Happy are they both,

Mother and child! These feelings, in themselves

Trite, do yet scarcely seem so when I think

Of those ingenuous moments of our youth

Ere yet by use we have learnt to slight the crimes

And sorrows of the world. Those days are now

My theme, and, 'mid the numerous scenes which they

Have left behind them, foremost I am crossed

Here by remembrance of two figures: one

A rosy babe, who for a twelvemonth's space

Perhaps had been of age to deal about

Articulate prattle, child as beautiful

As ever sate upon a mother's knee;

The other was the parent of that babe –

But on the mother's cheek the tints were false,

A painted bloom. 'Twas at a theatre

That I beheld this pair; the boy had been

The pride and pleasure of all lookers-on

In whatsoever place, but seemed in this

A sort of alien scattered from the clouds.

Of lusty vigour, more than infantine,

He was in limbs, in face a cottage rose

Just three parts blown – a cottage-child, but ne'er

Saw I by cottage or elsewhere a babe

By Nature's gifts so honored. Upon a board,

Whence an attendant of the theatre

Served out refreshments, had this child been placed,

And there he sate environed with a ring

Of chance spectators, chiefly dissolute men

And shameless women – treated and caressed –

Ate, drank, and with the fruit and glasses played,

While oaths, indecent speech, and ribaldry

Were rife about him as are songs of birds

In springtime after showers. The mother, too,

Was present, but of her I know no more

Than hath been said, and scarcely at this time

Do I remember her; but I behold

The lovely boy as I beheld him then,

Among the wretched and the falsely gay,

Like one of those who walked with hair unsinged

Amid the fiery furnace. He hath since

Appeared to me ofttimes as if embalmed

By Nature – through some special privilege

Stopped at the growth he had – destined to live,

To be, to have been, come, and go, a child

And nothing more, no partner in the years

That bear us forward to distress and guilt,

Pain and abasement; beauty in such excess

Adorned him in that miserable place.

So have I thought of him a thousand times –

And seldom otherwise – but he perhaps,

Mary, may now have lived till he could look

With envy on thy nameless babe that sleeps

Beside the mountain chapel undisturbed.

 

It was but little more than three short years

Before the season which I speak of now

When first, a traveller from our pastoral hills,

Southward two hundred miles I had advanced,

And for the first time in my life did hear

The voice of woman utter blasphemy –

Saw woman as she is to open shame

Abandoned, and the pride of public vice.

Full surely from the bottom of my heart

I shuddered; but the pain was almost lost,

Absorbed and buried in the immensity

Of the effect: a barrier seemed at once

Thrown in, that from humanity divorced

The human form, splitting the race of man

In twain, yet leaving the same outward shape.

Distress of mind ensued upon this sight,

And ardent meditation – afterwards

A milder sadness on such spectacles

Attended: thought, commiseration, grief,

For the individual and the overthrow

Of her soul's beauty – farther at that time

Than this I was but seldom led; in truth

The sorrow of the passion stopped me here.

 

I quit this painful theme, enough is said

To shew what thoughts must often have been mine

At theatres, which then were my delight –

A yearning made more strong by obstacles

Which slender funds imposed. Life then was new,

The senses easily pleased; the lustres, lights,

The carving and the gilding, paint and glare,

And all the mean upholstery of the place,

Wanted not animation in my sight,

Far less the living figures on the stage,

Solemn or gay – whether some beauteous dame

Advanced in radiance through a deep recess

Of thick-entangled forest, like the moon

Opening the clouds; or sovereign king, announced

With flourishing trumpets, came in full-blown state

Of the world's greatness, winding round with train

Of courtiers, banners, and a length of guards;

Or captive led in abject weeds, and jingling

His slender manacles; or romping girl

Bounced, leapt, and pawed the air; or mumbling sire,

A scarecrow pattern of old age, patched up

Of all the tatters of infirmity,

All loosely put together, hobbled in

Stumping upon a cane, with which he smites

From time to time the solid boards and makes them

Prate somewhat loudly of the whereabout

Of one so overloaded with his years.

But what of this? – the laugh, the grin, grimace,

And all the antics and buffoonery,

The least of them not lost, were all received

With charitable pleasure. Through the night,

Between the show, and many-headed mass

Of the spectators, and each little nook

That had its fray or brawl, how eagerly

And with what flashes, as it were, the mind

Turned this way, that way – sportive and alert

And watchful, as a kitten when at play,

While winds are blowing round her, among grass

And rustling leaves. Enchanting age and sweet –

Romantic almost, looked at through a space,

How small, of intervening years! For then,

Though surely no mean progress had been made

In meditations holy and sublime,

Yet something of a girlish childlike gloss

Of novelty survived for scenes like these –

Pleasure that had been handed down from times

When at a country playhouse, having caught

In summer through the fractured wall a glimpse

Of daylight, at the thought of where I was

I gladdened more than if I had beheld

Before me some bright cavern of romance,

Or than we do when on our beds we lie

At night, in warmth, when rains are beating hard.

 

The matter which detains me now will seem

To many neither dignified enough

Nor arduous, and is doubtless in itself

Humble and low – yet not to be despised

By those who have observed the curious props

By which the perishable hours of life

Rest on each other, and the world of thought

Exists and is sustained. More lofty themes,

Such as at least do wear a prouder face,

Might here be spoken of; but when I think

Of these I feel the imaginative power

Languish within me. Even then it slept,

When, wrought upon by tragic sufferings,

The heart was full – amid my sobs and tears

It slept, even in the season of my youth.

For though I was most passionately moved,

And yielded to the changes of the scene

With most obsequious feeling, yet all this

Passed not beyond the suburbs of the mind.

If aught there were of real grandeur here

'Twas only then when gross realities,

The incarnation of the spirits that moved

Amid the poet's beauteous world – called forth

With that distinctness which a contrast gives,

Or opposition – made me recognise

As by a glimpse, the things which I had shaped

And yet not shaped, had seen and scarcely seen,

Had felt, and thought of in my solitude.

 

Pass we from entertainments that are such

Professedly, to others titled higher,

Yet, in the estimate of youth at least,

More near akin to these than names imply –

I mean the brawls of lawyers in their courts

Before the ermined judge, or that great stage

Where senators, tongue-favored men, perform,

Admired and envied. Oh, the beating heart,

When one among the prime of these rose up,

One of whose name from childhood we had heard

Familiarly, a household term, like those –

The Bedfords, Glocesters, Salisburys of old –

Which the fifth Harry talks of. Silence, hush,

This is no trifler, no short-flighted wit,

No stammerer of a minute, painfully

Delivered. No, the orator hath yoked

The hours, like young Aurora, to his car –

O presence of delight, can patience e'er

Grow weary of attending on a track

That kindles with such glory? Marvellous,

The enchantment spreads and rises – all are rapt

Astonished – like a hero in romance

He winds away his never-ending horn:

Words follow words, sense seems to follow sense –

What memory and what logic! – till the strain

Transcendent, superhuman as it is,

Grows tedious even in a young man's ear.

 

These are grave follies; other public shows

The capital city teems with of a kind

More light – and where but in the holy church?

There have I seen a comely bachelor,

Fresh from a toilette of two hours, ascend

The pulpit, with seraphic glance look up,

And in a tone elaborately low

Beginning, lead his voice through many a maze

A minuet course, and, winding up his mouth

From time to time into an orifice

Most delicate, a lurking eyelet, small

And only not invisible, again

Open it out, diffusing thence a smile

Of rapt irradiation exquisite.

Meanwhile the Evangelists, Isaiah, Job,

Moses, and he who penned the other day

The Death of Abel, Shakespear, Doctor Young,

And Ossian – doubt not, 'tis the naked truth –

Summoned from streamy Morven, each and all

Must in their turn lend ornament and flowers

To entwine the crook of eloquence with which

This pretty shepherd, pride of all the plains,

Leads up and down his captivated flock.

 

I glance but at a few conspicuous marks,

Leaving ten thousand others that do each –

In hall or court, conventicle, or shop,

In public room or private, park or street –

With fondness reared on his own pedestal,

Look out for admiration. Folly, vice,

Extravagance in gesture, mien and dress,

And all the strife of singularity –

Lies to the ear, and lies to every sense –

Of these and of the living shapes they wear

There is no end. Such candidates for regard,

Although well pleased to be where they were found,

I did not hunt after or greatly prize,

Nor made unto myself a secret boast

Of reading them with quick and curious eye,

But as a common produce – things that are

Today, tomorrow will be – took of them

Such willing note as, on some errand bound

Of pleasure or of love, some traveller might,

Among a thousand other images,

Of sea-shells that bestud the sandy beach,

Or daisies swarming through the fields in June.

 

But foolishness, and madness in parade,

Though most at home in this their dear domain,

Are scattered everywhere, no rarities,

Even to the rudest novice of the schools.

O friend, one feeling was there which belonged

To this great city by exclusive right:

How often in the overflowing streets

Have I gone forwards with the crowd, and said

Unto myself, »The face of every one

That passes by me is a mystery.«

Thus have I looked, nor ceased to look, oppressed

By thoughts of what, and whither, when and how,

Until the shapes before my eyes became

A second-sight procession, such as glides

Over still mountains, or appears in dreams,

And all the ballast of familiar life –

The present, and the past, hope, fear, all stays,

All laws of acting, thinking, speaking man –

Went from me, neither knowing me, nor known.

And once, far travelled in such mood, beyond

The reach of common indications, lost

Amid the moving pageant, 'twas my chance

Abruptly to be smitten with the view

Of a blind beggar, who, with upright face,

Stood propped against a wall, upon his chest

Wearing a written paper, to explain

The story of the man, and who he was.

My mind did at this spectacle turn round

As with the might of waters, and it seemed

To me that in this label was a type

Or emblem of the utmost that we know

Both of ourselves and of the universe,

And on the shape of this unmoving man,

His fixèd face and sightless eyes, I looked,

As if admonished from another world.

 

Though reared upon the base of outward things,

These chiefly are such structures as the mind

Builds for itself. Scenes different there are –

Full-formed – which take, with small internal help,

Possession of the faculties: the peace

Of night, for instance, the solemnity

Of Nature's intermediate hours of rest

When the great tide of human life stands still,

The business of the day to come unborn,

Of that gone by locked up as in the grave;

The calmness, beauty, of the spectacle,

Sky, stillness, moonshine, empty streets, and sounds

Unfrequent as in desarts; at late hours

Of winter evenings when unwholesome rains

Are falling hard, with people yet astir,

The feeble salutation from the voice

Of some unhappy woman now and then

Heard as we pass, when no one looks about,

Nothing is listened to. But these I fear

Are falsely catalogued: things that are, are not,

Even as we give them welcome, or assist –

Are prompt, or are remiss. What say you then

To times when half the city shall break out

Full of one passion – vengeance, rage, or fear –

To executions, to a street on fire,

Mobs, riots, or rejoicings? From those sights

Take one, an annual festival, the fair

Holden where martyrs suffered in past time,

And named of St Bartholomew, there see

A work that's finished to our hands, that lays,

If any spectacle on earth can do,

The whole creative powers of man asleep.

For once the Muse's help will we implore,

And she shall lodge us – wafted on her wings

Above the press and danger of the crowd –

Upon some showman's platform. What a hell

For eyes and ears, what anarchy and din

Barbarian and infernal – 'tis a dream

Monstrous in colour, motion, shape, sight, sound.

Below, the open space, through every nook

Of the wide area, twinkles, is alive

With heads; the midway region and above

Is thronged with staring pictures and huge scrolls,

Dumb proclamations of the prodigies;

And chattering monkeys dangling from their poles,

And children whirling in their roundabouts;

With those that stretch the neck, and strain the eyes,

And crack the voice in rivalship, the crowd

Inviting; with buffoons against buffoons

Grimacing, writhing, screaming; him who grinds

The hurdy-gurdy, at the fiddle weaves,

Rattles the salt-box, thumps the kettle-drum,

And him who at the trumpet puffs his cheeks,

The silver-collared negro with his timbrel,

Equestrians, tumblers, women, girls, and boys,

Blue-breeched, pink-vested, and with towering plumes.

All moveables of wonder from all parts

Are here, albinos, painted Indians, dwarfs,

The horse of knowledge, and the learned pig,

The stone-eater, the man that swallows fire,

Giants, ventriloquists, the invisible girl,

The bust that speaks and moves its goggling eyes,

The waxwork, clockwork, all the marvellous craft

Of modern Merlins, wild beasts, puppet-shows,

All out-o'-th'-way, far-fetched, perverted things,

All freaks of Nature, all Promethean thoughts

Of man – his dulness, madness, and their feats,

All jumbled up together to make up

This parliament of monsters. Tents and booths

Meanwhile – as if the whole were one vast mill –

Are vomiting, receiving, on all sides,

Men, women, three-years' children, babes in arms.

 

O, blank confusion, and a type not false

Of what the mighty city is itself

To all, except a straggler here and there –

To the whole swarm of its inhabitants –

An undistinguishable world to men,

The slaves unrespited of low pursuits,

Living amid the same perpetual flow

Of trivial objects, melted and reduced

To one identity by differences

That have no law, no meaning, and no end –

Oppression under which even highest minds

Must labour, whence the strongest are not free.

But though the picture weary out the eye,

By nature an unmanageable sight,

It is not wholly so to him who looks

In steadiness, who hath among least things

An under-sense of greatest, sees the parts

As parts, but with a feeling of the whole.

This, of all acquisitions first, awaits

On sundry and most widely different modes

Of education – nor with least delight

On that through which I passed. Attention comes,

And comprehensiveness and memory,

From early converse with the works of God

Among all regions, chiefly where appear

Most obviously simplicity and power.

By influence habitual to the mind

The mountain's outline and its steady form

Gives a pure grandeur, and its presence shapes

The measure and the prospect of the soul

To majesty: such virtue have the forms

Perennial of the ancient hills – nor less

The changeful language of their countenances

Gives movement to the thoughts, and multitude,

With order and relation. This (if still,

As hitherto, with freedom I may speak,

And the same perfect openness of mind,

Not violating any just restraint,

As I would hope, of real modesty),

This did I feel in that vast receptacle.

The spirit of Nature was upon me here,

The soul of beauty and enduring life

Was present as a habit, and diffused –

Through meagre lines and colours, and the press

Of self-destroying, transitory things –

Composure and ennobling harmony.

 

 

Book Eighth

Retrospect: Love of Nature Leading to Love of Mankind

What sounds are those, Helvellyn, which are heard

Up to thy summit, through the depth of air

Ascending as if distance had the power

To make the sounds more audible? What crowd

Is yon, assembled in the gay green field?

Crowd seems it, solitary hill, to thee,

Though but a little family of men –

Twice twenty – with their children and their wives,

And here and there a stranger interspersed.

It is a summer festival, a fair,

Such as – on this side now, and now on that,

Repeated through his tributary vales –

Helvellyn, in the silence of his rest

Sees annually, if storms be not abroad

And mists have left him an unshrouded head.

Delightful day it is for all who dwell

In this secluded glen, and eagerly

They give it welcome. Long ere heat of noon,

Behold the cattle are driven down; the sheep

That have for traffic been culled out are penned

In cotes that stand together on the plain

Ranged side by side; the chaffering is begun;

The heifer lows uneasy at the voice

Of a new master; bleat the flocks aloud.

Booths are there none: a stall or two is here,

A lame man, or a blind (the one to beg,

The other to make music); hither too

From far, with basket slung upon her arm

Of hawker's wares – books, pictures, combs, and pins –

Some aged woman finds her way again,

Year after year a punctual visitant;

The showman with his freight upon his back,

And once perchance in lapse of many years,

Prouder itinerant – mountebank, or he

Whose wonders in a covered wain lie hid.

But one is here, the loveliest of them all,

Some sweet lass of the valley, looking out

For gains – and who that sees her would not buy?

Fruits of her father's orchard, apples, pears

(On that day only to such office stooping),

She carries in her basket, and walks round

Among the crowd, half pleased with, half ashamed

Of her new calling, blushing restlessly.

The children now are rich, the old man now

Is generous, so gaiety prevails

Which all partake of, young and old.

 

Immense

Is the recess, the circumambient world

Magnificent, by which they are embraced.

They move about upon the soft green field;

How little they, they and their doings, seem,

Their herds and flocks about them, they themselves,

And all which they can further or obstruct –

Through utter weakness pitiably dear,

As tender infants are – and yet how great,

For all things serve them: them the morning light

Loves as it glistens on the silent rocks,

And them the silent rocks, which now from high

Look down upon them, the reposing clouds,

The lurking brooks from their invisible haunts,

And old Helvellyn, conscious of the stir,

And the blue sky that roofs their calm abode.

 

With deep devotion, Nature, did I feel

In that great city what I owed to thee:

High thoughts of God and man, and love of man,

Triumphant over all those loathsome sights

Of wretchedness and vice, a watchful eye,

Which, with the outside of our human life

Not satisfied, must read the inner mind.

For I already had been taught to love

My fellow-beings, to such habits trained

Among the woods and mountains, where I found

In thee a gracious guide to lead me forth

Beyond the bosom of my family,

My friends and youthful playmates. 'Twas thy power

That raised the first complacency in me,

And noticeable kindliness of heart,

Love human to the creature in himself

As he appeared, a stranger in my path,

Before my eyes a brother of this world –

Thou first didst with those motions of delight

Inspire me. I remember, far from home

Once having strayed while yet a very child,

I saw a sight – and with what joy and love!

It was a day of exhalations spread

Upon the mountains, mists and steam-like fogs

Redounding everywhere, not vehement,

But calm and mild, gentle and beautiful,

With gleams of sunshine on the eyelet spots

And loopholes of the hills, wherever seen,

Hidden by quiet process, and as soon

Unfolded, to be huddled up again –

Along a narrow valley and profound

I journeyed, when aloft above my head,

Emerging from the silvery vapours, lo,

A shepherd and his dog, in open day.

Girt round with mists they stood, and looked about

From that enclosure small, inhabitants

Of an aërial island floating on,

As seemed, with that abode in which they were,

A little pendant area of grey rocks,

By the soft wind breathed forward. With delight

As bland almost, one evening I beheld –

And at as early age (the spectacle

Is common, but by me was then first seen) –

A shepherd in the bottom of a vale,

Towards the centre standing, who with voice,

And hand waved to and fro as need required,

Gave signal to his dog, thus teaching him

To chace along the mazes of steep crags

The flock he could not see. And so the brute –

Dear creature – with a man's intelligence,

Advancing, or retreating on his steps,

Through every pervious strait, to right or left,

Thridded a way unbaffled, while the flock

Fled upwards from the terror of his bark

Through rocks and seams of turf with liquid gold

Irradiate – that deep farewell light by which

The setting sun proclaims the love he bears

To mountain regions.

 

Beauteous the domain

Where to the sense of beauty first my heart

Was opened – tract more exquisitely fair

Than is that paradise of ten thousand trees,

Or Gehol's famous gardens, in a clime

Chosen from widest empire, for delight

Of the Tartarian dynasty composed

Beyond that mighty wall, not fabulous

(China's stupendous mound!) by patient skill

Of myriads, and boon Nature's lavish help:

Scene linked to scene, and ever-growing change,

Soft, grand, or gay, with palaces and domes

Of pleasure spangled over, shady dells

For eastern monasteries, sunny mounds

With temples crested, bridges, gondolas,

Rocks, dens, and groves of foliage, taught to melt

Into each other their obsequious hues –

Going and gone again, in subtile chace,

Too fine to be pursued – or standing forth

In no discordant opposition, strong

And gorgeous as the colours side by side

Bedded among the plumes of tropic birds;

And mountains over all, embracing all,

And all the landscape endlessly enriched

With waters running, falling, or asleep.

But lovelier far than this the paradise

Where I was reared, in Nature's primitive gifts

Favored no less, and more to every sense

Delicious, seeing that the sun and sky,

The elements, and seasons in their change,

Do find their dearest fellow-labourer there

The heart of man – a district on all sides

The fragrance breathing of humanity,

Man free, man working for himself, with choice

Of time, and place, and object; by his wants,

His comforts, native occupations, cares,

Conducted on to individual ends

Or social, and still followed by a train,

Unwooed, unthought-of even: simplicity,

And beauty, and inevitable grace.

 

Yea, doubtless, at an age when but a glimpse

Of those resplendent gardens, with their frame

Imperial, and elaborate ornaments,

Would to a child be transport over-great,

When but a half-hour's roam through such a place

Would leave behind a dance of images

That shall break in upon his sleep for weeks,

Even then the common haunts of the green earth

With the ordinary human interests

Which they embosom – all without regard

As both may seem – are fastening on the heart

Insensibly, each with the other's help,

So that we love, not knowing that we love,

And feel, not knowing whence our feeling comes.

Such league have these two principles of joy

In our affections.