit! All that I beheld<br>Was dear, and hence to finer influxes<br>The mind lay open to a more exact<br>And close communion. Many are our joys<br>In youth, but oh! what happiness to live<br>When every hour brings palpable access<br>Of knowledge, when all knowledge is delight,<br>And sorrow is not there! The seasons came,<br>And every season wheresoe'er I moved<br>Unfolded transitory qualities, <br>Which, but for this most watchful power of love,<br>Had been neglected; left a register<br>Of permanent relations, else unknown.<br>Hence life, and change, and beauty, solitude<br>More active ever than 'best society'--<br>Society made sweet as solitude<br>By silent inobtrusive sympathies,<br>And gentle agitations of the mind<br>From manifold distinctions, difference<br>Perceived in things, where, to the unwatchful eye, <br>No difference is, and hence, from the same source,<br>Sublimer joy; for I would walk alone,<br>Under the quiet stars, and at that time<br>Have felt whate'er there is of power in sound<br>To breathe an elevated mood, by form<br>Or image unprofaned; and I would stand,<br>If the night blackened with a coming storm,<br>Beneath some rock, listening to notes that are<br>The ghostly language of the ancient earth,<br>Or make their dim abode in distant winds. <br>Thence did I drink the visionary power;<br>And deem not profitless those fleeting moods<br>Of shadowy exultation: not for this,<br>That they are kindred to our purer mind<br>And intellectual life; but that the soul,<br>Remembering how she felt, but what she felt<br>Remembering not, retains an obscure sense<br>Of possible sublimity, whereto<br>With growing faculties she doth aspire,<br>With faculties still growing, feeling still <br>That whatsoever point they gain, they yet<br>Have something to pursue.<br>And not alone,<br>'Mid gloom and tumult, but no less 'mid fair<br>And tranquil scenes, that universal power<br>And fitness in the latent qualities<br>And essences of things, by which the mind<br>Is moved with feelings of delight, to me<br>Came strengthened with a superadded soul,<br>A virtue not its own. My morning walks<br>Were early;--oft before the hours of school <br>I travelled round our little lake, five miles<br>Of pleasant wandering. Happy time! more dear<br>For this, that one was by my side, a Friend,<br>Then passionately loved; with heart how full<br>Would he peruse these lines! For many years<br>Have since flowed in between us, and, our minds<br>Both silent to each other, at this time<br>We live as if those hours had never been.<br>Nor seldom did I lift our cottage latch<br>Far earlier, ere one smoke-wreath had risen <br>From human dwelling, or the vernal thrush<br>Was audible; and sate among the woods<br>Alone upon some jutting eminence,<br>At the first gleam of dawn-light, when the Vale,<br>Yet slumbering, lay in utter solitude.<br>How shall I seek the origin? where find<br>Faith in the marvellous things which then I felt?<br>Oft in these moments such a holy calm<br>Would overspread my soul, that bodily eyes<br>Were utterly forgotten, and what I saw <br>Appeared like something in myself, a dream,<br>A prospect in the mind.<br>'Twere long to tell<br>What spring and autumn, what the winter snows,<br>And what the summer shade, what day and night,<br>Evening and morning, sleep and waking, thought<br>From sources inexhaustible, poured forth<br>To feed the spirit of religious love<br>In which I walked with Nature. But let this<br>Be not forgotten, that I still retained<br>My first creative sensibility; <br>That by the regular action of the world<br>My soul was unsubdued. A plastic power<br>Abode with me; a forming hand, at times<br>Rebellious, acting in a devious mood;<br>A local spirit of his own, at war<br>With general tendency, but, for the most,<br>Subservient strictly to external things<br>With which it communed. An auxiliar light<br>Came from my mind, which on the setting sun<br>Bestowed new splendour; the melodious birds, <br>The fluttering breezes, fountains that run on<br>Murmuring so sweetly in themselves, obeyed<br>A like dominion, and the midnight storm<br>Grew darker in the presence of my eye:<br>Hence my obeisance, my devotion hence,<br>And hence my transport.<br>Nor should this, perchance,<br>Pass unrecorded, that I still had loved<br>The exercise and produce of a toil,<br>Than analytic industry to me<br>More pleasing, and whose character I deem <br>Is more poetic as resembling more<br>Creative agency. The song would speak<br>Of that interminable building reared<br>By observation of affinities<br>In objects where no brotherhood exists<br>To passive minds. My seventeenth year was come<br>And, whether from this habit rooted now<br>So deeply in my mind, or from excess<br>In the great social principle of life<br>Coercing all things into sympathy, <br>To unorganic natures were transferred<br>My own enjoyments; or the power of truth<br>Coming in revelation, did converse<br>With things that really are; I, at this time,<br>Saw blessings spread around me like a sea.<br>Thus while the days flew by, and years passed on,<br>From Nature and her overflowing soul,<br>I had received so much, that all my thoughts<br>Were steeped in feeling; I was only then<br>Contented, when with bliss ineffable <br>I felt the sentiment of Being spread<br>O'er all that moves and all that seemeth still;<br>O'er all that, lost beyond the reach of thought<br>And human knowledge, to the human eye<br>Invisible, yet liveth to the heart;<br>O'er all that leaps and runs, and shouts and sings,<br>Or beats the gladsome air; o'er all that glides<br>Beneath the wave, yea, in the wave itself,<br>And mighty depth of waters. Wonder not<br>If high the transport, great the joy I felt, <br>Communing in this sort through earth and heaven<br>With every form of creature, as it looked<br>Towards the Uncreated with a countenance<br>Of adoration, with an eye of love.<br>One song they sang, and it was audible,<br>Most audible, then, when the fleshly ear,<br>O'ercome by humblest prelude of that strain<br>Forgot her functions, and slept undisturbed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">If this be error, and another faith<br>Find easier access to the pious mind, <br>Yet were I grossly destitute of all<br>Those human sentiments that make this earth<br>So dear, if I should fail with grateful voice<br>To speak of you, ye mountains, and ye lakes<br>And sounding cataracts, ye mists and winds<br>That dwell among the hills where I was born.<br>If in my youth I have been pure in heart,<br>If, mingling with the world, I am content<br>With my own modest pleasures, and have lived<br>With God and Nature communing, removed <br>From little enmities and low desires--<br>The gift is yours; if in these times of fear,<br>This melancholy waste of hopes o'erthrown,<br>If, 'mid indifference and apathy,<br>And wicked exultation when good men<br>On every side fall off, we know not how,<br>To selfishness, disguised in gentle names<br>Of peace and quiet and domestic love<br>Yet mingled not unwillingly with sneers<br>On visionary minds; if, in this time <br>Of dereliction and dismay, I yet<br>Despair not of our nature, but retain<br>A more than Roman confidence, a faith<br>That fails not, in all sorrow my support,<br>The blessing of my life--the gift is yours,<br>Ye winds and sounding cataracts! 'tis yours,<br>Ye mountains! thine, O Nature! Thou hast fed<br>My lofty speculations; and in thee,<br>For this uneasy heart of ours, I find<br>A never-failing principle of joy <br>And purest passion.<br>Thou, my Friend! wert reared<br>In the great city, 'mid far other scenes;<br>But we, by different roads, at length have gained<br>The selfsame bourne. And for this cause to thee<br>I speak, unapprehensive of contempt,<br>The insinuated scoff of coward tongues,<br>And all that silent language which so oft<br>In conversation between man and man<br>Blots from the human countenance all trace<br>Of beauty and of love. For thou hast sought <br>The truth in solitude, and, since the days<br>That gave thee liberty, full long desired,<br>To serve in Nature's temple, thou hast been<br>The most assiduous of her ministers;<br>In many things my brother, chiefly here<br>In this our deep devotion.<br>Fare thee well!<br>Health and the quiet of a healthful mind<br>Attend thee! seeking oft the haunts of men,<br>And yet more often living with thyself,<br>And for thyself, so haply shall thy days <br>Be many, and a blessing to mankind.</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=539938" data-title="Book Second [School-Time Continued] de William Wordsworth" data-description="THUS far, O Friend! have we, though leaving much Unvisited, endeavoured to retrace The simple ways in which my childhood walked; Those chiefly that first led me to the love Of rivers, woods, and fields. The passion yet Was in its birth, sustained ..."></div> </div> </div>

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