<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=539940" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Book Sixth [Cambridge and the Alps]</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">THE leaves were fading when to Esthwaite's banks<br>And the simplicities of cottage life<br>I bade farewell; and, one among the youth<br>Who, summoned by that season, reunite<br>As scattered birds troop to the fowler's lure,<br>Went back to Granta's cloisters, not so prompt<br>Or eager, though as gay and undepressed<br>In mind, as when I thence had taken flight<br>A few short months before. I turned my face<br>Without repining from the coves and heights <br>Clothed in the sunshine of the withering fern;<br>Quitted, not loth, the mild magnificence<br>Of calmer lakes and louder streams; and you,<br>Frank-hearted maids of rocky Cumberland,<br>You and your not unwelcome days of mirth,<br>Relinquished, and your nights of revelry,<br>And in my own unlovely cell sate down<br>In lightsome mood--such privilege has youth<br>That cannot take long leave of pleasant thoughts.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The bonds of indolent society <br>Relaxing in their hold, henceforth I lived<br>More to myself. Two winters may be passed<br>Without a separate notice: many books<br>Were skimmed, devoured, or studiously perused,<br>But with no settled plan. I was detached<br>Internally from academic cares;<br>Yet independent study seemed a course<br>Of hardy disobedience toward friends<br>And kindred, proud rebellion and unkind.<br>This spurious virtue, rather let it bear <br>A name it now deserves, this cowardice,<br>Gave treacherous sanction to that over-love<br>Of freedom which encouraged me to turn<br>From regulations even of my own<br>As from restraints and bonds. Yet who can tell--<br>Who knows what thus may have been gained, both then<br>And at a later season, or preserved;<br>What love of nature, what original strength<br>Of contemplation, what intuitive truths<br>The deepest and the best, what keen research, <br>Unbiassed, unbewildered, and unawed?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The Poet's soul was with me at that time;<br>Sweet meditations, the still overflow<br>Of present happiness, while future years<br>Lacked not anticipations, tender dreams,<br>No few of which have since been realised;<br>And some remain, hopes for my future life.<br>Four years and thirty, told this very week,<br>Have I been now a sojourner on earth,<br>By sorrow not unsmitten; yet for me <br>Life's morning radiance hath not left the hills,<br>Her dew is on the flowers. Those were the days<br>Which also first emboldened me to trust<br>With firmness, hitherto but slightly touched<br>By such a daring thought, that I might leave<br>Some monument behind me which pure hearts<br>Should reverence. The instinctive humbleness,<br>Maintained even by the very name and thought<br>Of printed books and authorship, began<br>To melt away; and further, the dread awe <br>Of mighty names was softened down and seemed<br>Approachable, admitting fellowship<br>Of modest sympathy. Such aspect now,<br>Though not familiarly, my mind put on,<br>Content to observe, to achieve, and to enjoy.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">All winter long, whenever free to choose,<br>Did I by night frequent the College grove<br>And tributary walks; the last, and oft<br>The only one, who had been lingering there<br>Through hours of silence, till the porter's bell, <br>A punctual follower on the stroke of nine,<br>Rang with its blunt unceremonious voice;<br>Inexorable summons! Lofty elms,<br>Inviting shades of opportune recess,<br>Bestowed composure on a neighbourhood<br>Unpeaceful in itself. A single tree<br>With sinuous trunk, boughs exquisitely wreathed,<br>Grew there; an ash which Winter for himself<br>Decked out with pride, and with outlandish grace:<br>Up from the ground, and almost to the top, <br>The trunk and every master branch were green<br>With clustering ivy, and the lightsome twigs<br>And outer spray profusely tipped with seeds<br>That hung in yellow tassels, while the air<br>Stirred them, not voiceless. Often have I stood<br>Foot-bound uplooking at this lovely tree<br>Beneath a frosty moon. The hemisphere<br>Of magic fiction, verse of mine perchance<br>May never tread; but scarcely Spenser's self<br>Could have more tranquil visions in his youth, <br>Or could more bright appearances create<br>Of human forms with superhuman powers,<br>Than I beheld, loitering on calm clear nights<br>Alone, beneath this fairy work of earth.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">On the vague reading of a truant youth<br>'Twere idle to descant. My inner judgment<br>Not seldom differed from my taste in books,<br>As if it appertained to another mind,<br>And yet the books which then I valued most<br>Are dearest to me 'now'; for, having scanned, <br>Not heedlessly, the laws, and watched the forms<br>Of Nature, in that knowledge I possessed<br>A standard, often usefully applied,<br>Even when unconsciously, to things removed<br>From a familiar sympathy.--In fine,<br>I was a better judge of thoughts than words,<br>Misled in estimating words, not only<br>By common inexperience of youth,<br>But by the trade in classic niceties,<br>The dangerous craft, of culling term and phrase <br>From languages that want the living voice<br>To carry meaning to the natural heart;<br>To tell us what is passion, what is truth,<br>What reason, what simplicity and sense.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet may we not entirely overlook<br>The pleasure gathered from the rudiments<br>Of geometric science. Though advanced<br>In these enquiries, with regret I speak,<br>No farther than the threshold, there I found<br>Both elevation and composed delight: <br>With Indian awe and wonder, ignorance pleased<br>With its own struggles, did I meditate<br>On the relation those abstractions bear<br>To Nature's laws, and by what process led,<br>Those immaterial agents bowed their heads<br>Duly to serve the mind of earth-born man;<br>From star to star, from kindred sphere to sphere,<br>From system on to system without end.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">More frequently from the same source I drew<br>A pleasure quiet and profound, a sense <br>Of permanent and universal sway,<br>And paramount belief; there, recognised<br>A type, for finite natures, of the one<br>Supreme Existence, the surpassing life<br>Which--to the boundaries of space and time,<br>Of melancholy space and doleful time,<br>Superior and incapable of change,<br>Nor touched by welterings of passion--is,<br>And hath the name of, God. Transcendent peace<br>And silence did await upon these thoughts <br>That were a frequent comfort to my youth.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Tis told by one whom stormy waters threw,<br>With fellow-sufferers by the shipwreck spared,<br>Upon a desert coast, that having brought<br>To land a single volume, saved by chance,<br>A treatise of Geometry, he wont,<br>Although of food and clothing destitute,<br>And beyond common wretchedness depressed,<br>To part from company and take this book<br>(Then first a self-taught pupil in its truths) <br>To spots remote, and draw his diagrams<br>With a long staff upon the sand, and thus<br>Did oft beguile his sorrow, and almost<br>Forget his feeling: so (if like effect<br>From the same cause produced, 'mid outward things<br>So different, may rightly be compared),<br>So was it then with me, and so will be<br>With Poets ever. Mighty is the charm<br>Of those abstractions to a mind beset<br>With images and haunted by herself, <br>And specially delightful unto me<br>Was that clear synthesis built up aloft<br>So gracefully; even then when it appeared<br>Not more than a mere plaything, or a toy<br>To sense embodied: not the thing it is<br>In verity, an independent world,<br>Created out of pure intelligence.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Such dispositions then were mine unearned<br>By aught, I fear, of genuine desert--<br>Mine, through heaven's grace and inborn aptitudes. <br>And not to leave the story of that time<br>Imperfect, with these habits must be joined,<br>Moods melancholy, fits of spleen, that loved<br>A pensive sky, sad days, and piping winds,<br>The twilight more than dawn, autumn than spring;<br>A treasured and luxurious gloom of choice<br>And inclination mainly, and the mere<br>Redundancy of youth's contentedness.<br>--To time thus spent, add multitudes of hours<br>Pilfered away, by what the Bard who sang <br>Of the Enchanter Indolence hath called<br>'Good-natured lounging,' and behold a map<br>Of my collegiate life--far less intense<br>Than duty called for, or, without regard<br>To duty, 'might' have sprung up of itself<br>By change of accidents, or even, to speak<br>Without unkindness, in another place.<br>Yet why take refuge in that plea?--the fault,<br>This I repeat, was mine; mine be the blame.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In summer, making quest for works of art, <br>Or scenes renowned for beauty, I explored<br>That streamlet whose blue current works its way<br>Between romantic Dovedale's spiry rocks;<br>Pried into Yorkshire dales, or hidden tracts<br>Of my own native region, and was blest<br>Between these sundry wanderings with a joy<br>Above all joys, that seemed another morn<br>Risen on mid noon; blest with the presence, Friend<br>Of that sole Sister, her who hath been long<br>Dear to thee also, thy true friend and mine, <br>Now, after separation desolate,<br>Restored to me--such absence that she seemed<br>A gift then first bestowed. The varied banks<br>Of Emont, hitherto unnamed in song,<br>And that monastic castle, 'mid tall trees,<br>Low standing by the margin of the stream,<br>A mansion visited (as fame reports)<br>By Sidney, where, in sight of our Helvellyn,<br>Or stormy Cross-fell, snatches he might pen<br>Of his Arcadia, by fraternal love <br>Inspired;--that river and those mouldering towers<br>Have seen us side by side, when, having clomb<br>The darksome windings of a broken stair,<br>And crept along a ridge of fractured wall,<br>Not without trembling, we in safety looked<br>Forth, through some Gothic window's open space,<br>And gathered with one mind a rich reward<br>From the far-stretching landscape, by the light<br>Of morning beautified, or purple eve;<br>Or, not less pleased, lay on some turret's head, <br>Catching from tufts of grass and hare-bell flowers<br>Their faintest whisper to the passing breeze,<br>Given out while mid-day heat oppressed the plains.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Another maid there was, who also shed<br>A gladness o'er that season, then to me,<br>By her exulting outside look of youth<br>And placid under-countenance, first endeared;<br>That other spirit, Coleridge! who is now<br>So near to us, that meek confiding heart,<br>So reverenced by us both. O'er paths and fields <br>In all that neighbourhood, through narrow lanes<br>Of eglantine, and through the shady woods,<br>And o'er the Border Beacon, and the waste<br>Of naked pools, and common crags that lay<br>Exposed on the bare fell, were scattered love,<br>The spirit of pleasure, and youth's golden gleam.<br>O Friend! we had not seen thee at that time,<br>And yet a power is on me, and a strong<br>Confusion, and I seem to plant thee there.<br>Far art thou wandered now in search of health <br>And milder breezes,--melancholy lot!<br>But thou art with us, with us in the past,<br>The present, with us in the times to come.<br>There is no grief, no sorrow, no despair,<br>No languor, no dejection, no dismay,<br>No absence scarcely can there be, for those<br>Who love as we do. Speed thee well! divide<br>With us thy pleasure; thy returning strength,<br>Receive it daily as a joy of ours;<br>Share with us thy fresh spirits, whether gift <br>Of gales Etesian or of tender thoughts.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I, too, have been a wanderer; but, alas!<br>How different the fate of different men.<br>Though mutually unknown, yea nursed and reared<br>As if in several elements, we were framed<br>To bend at last to the same discipline,<br>Predestined, if two beings ever were,<br>To seek the same delights, and have one health,<br>One happiness. Throughout this narrative,<br>Else sooner ended, I have borne in mind <br>For whom it registers the birth, and marks the growth,<br>Of gentleness, simplicity, and truth,<br>And joyous loves, that hallow innocent days<br>Of peace and self-command. Of rivers, fields,<br>And groves I speak to thee, my Friend! to thee,<br>Who, yet a liveried schoolboy, in the depths<br>Of the huge city, on the leaded roof<br>Of that wide edifice, thy school and home,<br>Wert used to lie and gaze upon the clouds<br>Moving in heaven; or, of that pleasure tired, <br>To shut thine eyes, and by internal light<br>See trees, and meadows, and thy native stream,<br>Far distant, thus beheld from year to year<br>Of a long exile. Nor could I forget,<br>In this late portion of my argument,<br>That scarcely, as my term of pupilage<br>Ceased, had I left those academic bowers<br>When thou wert thither guided. From the heart<br>Of London, and from cloisters there, thou camest.<br>And didst sit down in temperance and peace, <br>A rigorous student. What a stormy course<br>Then followed. Oh! it is a pang that calls<br>For utterance, to think what easy change<br>Of circumstances might to thee have spared<br>A world of pain, ripened a thousand hopes,<br>For ever withered. Through this retrospect<br>Of my collegiate life I still have had<br>Thy after-sojourn in the self-same place<br>Present before my eyes, have played with times<br>And accidents as children do with cards, <br>Or as a man, who, when his house is built,<br>A frame locked up in wood and stone, doth still,<br>As impotent fancy prompts, by his fireside,<br>Rebuild it to his liking. I have thought<br>Of thee, thy learning, gorgeous eloquence,<br>And all the strength and plumage of thy youth,<br>Thy subtle speculations, toils abstruse<br>Among the schoolmen, and Platonic forms<br>Of wild ideal pageantry, shaped out<br>From things well-matched or ill, and words for things, <br>The self-created sustenance of a mind<br>Debarred from Nature's living images,<br>Compelled to be a life unto herself,<br>And unrelentingly possessed by thirst<br>Of greatness, love, and beauty. Not alone,<br>Ah! surely not in singleness of heart<br>Should I have seen the light of evening fade<br>From smooth Cam's silent waters: had we met,<br>Even at that early time, needs must I trust<br>In the belief, that my maturer age, <br>My calmer habits, and more steady voice,<br>Would with an influence benign have soothed,<br>Or chased away, the airy wretchedness<br>That battened on thy youth. But thou hast trod<br>A march of glory, which doth put to shame<br>These vain regrets; health suffers in thee, else<br>Such grief for thee would be the weakest thought<br>That ever harboured in the breast of man.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A passing word erewhile did lightly touch<br>On wanderings of my own, that now embraced <br>With livelier hope a region wider far.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When the third summer freed us from restraint,<br>A youthful friend, he too a mountaineer,<br>Not slow to share my wishes, took his staff,<br>And sallying forth, we journeyed side by side,<br>Bound to the distant Alps. A hardy slight,<br>Did this unprecedented course imply,<br>Of college studies and their set rewards;<br>Nor had, in truth, the scheme been formed by me<br>Without uneasy forethought of the pain, <br>The censures, and ill-omening, of those<br>To whom my worldly interests were dear.<br>But Nature then was sovereign in my mind,<br>And mighty forms, seizing a youthful fancy,<br>Had given a charter to irregular hopes.<br>In any age of uneventful calm<br>Among the nations, surely would my heart<br>Have been possessed by similar desire;<br>But Europe at that time was thrilled with joy,<br>France standing on the top of golden hours, <br>And human nature seeming born again.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Lightly equipped, and but a few brief looks<br>Cast on the white cliffs of our native shore<br>From the receding vessel's deck, we chanced<br>To land at Calais on the very eve<br>Of that great federal day; and there we saw,<br>In a mean city, and among a few,<br>How bright a face is worn when joy of one<br>Is joy for tens of millions. Southward thence<br>We held our way, direct through hamlets, towns, <br>Gaudy with reliques of that festival,<br>Flowers left to wither on triumphal arcs,<br>And window-garlands. On the public roads,<br>And, once, three days successively, through paths<br>By which our toilsome journey was abridged,<br>Among sequestered villages we walked<br>And found benevolence and blessedness<br>Spread like a fragrance everywhere, when spring<br>Hath left no corner of the land untouched;<br>Where elms for many and many a league in files <br>With their thin umbrage, on the stately roads<br>Of that great kingdom, rustled o'er our heads,<br>For ever near us as we paced along:<br>How sweet at such a time, with such delight<br>On every side, in prime of youthful strength,<br>To feed a Poet's tender melancholy<br>And fond conceit of sadness, with the sound<br>Of undulations varying as might please<br>The wind that swayed them; once, and more than once,<br>Unhoused beneath the evening star we saw <br>Dances of liberty, and, in late hours<br>Of darkness, dances in the open air<br>Deftly prolonged, though grey-haired lookers on<br>Might waste their breath in chiding.<br>Under hills--<br>The vine-clad hills and slopes of Burgundy,<br>Upon the bosom of the gentle Saone<br>We glided forward with the flowing stream.<br>Swift Rhone! thou wert the 'wings' on which we cut<br>A winding passage with majestic ease<br>Between thy lofty rocks. Enchanting show <br>Those woods and farms and orchards did present,<br>And single cottages and lurking towns,<br>Reach after reach, succession without end<br>Of deep and stately vales! A lonely pair<br>Of strangers, till day closed, we sailed along<br>Clustered together with a merry crowd<br>Of those emancipated, a blithe host<br>Of travellers, chiefly delegates, returning<br>From the great spousals newly solemnised<br>At their chief city, in the sight of Heaven. <br>Like bees they swarmed, gaudy and gay as bees;<br>Some vapoured in the unruliness of joy,<br>And with their swords flourished as if to fight<br>The saucy air. In this proud company<br>We landed--took with them our evening meal,<br>Guests welcome almost as the angels were<br>To Abraham of old. The supper done,<br>With flowing cups elate and happy thoughts<br>We rose at signal given, and formed a ring<br>And, hand in hand, danced round and round the board; <br>All hearts were open, every tongue was loud<br>With amity and glee; we bore a name<br>Honoured in France, the name of Englishmen,<br>And hospitably did they give us hail,<br>As their forerunners in a glorious course;<br>And round and round the board we danced again.<br>With these blithe friends our voyage we renewed<br>At early dawn. The monastery bells<br>Made a sweet jingling in our youthful ears;<br>The rapid river flowing without noise, <br>And each uprising or receding spire<br>Spake with a sense of peace, at intervals<br>Touching the heart amid the boisterous crew<br>By whom we were encompassed. Taking leave<br>Of this glad throng, foot-travellers side by side,<br>Measuring our steps in quiet, we pursued<br>Our journey, and ere twice the sun had set<br>Beheld the Convent of Chartreuse, and there<br>Rested within an awful 'solitude':<br>Yes, for even then no other than a place <br>Of soul-affecting 'solitude' appeared<br>That far-famed region, though our eyes had seen,<br>As toward the sacred mansion we advanced,<br>Arms flashing, and a military glare<br>Of riotous men commissioned to expel<br>The blameless inmates, and belike subvert<br>That frame of social being, which so long<br>Had bodied forth the ghostliness of things<br>In silence visible and perpetual calm.<br>--'Stay, stay your sacrilegious hands!'--The voice <br>Was Nature's, uttered from her Alpine throne;<br>I heard it then and seem to hear it now--<br>'Your impious work forbear, perish what may,<br>Let this one temple last, be this one spot<br>Of earth devoted to eternity!'<br>She ceased to speak, but while St. Bruno's pines<br>Waved their dark tops, not silent as they waved,<br>And while below, along their several beds,<br>Murmured the sister streams of Life and Death,<br>Thus by conflicting passions pressed, my heart <br>Responded; 'Honour to the patriot's zeal!<br>Glory and hope to new-born Liberty!<br>Hail to the mighty projects of the time!<br>Discerning sword that Justice wields, do thou<br>Go forth and prosper; and, ye purging fires,<br>Up to the loftiest towers of Pride ascend,<br>Fanned by the breath of angry Providence.<br>But oh! if Past and Future be the wings<br>On whose support harmoniously conjoined<br>Moves the great spirit of human knowledge, spare <br>These courts of mystery, where a step advanced<br>Between the portals of the shadowy rocks<br>Leaves far behind life's treacherous vanities,<br>For penitential tears and trembling hopes<br>Exchanged--to equalise in God's pure sight<br>Monarch and peasant: be the house redeemed<br>With its unworldly votaries, for the sake<br>Of conquest over sense, hourly achieved<br>Through faith and meditative reason, resting<br>Upon the word of heaven-imparted truth, <br>Calmly triumphant; and for humbler claim<br>Of that imaginative impulse sent<br>From these majestic floods, yon shining cliffs,<br>The untransmuted shapes of many worlds,<br>Cerulean ether's pure inhabitants,<br>These forests unapproachable by death,<br>That shall endure as long as man endures,<br>To think, to hope, to worship, and to feel,<br>To struggle, to be lost within himself<br>In trepidation, from the blank abyss <br>To look with bodily eyes, and be consoled.'<br>Not seldom since that moment have I wished<br>That thou, O Friend! the trouble or the calm<br>Hadst shared, when, from profane regards apart,<br>In sympathetic reverence we trod<br>The floors of those dim cloisters, till that hour,<br>From their foundation, strangers to the presence<br>Of unrestricted and unthinking man.<br>Abroad, how cheeringly the sunshine lay<br>Upon the open lawns! Vallombre's groves <br>Entering, we fed the soul with darkness; thence<br>Issued, and with uplifted eyes beheld,<br>In different quarters of the bending sky,<br>The cross of Jesus stand erect, as if<br>Hands of angelic powers had fixed it there,<br>Memorial reverenced by a thousand storms;<br>Yet then, from the undiscriminating sweep<br>And rage of one State-whirlwind, insecure.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Tis not my present purpose to retrace<br>That variegated journey step by step. <br>A march it was of military speed,<br>And Earth did change her images and forms<br>Before us, fast as clouds are changed in heaven.<br>Day after day, up early and down late,<br>From hill to vale we dropped, from vale to hill<br>Mounted--from province on to province swept,<br>Keen hunters in a chase of fourteen weeks,<br>Eager as birds of prey, or as a ship<br>Upon the stretch, when winds are blowing fair:<br>Sweet coverts did we cross of pastoral life, <br>Enticing valleys, greeted them and left<br>Too soon, while yet the very flash and gleam<br>Of salutation were not passed away.<br>Oh! sorrow for the youth who could have seen,<br>Unchastened, unsubdued, unawed, unraised<br>To patriarchal dignity of mind,<br>And pure simplicity of wish and will,<br>Those sanctified abodes of peaceful man,<br>Pleased (though to hardship born, and compassed round<br>With danger, varying as the seasons change), <br>Pleased with his daily task, or, if not pleased,<br>Contented, from the moment that the dawn<br>(Ah! surely not without attendant gleams<br>Of soul-illumination) calls him forth<br>To industry, by glistenings flung on rocks,<br>Whose evening shadows lead him to repose.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Well might a stranger look with bounding heart<br>Down on a green recess, the first I saw<br>Of those deep haunts, an aboriginal vale,<br>Quiet and lorded over and possessed <br>By naked huts, wood-built, and sown like tents<br>Or Indian cabins over the fresh lawns<br>And by the river side.<br>That very day,<br>From a bare ridge we also first beheld<br>Unveiled the summit of Mont Blanc, and grieved<br>To have a soulless image on the eye<br>That had usurped upon a living thought<br>That never more could be. The wondrous Vale<br>Of Chamouny stretched far below, and soon<br>With its dumb cataracts and streams of ice, <br>A motionless array of mighty waves,<br>Five rivers broad and vast, made rich amends,<br>And reconciled us to realities;<br>There small birds warble from the leafy trees,<br>The eagle soars high in the element,<br>There doth the reaper bind the yellow sheaf,<br>The maiden spread the haycock in the sun,<br>While Winter like a well-tamed lion walks,<br>Descending from the mountain to make sport<br>Among the cottages by beds of flowers. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Whate'er in this wide circuit we beheld,<br>Or heard, was fitted to our unripe state<br>Of intellect and heart. With such a book<br>Before our eyes, we could not choose but read<br>Lessons of genuine brotherhood, the plain<br>And universal reason of mankind,<br>The truths of young and old. Nor, side by side<br>Pacing, two social pilgrims, or alone<br>Each with his humour, could we fail to abound<br>In dreams and fictions, pensively composed: <br>Dejection taken up for pleasure's sake,<br>And gilded sympathies, the willow wreath,<br>And sober posies of funereal flowers,<br>Gathered among those solitudes sublime<br>From formal gardens of the lady Sorrow,<br>Did sweeten many a meditative hour.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet still in me with those soft luxuries<br>Mixed something of stern mood, an underthirst<br>Of vigour seldom utterly allayed:<br>And from that source how different a sadness <br>Would issue, let one incident make known.<br>When from the Vallais we had turned, and clomb<br>Along the Simplon's steep and rugged road,<br>Following a band of muleteers, we reached<br>A halting-place, where all together took<br>Their noon-tide meal. Hastily rose our guide,<br>Leaving us at the board; awhile we lingered,<br>Then paced the beaten downward way that led<br>Right to a rough stream's edge, and there broke off;<br>The only track now visible was one <br>That from the torrent's further brink held forth<br>Conspicuous invitation to ascend<br>A lofty mountain. After brief delay<br>Crossing the unbridged stream, that road we took,<br>And clomb with eagerness, till anxious fears<br>Intruded, for we failed to overtake<br>Our comrades gone before. By fortunate chance,<br>While every moment added doubt to doubt,<br>A peasant met us, from whose mouth we learned<br>That to the spot which had perplexed us first <br>We must descend, and there should find the road,<br>Which in the stony channel of the stream<br>Lay a few steps, and then along its banks;<br>And, that our future course, all plain to sight,<br>Was downwards, with the current of that stream.<br>Loth to believe what we so grieved to hear,<br>For still we had hopes that pointed to the clouds,<br>We questioned him again, and yet again;<br>But every word that from the peasant's lips<br>Came in reply, translated by our feelings, <br>Ended in this,--'that we had crossed the Alps'.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Imagination--here the Power so called<br>Through sad incompetence of human speech,<br>That awful Power rose from the mind's abyss<br>Like an unfathered vapour that enwraps,<br>At once, some lonely traveller. I was lost;<br>Halted without an effort to break through;<br>But to my conscious soul I now can say--<br>'I recognise thy glory:' in such strength<br>Of usurpation, when the light of sense <br>Goes out, but with a flash that has revealed<br>The invisible world, doth greatness make abode,<br>There harbours; whether we be young or old,<br>Our destiny, our being's heart and home,<br>Is with infinitude, and only there;<br>With hope it is, hope that can never die,<br>Effort, and expectation, and desire,<br>And something evermore about to be.<br>Under such banners militant, the soul<br>Seeks for no trophies, struggles for no spoils <br>That may attest her prowess, blest in thoughts<br>That are their own perfection and reward,<br>Strong in herself and in beatitude<br>That hides her, like the mighty flood of Nile<br>Poured from his fount of Abyssinian clouds<br>To fertilise the whole Egyptian plain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The melancholy slackening that ensued<br>Upon those tidings by the peasant given<br>Was soon dislodged. Downwards we hurried fast,<br>And, with the half-shaped road which we had missed, <br>Entered a narrow chasm. The brook and road<br>Were fellow-travellers in this gloomy strait,<br>And with them did we journey several hours<br>At a slow pace. The immeasurable height<br>Of woods decaying, never to be decayed,<br>The stationary blasts of waterfalls,<br>And in the narrow rent at every turn<br>Winds thwarting winds, bewildered and forlorn,<br>The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky,<br>The rocks that muttered close upon our ears, <br>Black drizzling crags that spake by the way-side<br>As if a voice were in them, the sick sight<br>And giddy prospect of the raving stream,<br>The unfettered clouds and region of the Heavens,<br>Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light--<br>Were all like workings of one mind, the features<br>Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree;<br>Characters of the great Apocalypse,<br>The types and symbols of Eternity,<br>Of first, and last, and midst, and without end. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">That night our lodging was a house that stood<br>Alone within the valley, at a point<br>Where, tumbling from aloft, a torrent swelled<br>The rapid stream whose margin we had trod;<br>A dreary mansion, large beyond all need,<br>With high and spacious rooms, deafened and stunned<br>By noise of waters, making innocent sleep<br>Lie melancholy among weary bones.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Uprisen betimes, our journey we renewed,<br>Led by the stream, ere noon-day magnified <br>Into a lordly river, broad and deep,<br>Dimpling along in silent majesty,<br>With mountains for its neighbours, and in view<br>Of distant mountains and their snowy tops,<br>And thus proceeding to Locarno's Lake,<br>Fit resting-place for such a visitant.<br>Locarno! spreading out in width like Heaven,<br>How dost thou cleave to the poetic heart,<br>Bask in the sunshine of the memory;<br>And Como! thou, a treasure whom the earth <br>Keeps to herself, confined as in a depth<br>Of Abyssinian privacy. I spake<br>Of thee, thy chestnut woods, and garden plots<br>Of Indian corn tended by dark-eyed maids;<br>Thy lofty steeps, and pathways roofed with vines,<br>Winding from house to house, from town to town,<br>Sole link that binds them to each other; walks,<br>League after league, and cloistral avenues,<br>Where silence dwells if music be not there:<br>While yet a youth undisciplined in verse, <br>Through fond ambition of that hour I strove<br>To chant your praise; nor can approach you now<br>Ungreeted by a more melodious Song,<br>Where tones of Nature smoothed by learned Art<br>May flow in lasting current. Like a breeze<br>Or sunbeam over your domain I passed<br>In motion without pause; but ye have left<br>Your beauty with me, a serene accord<br>Of forms and colours, passive, yet endowed<br>In their submissiveness with power as sweet <br>And gracious, almost, might I dare to say,<br>As virtue is, or goodness; sweet as love,<br>Or the remembrance of a generous deed,<br>Or mildest visitations of pure thought,<br>When God, the giver of all joy, is thanked<br>Religiously, in silent blessedness;<br>Sweet as this last herself, for such it is.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">With those delightful pathways we advanced,<br>For two days' space, in presence of the Lake,<br>That, stretching far among the Alps, assumed <br>A character more stern. The second night,<br>From sleep awakened, and misled by sound<br>Of the church clock telling the hours with strokes<br>Whose import then we had not learned, we rose<br>By moonlight, doubting not that day was nigh,<br>And that meanwhile, by no uncertain path,<br>Along the winding margin of the lake,<br>Led, as before, we should behold the scene<br>Hushed in profound repose. We left the town<br>Of Gravedona with this hope; but soon <br>Were lost, bewildered among woods immense,<br>And on a rock sate down, to wait for day.<br>An open place it was, and overlooked,<br>From high, the sullen water far beneath,<br>On which a dull red image of the moon<br>Lay bedded, changing oftentimes its form<br>Like an uneasy snake. From hour to hour<br>We sate and sate, wondering, as if the night<br>Had been ensnared by witchcraft. On the rock<br>At last we stretched our weary limbs for sleep, <br>But 'could not' sleep, tormented by the stings<br>Of insects, which, with noise like that of noon,<br>Filled all the woods: the cry of unknown birds;<br>The mountains more by blackness visible<br>And their own size, than any outward light;<br>The breathless wilderness of clouds; the clock<br>That told, with unintelligible voice,<br>The widely parted hours; the noise of streams,<br>And sometimes rustling motions nigh at hand,<br>That did not leave us free from personal fear; <br>And, lastly, the withdrawing moon, that set<br>Before us, while she still was high in heaven;--<br>These were our food; and such a summer's night<br>Followed that pair of golden days that shed<br>On Como's Lake, and all that round it lay,<br>Their fairest, softest, happiest influence.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But here I must break off, and bid farewell<br>To days, each offering some new sight, or fraught<br>With some untried adventure, in a course<br>Prolonged till sprinklings of autumnal snow <br>Checked our unwearied steps. Let this alone<br>Be mentioned as a parting word, that not<br>In hollow exultation, dealing out<br>Hyperboles of praise comparative,<br>Not rich one moment to be poor for ever;<br>Not prostrate, overborne, as if the mind<br>Herself were nothing, a mere pensioner<br>On outward forms--did we in presence stand<br>Of that magnificent region. On the front<br>Of this whole Song is written that my heart <br>Must, in such Temple, needs have offered up<br>A different worship. Finally, whate'er<br>I saw, or heard, or felt, was but a stream<br>That flowed into a kindred stream; a gale,<br>Confederate with the current of the soul,<br>To speed my voyage; every sound or sight,<br>In its degree of power, administered<br>To grandeur or to tenderness,--to the one<br>Directly, but to tender thoughts by means<br>Less often instantaneous in effect; <br>Led me to these by paths that, in the main,<br>Were more circuitous, but not less sure<br>Duly to reach the point marked out by Heaven.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Oh, most beloved Friend! a glorious time,<br>A happy time that was; triumphant looks<br>Were then the common language of all eyes;<br>As if awaked from sleep, the Nations hailed<br>Their great expectancy: the fife of war<br>Was then a spirit-stirring sound indeed,<br>A blackbird's whistle in a budding grove. <br>We left the Swiss exulting in the fate<br>Of their near neighbours; and, when shortening fast<br>Our pilgrimage, nor distant far from home,<br>We crossed the Brabant armies on the fret<br>For battle in the cause of Liberty.<br>A stripling, scarcely of the household then<br>Of social life, I looked upon these things<br>As from a distance; heard, and saw, and felt,<br>Was touched, but with no intimate concern;<br>I seemed to move along them, as a bird <br>Moves through the air, or as a fish pursues<br>Its sport, or feeds in its proper element;<br>I wanted not that joy, I did not need<br>Such help; the ever-living universe,<br>Turn where I might, was opening out its glories,<br>And the independent spirit of pure youth<br>Called forth, at every season, new delights,<br>Spread round my steps like sunshine o'er green fields.</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=539940" data-title="Book Sixth [Cambridge and the Alps] de William Wordsworth" data-description="THE leaves were fading when to Esthwaite's banks And the simplicities of cottage life I bade farewell; and, one among the youth Who, summoned by that season, reunite As scattered birds troop to the fowler's lure, Went back to Granta's cloisters, n..."></div> </div> </div>

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