Delphi Complete Works of William Wordsworth

by William Wordsworth

For, born in a poor district, and which yet

  Retaineth more of ancient homeliness,

  Than any other nook of English ground,

  It was my fortune scarcely to have seen,

  Through the whole tenor of my school-day time,

  The face of one, who, whether boy or man,

  Was vested with attention or respect 220

  Through claims of wealth or blood; nor was it least

  Of many benefits, in later years

  Derived from academic institutes

  And rules, that they held something up to view

  Of a Republic, where all stood thus far

  Upon equal ground; that we were brothers all

  In honour, as in one community,

  Scholars and gentlemen; where, furthermore,

  Distinction open lay to all that came,

  And wealth and titles were in less esteem 230

  Than talents, worth, and prosperous industry,

  Add unto this, subservience from the first

  To presences of God’s mysterious power

  Made manifest in Nature’s sovereignty,

  And fellowship with venerable books,

  To sanction the proud workings of the soul,

  And mountain liberty. It could not be

  But that one tutored thus should look with awe

  Upon the faculties of man, receive

  Gladly the highest promises, and hail, 240

  As best, the government of equal rights

  And individual worth. And hence, O Friend!

  If at the first great outbreak I rejoiced

  Less than might well befit my youth, the cause

  In part lay here, that unto me the events

  Seemed nothing out of nature’s certain course,

  A gift that was come rather late than soon.

  No wonder, then, if advocates like these,

  Inflamed by passion, blind with prejudice,

  And stung with injury, at this riper day, 250

  Were impotent to make my hopes put on

  The shape of theirs, my understanding bend

  In honour to their honour: zeal, which yet

  Had slumbered, now in opposition burst

  Forth like a Polar summer: every word

  They uttered was a dart, by counter-winds

  Blown back upon themselves; their reason seemed

  Confusion-stricken by a higher power

  Than human understanding, their discourse

  Maimed, spiritless; and, in their weakness strong, 260

  I triumphed.

  Meantime, day by day, the roads

  Were crowded with the bravest youth of France,

  And all the promptest of her spirits, linked

  In gallant soldiership, and posting on

  To meet the war upon her frontier bounds.

  Yet at this very moment do tears start

  Into mine eyes: I do not say I weep—

  I wept not then,—but tears have dimmed my sight,

  In memory of the farewells of that time,

  Domestic severings, female fortitude 270

  At dearest separation, patriot love

  And self-devotion, and terrestrial hope,

  Encouraged with a martyr’s confidence;

  Even files of strangers merely seen but once,

  And for a moment, men from far with sound

  Of music, martial tunes, and banners spread,

  Entering the city, here and there a face,

  Or person, singled out among the rest,

  Yet still a stranger and beloved as such;

  Even by these passing spectacles my heart 280

  Was oftentimes uplifted, and they seemed

  Arguments sent from Heaven to prove the cause

  Good, pure, which no one could stand up against,

  Who was not lost, abandoned, selfish, proud,

  Mean, miserable, wilfully depraved,

  Hater perverse of equity and truth.

  Among that band of Officers was one,

  Already hinted at, of other mould—

  A patriot, thence rejected by the rest,

  And with an oriental loathing spurned, 290

  As of a different caste. A meeker man

  Than this lived never, nor a more benign,

  Meek though enthusiastic. Injuries

  Made ‘him’ more gracious, and his nature then

  Did breathe its sweetness out most sensibly,

  As aromatic flowers on Alpine turf,

  When foot hath crushed them. He through the events

  Of that great change wandered in perfect faith,

  As through a book, an old romance, or tale

  Of Fairy, or some dream of actions wrought 300

  Behind the summer clouds. By birth he ranked

  With the most noble, but unto the poor

  Among mankind he was in service bound,

  As by some tie invisible, oaths professed

  To a religious order. Man he loved

  As man; and, to the mean and the obscure,

  And all the homely in their homely works,

  Transferred a courtesy which had no air

  Of condescension; but did rather seem

  A passion and a gallantry, like that 310

  Which he, a soldier, in his idler day

  Had paid to woman: somewhat vain he was,

  Or seemed so, yet it was not vanity,

  But fondness, and a kind of radiant joy

  Diffused around him, while he was intent

  On works of love or freedom, or revolved

  Complacently the progress of a cause,

  Whereof he was a part: yet this was meek

  And placid, and took nothing from the man

  That was delightful. Oft in solitude 320

  With him did I discourse about the end

  Of civil government, and its wisest forms;

  Of ancient loyalty, and chartered rights,

  Custom and habit, novelty and change;

  Of self-respect, and virtue in the few

  For patrimonial honour set apart,

  And ignorance in the labouring multitude.

  For he, to all intolerance indisposed,

  Balanced these contemplations in his mind;

  And I, who at that time was scarcely dipped 330

  Into the turmoil, bore a sounder judgment

  Than later days allowed; carried about me,

  With less alloy to its integrity,

  The experience of past ages, as, through help

  Of books and common life, it makes sure way

  To youthful minds, by objects over near

  Not pressed upon, nor dazzled or misled

  By struggling with the crowd for present ends.

  But though not deaf, nor obstinate to find

  Error without excuse upon the side 340

  Of them who strove against us, more delight

  We took, and let this freely be confessed,

  In painting to ourselves the miseries

  Of royal courts, and that voluptuous life

  Unfeeling, where the man who is of soul

  The meanest thrives the most; where dignity,

  True personal dignity, abideth not;

  A light, a cruel, and vain world cut off

  From the natural inlets of just sentiment,

  From lowly sympathy and chastening truth; 350

  Where good and evil interchange their names,

  And thirst for bloody spoils abroad is paired

  With vice at home. We added dearest themes—

  Man and his noble nature, as it is

  The gift which God has placed within his power,

  His blind desires and steady faculties

  Capable of clear truth, the one to break

  Bondage, the other to build liberty

  On firm foundations, making social life,

  Through knowledge spreading and imperishable, 360

  As just in regulation, and as pure


  As individual in the wise and good.

  We summoned up the honourable deeds

  Of ancient Story, thought of each bright spot,

  That would be found in all recorded time,

  Of truth preserved and error passed away;

  Of single spirits that catch the flame from Heaven,

  And how the multitudes of men will feed

  And fan each other; thought of sects, how keen

  They are to put the appropriate nature on, 370

  Triumphant over every obstacle

  Of custom, language, country, love, or hate,

  And what they do and suffer for their creed;

  How far they travel, and how long endure;

  How quickly mighty Nations have been formed,

  From least beginnings; how, together locked

  By new opinions, scattered tribes have made

  One body, spreading wide as clouds in heaven.

  To aspirations then of our own minds

  Did we appeal; and, finally, beheld 380

  A living confirmation of the whole

  Before us, in a people from the depth

  Of shameful imbecility uprisen,

  Fresh as the morning star. Elate we looked

  Upon their virtues; saw, in rudest men,

  Self-sacrifice the firmest; generous love,

  And continence of mind, and sense of right,

  Uppermost in the midst of fiercest strife.

  Oh, sweet it is, in academic groves,

  Or such retirement, Friend! as we have known 390

  In the green dales beside our Rotha’s stream,

  Greta, or Derwent, or some nameless rill,

  To ruminate, with interchange of talk,

  On rational liberty, and hope in man,

  Justice and peace. But far more sweet such toil—

  Toil, say I, for it leads to thoughts abstruse—

  If nature then be standing on the brink

  Of some great trial, and we hear the voice

  Of one devoted,—one whom circumstance

  Hath called upon to embody his deep sense 400

  In action, give it outwardly a shape,

  And that of benediction, to the world.

  Then doubt is not, and truth is more than truth,—

  A hope it is, and a desire; a creed

  Of zeal, by an authority Divine

  Sanctioned, of danger, difficulty, or death.

  Such conversation, under Attic shades,

  Did Dion hold with Plato; ripened thus

  For a Deliverer’s glorious task,—and such

  He, on that ministry already bound, 410

  Held with Eudemus and Timonides,

  Surrounded by adventurers in arms,

  When those two vessels with their daring freight,

  For the Sicilian Tyrant’s overthrow,

  Sailed from Zacynthus,—philosophic war,

  Led by Philosophers. With harder fate,

  Though like ambition, such was he, O Friend!

  Of whom I speak. So Beaupuis (let the name

  Stand near the worthiest of Antiquity)

  Fashioned his life; and many a long discourse, 420

  With like persuasion honoured, we maintained:

  He, on his part, accoutred for the worst,

  He perished fighting, in supreme command,

  Upon the borders of the unhappy Loire,

  For liberty, against deluded men,

  His fellow-countrymen; and yet most blessed

  In this, that he the fate of later times

  Lived not to see, nor what we now behold,

  Who have as ardent hearts as he had then.

  Along that very Loire, with festal mirth 430

  Resounding at all hours, and innocent yet

  Of civil slaughter, was our frequent walk;

  Or in wide forests of continuous shade,

  Lofty and over-arched, with open space

  Beneath the trees, clear footing many a mile—

  A solemn region. Oft amid those haunts,

  From earnest dialogues I slipped in thought,

  And let remembrance steal to other times,

  When, o’er those interwoven roots, moss-clad,

  And smooth as marble or a waveless sea, 440

  Some Hermit, from his cell forth-strayed, might pace

  In sylvan meditation undisturbed;

  As on the pavement of a Gothic church

  Walks a lone Monk, when service hath expired,

  In peace and silence. But if e’er was heard,—

  Heard, though unseen,—a devious traveller,

  Retiring or approaching from afar

  With speed and echoes loud of trampling hoofs

  From the hard floor reverberated, then

  It was Angelica thundering through the woods 450

  Upon her palfrey, or that gentle maid

  Erminia, fugitive as fair as she.

  Sometimes methought I saw a pair of knights

  Joust underneath the trees, that as in storm

  Rocked high above their heads; anon, the din

  Of boisterous merriment, and music’s roar,

  In sudden proclamation, burst from haunt

  Of Satyrs in some viewless glade, with dance

  Rejoicing o’er a female in the midst,

  A mortal beauty, their unhappy thrall. 460

  The width of those huge forests, unto me

  A novel scene, did often in this way

  Master my fancy while I wandered on

  With that revered companion. And sometimes—

  When to a convent in a meadow green,

  By a brook-side, we came, a roofless pile,

  And not by reverential touch of Time

  Dismantled, but by violence abrupt—

  In spite of those heart-bracing colloquies,

  In spite of real fervour, and of that 470

  Less genuine and wrought up within myself—

  I could not but bewail a wrong so harsh,

  And for the Matin-bell to sound no more

  Grieved, and the twilight taper, and the cross

  High on the topmost pinnacle, a sign

  (How welcome to the weary traveller’s eyes!)

  Of hospitality and peaceful rest.

  And when the partner of those varied walks

  Pointed upon occasion to the site

  Of Romorentin, home of ancient kings, 480

  To the imperial edifice of Blois,

  Or to that rural castle, name now slipped

  From my remembrance, where a lady lodged,

  By the first Francis wooed, and bound to him

  In chains of mutual passion, from the tower,

  As a tradition of the country tells,

  Practised to commune with her royal knight

  By cressets and love-beacons, intercourse

  ‘Twixt her high-seated residence and his

  Far off at Chambord on the plain beneath; 490

  Even here, though less than with the peaceful house

  Religious, ‘mid those frequent monuments

  Of Kings, their vices and their better deeds,

  Imagination, potent to inflame

  At times with virtuous wrath and noble scorn,

  Did also often mitigate the force

  Of civic prejudice, the bigotry,

  So call it, of a youthful patriot’s mind;

  And on these spots with many gleams I looked

  Of chivalrous delight. Yet not the less, 500

  Hatred of absolute rule, where will of one

  Is law for all, and of that barren pride

  In them who, by immunities unjust,

  Between the sovereign and the people stand,

  His helper and not theirs, laid stronger hold

  Daily upon me, mixed with pity too

  And love; for where hope is, there love will be

  For the abject multitude, And when we chanced

  One day to meet a hunger-bitten g
irl,

  Who crept along fitting her languid gait 510

  Unto a heifer’s motion, by a cord

  Tied to her arm, and picking thus from the lane

  Its sustenance, while the girl with pallid hands

  Was busy knitting in a heartless mood

  Of solitude, and at the sight my friend

  In agitation said, “‘Tis against ‘that’

  That we are fighting,” I with him believed

  That a benignant spirit was abroad

  Which might not be withstood, that poverty

  Abject as this would in a little time 520

  Be found no more, that we should see the earth

  Unthwarted in her wish to recompense

  The meek, the lowly, patient child of toil,

  All institutes for ever blotted out

  That legalised exclusion, empty pomp

  Abolished, sensual state and cruel power

  Whether by edict of the one or few;

  And finally, as sum and crown of all,

  Should see the people having a strong hand

  In framing their own laws; whence better days 530

  To all mankind. But, these things set apart,

  Was not this single confidence enough

  To animate the mind that ever turned

  A thought to human welfare? That henceforth

  Captivity by mandate without law

  Should cease; and open accusation lead

  To sentence in the hearing of the world,

  And open punishment, if not the air

  Be free to breathe in, and the heart of man

  Dread nothing. From this height I shall not stoop 540

  To humbler matter that detained us oft

  In thought or conversation, public acts,

  And public persons, and emotions wrought

  Within the breast, as ever-varying winds

  Of record or report swept over us;

  But I might here, instead, repeat a tale,

  Told by my Patriot friend, of sad events,

  That prove to what low depth had struck the roots,

  How widely spread the boughs, of that old tree

  Which, as a deadly mischief, and a foul 550

  And black dishonour, France was weary of.

  Oh, happy time of youthful lovers, (thus

  The story might begin,) oh, balmy time,

  In which a love-knot, on a lady’s brow,

  Is fairer than the fairest star in Heaven!

  So might—and with that prelude ‘did’ begin

  The record; and, in faithful verse, was given

  The doleful sequel.

  But our little bark

  On a strong river boldly hath been launched;

  And from the driving current should we turn 560

  To loiter wilfully within a creek,

  Howe’er attractive, Fellow voyager!

  Would’st thou not chide? Yet deem not my pains lost:

  For Vaudracour and Julia (so were named

  The ill-fated pair) in that plain tale will draw