The Prelude, or Growth of a Poet's Mind Read Online

In my thoughts

There was a darkness – call it solitude

Or blank desertion – no familiar shapes

Of hourly objects, images of trees,

Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields,

But huge and mighty forms that do not live

Like living men moved slowly through my mind

By day, and were the trouble of my dreams.

Wisdom and spirit of the universe,

Thou soul that art the eternity of thought,

That giv'st to forms and images a breath

And everlasting motion – not in vain,

By day or star-light, thus from my first dawn

Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me

The passions that build up our human soul,

Not with the mean and vulgar works of man,

But with high objects, with enduring things,

With life and Nature, purifying thus

The elements of feeling and of thought,

And sanctifying by such discipline

Both pain and fear, until we recognise

A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.

Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me

With stinted kindness. In November days,

When vapours rolling down the valleys made

A lonely scene more lonesome, among woods

At noon, and 'mid the calm of summer nights

When by the margin of the trembling lake

Beneath the gloomy hills I homeward went

In solitude, such intercourse was mine –

'Twas mine among the fields both day and night,

And by the waters all the summer long.

And in the frosty season, when the sun

Was set, and visible for many a mile

The cottage windows through the twilight blazed,

I heeded not the summons; happy time

It was indeed for all of us, to me

It was a time of rapture. Clear and loud

The village clock tolled six; I wheeled about

Proud and exulting, like an untired horse

That cares not for its home. All shod with steel

We hissed along the polished ice in games

Confederate, imitative of the chace

And woodland pleasures, the resounding horn,

The pack loud bellowing, and the hunted hare.

So through the darkness and the cold we flew,

And not a voice was idle. With the din,

Meanwhile, the precipices rang aloud;

The leafless trees and every icy crag

Tinkled like iron; while the distant hills

Into the tumult sent an alien sound

Of melancholy, not unnoticed; while the stars,

Eastward, were sparkling clear, and in the west

The orange sky of evening died away.

Not seldom from the uproar I retired

Into a silent bay, or sportively

Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng,

To cut across the image of a star

That gleamed upon the ice. And oftentimes

When we had given our bodies to the wind,

And all the shadowy banks on either side

Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still

The rapid line of motion, then at once

Have I, reclining back upon my heels,

Stopped short – yet still the solitary cliffs

Wheeled by me, even as if the earth had rolled

With visible motion her diurnal round.

Behind me did they stretch in solemn train,

Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watched

Till all was tranquil as a dreamless sleep.

Ye presences of Nature, in the sky

Or on the earth, ye visions of the hills

And souls of lonely places, can I think

A vulgar hope was yours when ye employed

Such ministry – when ye through many a year

Haunting me thus among my boyish sports,

On caves and trees, upon the woods and hills,

Impressed upon all forms the characters

Of danger or desire, and thus did make

The surface of the universal earth

With triumph, and delight, and hope, and fear,

Work like a sea?

Not uselessly employed,

I might pursue this theme through every change

Of exercise and play to which the year

Did summon us in its delightful round.

We were a noisy crew; the sun in heaven

Beheld not vales more beautiful than ours,

Nor saw a race in happiness and joy

More worthy of the fields where they were sown.

I would record with no reluctant voice

The woods of autumn, and their hazel bowers

With milk-white clusters hung, the rod and line –

True symbol of the foolishness of hope –

Which with its strong enchantment led us on

By rocks and pools, shut out from every star

All the green summer, to forlorn cascades

Among the windings of the mountain brooks.

Unfading recollections – at this hour

The heart is almost mine with which I felt

From some hill-top on sunny afternoons

The kite, high up among the fleecy clouds,

Pull at its rein like an impatient courser,

Or, from the meadows sent on gusty days,

Beheld her breast the wind, then suddenly

Dashed headlong and rejected by the storm.

Ye lowly cottages in which we dwelt,

A ministration of your own was yours,

A sanctity, a safeguard, and a love.

Can I forget you, being as ye were

So beautiful among the pleasant fields

In which ye stood? Or can I here forget

The plain and seemly countenance with which

Ye dealt out your plain comforts? Yet had ye

Delights and exultations of your own:

Eager and never weary we pursued

Our home amusements by the warm peat fire

At evening, when with pencil and with slate,

In square divisions parcelled out, and all

With crosses and with cyphers scribbled o'er,

We schemed and puzzled, head opposed to head,

In strife too humble to be named in verse;

Or round the naked table, snow-white deal,

Cherry, or maple, sate in close array,

And to the combat – lu or whist – led on

A thick-ribbed army, not as in the world

Neglected and ungratefully thrown by

Even for the very service they had wrought,

But husbanded through many a long campaign.

Uncouth assemblage was it, where no few

Had changed their functions – some, plebean cards

Which fate beyond the promise of their birth

Had glorified, and called to represent

The persons of departed potentates.

Oh, with what echoes on the board they fell!

Ironic diamonds – clubs, hearts, diamonds, spades,

A congregation piteously akin.

Cheap matter did they give to boyish wit,

Those sooty knaves, precipitated down

With scoffs and taunts like Vulcan out of heaven;

The paramount ace, a moon in her eclipse;

Queens, gleaming through their splendour's last decay;

And monarchs, surly at the wrongs sustained

By royal visages. Meanwhile abroad

The heavy rain was falling, or the frost

Raged bitterly with keen and silent tooth;

And, interrupting the impassioned game,

From Esthwaite's neighbouring lake the splitting ice,

While it sank down towards the water, sent

Among the meadows and the hills its long

And dismal yellings, like the noise of wolves

When they are howling round the Bothnic main.

Nor, sedulous as I have been to trace

How Nature by extrinsic passion first

Peopled my mind with beauteous forms or grand

And made me love them, may I well forget

How other pleasures have been mine, and joys

Of subtler origin – how I have felt,

Not seldom, even in that tempestuous time,

Those hallowed and pure motions of the sense

Which seem in their simplicity to own

An intellectual charm, that calm delight

Which, if I err not, surely must belong

To those first-born affinities that fit

Our new existence to existing things,

And, in our dawn of being, constitute

The bond of union betwixt life and joy.

Yes, I remember when the changeful earth

And twice five seasons on my mind had stamped

The faces of the moving year, even then,

A child, I held unconscious intercourse

With the eternal beauty, drinking in

A pure organic pleasure from the lines

Of curling mist, or from the level plain

Of waters coloured by the steady clouds.

The sands of Westmoreland, the creeks and bays

Of Cumbria's rocky limits, they can tell

How when the sea threw off his evening shade

And to the shepherd's huts beneath the crags

Did send sweet notice of the rising moon,

How I have stood, to fancies such as these,

Engrafted in the tenderness of thought,

A stranger, linking with the spectacle

No conscious memory of a kindred sight,

And bringing with me no peculiar sense

Of quietness or peace – yet I have stood

Even while mine eye has moved o'er three long leagues

Of shining water, gathering, as it seemed,

Through every hair-breadth of that field of light

New pleasure, like a bee among the flowers.

Thus often in those fits of vulgar joy

Which through all seasons on a child's pursuits

Are prompt attendants, 'mid that giddy bliss

Which like a tempest works along the blood

And is forgotten, even then I felt

Gleams like the flashing of a shield. The earth

And common face of Nature spake to me

Rememberable things; sometimes, 'tis true,

By chance collisions and quaint accidents –

Like those ill-sorted unions, work supposed

Of evil-minded fairies – yet not vain

Nor profitless, if haply they impressed

Collateral objects and appearances,

Albeit lifeless then, and doomed to sleep

Until maturer seasons called them forth

To impregnate and to elevate the mind.

And if the vulgar joy by its own weight

Wearied itself out of the memory,

The scenes which were a witness of that joy

Remained, in their substantial lineaments

Depicted on the brain, and to the eye

Were visible, a daily sight. And thus

By the impressive discipline of fear,

By pleasure and repeated happiness –

So frequently repeated – and by force

Of obscure feelings representative

Of joys that were forgotten, these same scenes,

So beauteous and majestic in themselves,

Though yet the day was distant, did at length

Become habitually dear, and all

Their hues and forms were by invisible links

Allied to the affections.

I began

My story early, feeling, as I fear,

The weakness of a human love for days

Disowned by memory – ere the birth of spring

Planting my snowdrops among winter snows.

Nor will it seem to thee, my friend, so prompt

In sympathy, that I have lengthened out

With fond and feeble tongue a tedious tale.

Meanwhile my hope has been that I might fetch

Invigorating thoughts from former years,

Might fix the wavering balance of my mind,

And haply meet reproaches too, whose power

May spur me on, in manhood now mature,

To honorable toil. Yet should these hopes

Be vain, and thus should neither I be taught

To understand myself, nor thou to know

With better knowledge how the heart was framed

Of him thou lovest, need I dread from thee

Harsh judgments if I am so loth to quit

Those recollected hours that have the charm

Of visionary things, and lovely forms

And sweet sensations, that throw back our life

And almost make our infancy itself

A visible scene on which the sun is shining?

One end hereby at least hath been attained –

My mind hath been revived – and if this mood

Desert me not, I will forthwith bring down

Through later years the story of my life.

The road lies plain before me. 'Tis a theme

Single and of determined bounds, and hence

I chuse it rather at this time than work

Of ampler or more varied argument,

Where I might be discomfited and lost,

And certain hopes are with me that to thee

This labour will be welcome, honoured friend.

Book Second

School-time (Continued)

Thus far, O friend, have we, though leaving much

Unvisited, endeavoured to retrace

My life through its first years, and measured back

The way I travelled when I first began

To love the woods and fields. The passion yet

Was in its birth, sustained, as might befal,

By nourishment that came unsought – for still

From week to week, from month to month, we lived

A round of tumult. Duly were our games

Prolonged in summer till the daylight failed:

No chair remained before the doors, the bench

And threshold steps were empty, fast asleep

The labourer and the old man who had sate

A later lingerer, yet the revelry

Continued and the loud uproar. At last,

When all the ground was dark and the huge clouds

Were edged with twinkling stars, to bed we went

With weary joints and with a beating mind.

Ah, is there one who ever has been young

And needs a monitory voice to tame

The pride of virtue and of intellect?

And is there one, the wisest and the best

Of all mankind, who does not sometimes wish

For things which cannot be, who would not give,

If so he might, to duty and to truth

The eagerness of infantine desire?

A tranquillizing spirit presses now

On my corporeal frame, so wide appears

The vacancy between me and those days,

Which yet have such self-presence in my mind

That sometimes when I think of them I seem

Two consciousnesses – conscious of myself,

And of some other being. A grey stone

Of native rock, left midway in the square

Of our small market-village, was the home

And centre of these joys; and when, returned

After long absence, thither I repaired,

I found that it was split and gone to build

A smart assembly-room that perked and flared

With wash and rough-cast, elbowing the ground

Which had been ours. But let the fiddle scream,

And be ye happy! Yet, my friends, I know

That more than one of you will think with me

Of those soft starry nights, and that old dame

From whom the stone was named, who there had sate

And watched her table with its huxter's wares,

Assiduous through the length of sixty years.

We ran a boisterous race, the year span round

With giddy motion; but the time approached

That brought with it a regular desire

For calmer pleasures – when the beauteous forms

Of Nature were collaterally attached

To every scheme of holiday delight,

And every boyish sport, less grateful else

And languidly pursued. When summer came

It was the pastime of our afternoons

To beat along the plain of Windermere

With rival oars; and the selected bourne

Was now an island musical with birds

That sang for ever, now a sister isle

Beneath the oak's umbrageous covert, sown

With lilies-of-the-valley like a field,

And now a third small island where remained

An old stone table and a mouldered cave –

A hermit's history. In such a race,

So ended, disappointment could be none,

Uneasiness, or pain, or jealousy;

We rested in the shade, all pleased alike,

Conquered and conqueror. Thus the pride of strength

And the vainglory of superior skill

Were interfused with objects which subdued

And tempered them, and gradually produced

A quiet independence of the heart.

And to my friend who knows me I may add,

Unapprehensive of reproof, that hence

Ensued a diffidence and modesty,

And I was taught to feel – perhaps too much –

The self-sufficing power of solitude.

No delicate viands sapped our bodily strength:

More than we wished we knew the blessing then

Of vigorous hunger, for our daily meals

Were frugal, Sabine fare – and then, exclude

A little weekly stipend, and we lived

Through three divisions of the quartered year

In pennyless poverty. But now, to school

Returned from the half-yearly holidays,

We came with purses more profusely filled,

Allowance which abundantly sufficed

To gratify the palate with repasts

More costly than the dame of whom I spake,

That ancient woman, and her board, supplied.

Hence inroads into distant vales, and long

Excursions far away among the hills,

Hence rustic dinners on the cool green ground –

Or in the woods, or near a river-side,

Or by some shady fountain – while soft airs

Among the leaves were stirring, and the sun,

Unfelt, shone sweetly round us in our joy.

Nor is my aim neglected if I tell

How twice in the long length of those half-years

We from our funds perhaps with bolder hand

Drew largely, anxious for one day at least

To feel the motion of the galloping steed.

And with the good old innkeeper, in truth,

On such occasion sometimes we employed

Sly subterfuge, for the intended bound

Of the day's journey was too distant far

For any cautious man: a structure famed

Beyond its neighbourhood, the antique walls

Of that large abbey which within the Vale

Of Nightshade, to St Mary's honour built,

Stands yet, a mouldering pile with fractured arch,

Belfry, and images, and living trees –

A holy scene. Along the smooth green turf

Our horses grazed. To more than inland peace

Left by the sea-wind passing overhead

(Though wind of roughest temper) trees and towers

May in that valley oftentimes be seen

Both silent and both motionless alike,

Such is the shelter that is there, and such

The safeguard for repose and quietness.

Our steeds remounted, and the summons given,

With whip and spur we by the chauntry flew

In uncouth race, and left the cross-legged knight,

And the stone abbot, and that single wren

Which one day sang so sweetly in the nave

Of the old church that, though from recent showers

The earth was comfortless, and, touched by faint

Internal breezes – sobbings of the place

And respirations – from the roofless walls

The shuddering ivy dripped large drops, yet still

So sweetly 'mid the gloom the invisible bird

Sang to itself that there I could have made

My dwelling-place, and lived for ever there

To hear such music. Through the walls we flew

And down the valley, and, a circuit made

In wantonness of heart, through rough and smooth

We scampered homeward. Oh, ye rocks and streams,

And that still spirit of the evening air,

Even in this joyous time I sometimes felt

Your presence, when, with slackened step, we breathed

Along the sides of the steep hills, or when,

Lighted by gleams of moonlight from the sea,

We beat with thundering hoofs the level sand.

Upon the eastern shore of Windermere

Above the crescent of a pleasant bay

There was an inn, no homely-featured shed,

Brother of the surrounding cottages,

But 'twas a splendid place, the door beset

With chaises, grooms, and liveries, and within

Decanters, glasses, and the blood-red wine.

In ancient times, or ere the hall was built

On the large island, had this dwelling been

More worthy of a poet's love, a hut

Proud of its one bright fire and sycamore shade;

But though the rhymes were gone which once inscribed

The threshold, and large golden characters

On the blue-frosted signboard had usurped

The place of the old lion, in contempt

And mockery of the rustic painter's hand,

Yet to this hour the spot to me is dear

With all its foolish pomp. The garden lay

Upon a slope surmounted by the plain

Of a small bowling-green; beneath us stood

A grove, with gleams of water through the trees

And over the tree-tops – nor did we want

Refreshment, strawberries and mellow cream –

And there through half an afternoon we played

On the smooth platform, and the shouts we sent

Made all the mountains ring. But ere the fall

Of night, when in our pinnace we returned

Over the dusky lake, and to the beach

Of some small island steered our course, with one,

The minstrel of our troop, and left him there,

And rowed off gently, while he blew his flute

Alone upon the rock, oh, then the calm

And dead still water lay upon my mind

Even with a weight of pleasure, and the sky,

Never before so beautiful, sank down

Into my heart and held me like a dream.

Thus daily were my sympathies enlarged,

And thus the common range of visible things

Grew dear to me: already I began

To love the sun, a boy I loved the sun

Not as I since have loved him – as a pledge

And surety of our earthly life, a light

Which while we view we feel we are alive –

But for this cause, that I had seen him lay

His beauty on the morning hills, had seen

The western mountain touch his setting orb

In many a thoughtless hour, when from excess

Of happiness my blood appeared to flow

With its own pleasure, and I breathed with joy.

And from like feelings, humble though intense,

To patriotic and domestic love

Analogous, the moon to me was dear;

For I would dream away my purposes

Standing to look upon her, while she hung

Midway between the hills as if she knew

No other region but belonged to thee,

Yea, appertained by a peculiar right

To thee and thy grey huts, my darling vale.

Those incidental charms which first attached

My heart to rural objects, day by day

Grew weaker, and I hasten on to tell

How Nature, intervenient till this time

And secondary, now at length was sought

For her own sake. But who shall parcel out

His intellect by geometric rules,

Split like a province into round and square?

Who knows the individual hour in which

His habits were first sown even as a seed,

Who that shall point as with a wand, and say

»This portion of the river of my mind

Came from yon fountain«? Thou, my friend, art one

More deeply read in thy own thoughts; to thee

Science appears but what in truth she is,

Not as our glory and our absolute boast,

But as a succedaneum, and a prop

To our infirmity. Thou art no slave

Of that false secondary power by which

In weakness we create distinctions, then

Deem that our puny boundaries are things

Which we perceive, and not which we have made.

To thee, unblinded by these outward shows,

The unity of all has been revealed;

And thou wilt doubt with me, less aptly skilled

Than many are to class the cabinet

Of their sensations, and in voluble phrase

Run through the history and birth of each

As of a single independent thing.

Hard task to analyse a soul, in which

Not only general habits and desires,

But each most obvious and particular thought –

Not in a mystical and idle sense,

But in the words of reason deeply weighed –

Hath no beginning.

Blessed the infant babe –

For with my best conjectures I would trace

The progress of our being – blest the babe

Nursed in his mother's arms, the babe who sleeps

Upon his mother's breast, who, when his soul

Claims manifest kindred with an earthly soul,

Doth gather passion from his mother's eye.

Such feelings pass into his torpid life

Like an awakening breeze, and hence his mind,

Even in the first trial of its powers,

Is prompt and watchful, eager to combine

In one appearance all the elements

And parts of the same object, else detached

And loth to coalesce.