. verse fitted to the mind and the mind to the universe, he bestows
old habit of vision for a new one. In shifting the center of his interest
upon man a dignity which cannot be derived from looking at him
from Nature to man in the field of morality Wordsworth is fulfilling
in the actualities of common life, from seeing him engaged in business, in morality and politics.
11 Carlyle makes elaborate play with this idea in his account of Teufelsdriickh,
Yet here we must credit Wordsworth with the double vision. Man
and see _the essay on The Princess Casamassima in this volume, page 60. The fantasy
that their parents are really foster parents 1s a common one with children and it is
must be conceived of as "imperial," but he must also be seen as he
to be associated with the various forms of the belief that the world is not real.
THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION
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The Immortality Ode
r45
·----·----·
his own conception of the three ages of man which Professor Beatty
definition of the new powers seems to imply what the new subject
has expounded so well. The shift in interest he called the coming of
matter must be-thoughts that lie too deep for tears are ideally the
"the philosophic mind," but the word "philosophic" does not have
thoughts which are brought to mind by tragedy. It would be an
here either of two of its meanings in common usage-it does not
extravagant but not an absurd reading of the Ode that found it to
mean abstract and it does not mean apathetic. Wordsworth is not
be Wordsworth's farewell to the characteristic mode of his poetry,
saying, and it is sentimental and unimaginative of us to say, that
the mode that Keats called the "egotistical sublime" and a dedicahe has become less a feeling man and less a poet. He is only saying tion to the mode of tragedy. But the tragic mode could not be
that he has become less a youth. Indeed, the Ode is so little a fare
Wordsworth's. He did not have the "negative capability" which
well to art, so little a dirge sung over departing powers, that it is
Keats believed to be the source of Shakespeare's power, the gift of
actually the very opposite-it is a welcome of new powers and a
being able to be "content with half-knowledge," to give up the "irridedication to a new poetic subject. For if sensitivity and responsivetable reaching after fact and reason," to remain "in uncertainties, ness be among the poetic powers, what else is Wordsworth saying at
mysteries, doubts." In this he was at one with all the poets of the
the end of the poem except that he has a greater sensitivity and
Romantic Movement and after-negative capability was impossible
responsiveness than ever before? The "philosophic mind" has not defor them to come by and tragedy was not for them. But although creased but, on the contrary, increased the power to feel.
Wordsworth did not realize the new kind of art which seems implied by his sense of new powers, yet his bold declaration that he The clouds that gather round the setting sun
had acquired a new way of feeling makes it impossible for us to go
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
on saying that the Ode was his "conscious farewell to his art, a dirge
Another race hath been and other palms are won.
sung over his departing powers."
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Still, was there not, after the composition of the Ode, a great fall
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
ing off in his genius which we are drawn to connect with the crucial
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
changes the Ode records? That there was a falling off is certain,
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
although we must observe that it was not so sharp as is commonly
The meanest flower is significant now not only because, like the
held and also that it did not occur immediately or even soon after
small celandine, it speaks of age, suffering, and death, but because
the composition of the first four stanzas with their statement that
to a man who is aware of man's mortality the world becomes sigthe visionary gleam had gone; on the contrary, some of the most nificant and precious. The knowledge of man's mortality-this must
striking of Wordsworth's verse was written at this time. It must be
be carefully noted in a poem presumably about immortality-now
remembered too that another statement of the loss of the visionary
replaces the "glory" as the agency which makes things significant
gleam, that made in "Tintern Abbey," had been followed by all the
and precious. We are back again at optics, which we have never
superb production of the "great decade"-an objection which is somereally left, and the Ode in a very honest fashion has come full circle.
times dealt with by saying that Wordsworth wrote his best work
The new poetic powers of sensitivity and responsiveness are new
from his near memories of the gleam, and that, as he grew older and
not so much in degree as in kind; they would therefore seem to
moved farther from it, his recollection dimmed and thus he lost his
require a new poetic subject matter for their exercise. And the very
power: it is an explanation which suggests that mechanical and sim-
THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION
--·-··--·-··--·-·--·-·-·-·-··-··-··-11-••-·-·-··-·-..
The Immortality Ode
147
_ .. ··--"------·-··-·--·-·-·-·-·-·-·-··--·-·-··-··
pie notions of the mind and of the poetic process are all too tempting
Ill
to those who speculate on Wordsworth's decline. Given the fact of
Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound
the great power, the desire to explain its relative deterioration will
As to the tabor's sound,
no doubt always be irresistible. But we must be aware, in any at
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
tempt to make this explanation, that an account of why Wordsworth
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
ceased to write great poetry must at the same time be an account of
And I again am strong:
how he once did write great poetry. And this latter account, in our
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
present state of knowledge, we cannot begin to furnish.
I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng,
The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
Ode: Intimations of Im mortality from
And all the earth is gay;
Recollections of Early Childhood
Land and sea
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Doth every Beast keep holiday;
The Child is father of the Man;
Thou Child of Joy,
And I could wish my days to be
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy
Bound each to each by natural piety.
Shepherd boy!
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
/> IV
The earth, and every common sight,
Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call
To me did seem
Ye to each other make; I see
Apparelled in celestial light,
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
My heart is at your festival,
It is not now as it hath been of yore;
My head hath its coronal,
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel-I feel it all.
By night or day,
Oh evil day! if I were sullen
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning,
And the Children are culling
II
On every side,
The Rainbow comes and goes,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
And lovely is the Rose,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
The Moon doth with delight
And the Babe leaps up on his Mother's arm:-
Look round her when the heavens are bare,
1 hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
Waters on a starry night
-But there's a Tree, of many, one,
Are beautiful and fair;
A single Field which I have looked upon,
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
But yet I know, where'er I go,
The Pansy at my feet
That there hath past away a glory from the earth.
Doth the same tale repeat:
1.,S
THE UBERAL IMAGINATION
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The Immortality Ode
..
149
_,,_
_
_,.,.-,_, _,,-•-•-•-••-••-•-n-11-•-•-••-•-••-••-••-•-••-•-•-••
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learned art;
A wedding or a festival,
V
A mourning or a funeral;
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
And this hath now his heart,
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
And unto this he frames his song:
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
Then will he fit his tongue
And cometh from afar:
To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
But it will not be long
And not in utter nakedness,
Ere this be thrown aside,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
And with new joy and pride
From God, who is our home:
The little Actor cons another part;
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Filling from time to time his "humorous stage"
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,
Upon the growing Boy,
That Life brings with her in her equipage;
But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,
As if his whole vocation
He sees it in his joy;
Were endless imitation.
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
VIII
Is on his way attended;
Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
At length the Man perceives it die away,
Thy Soul's immensity;
And fade into the light of common day.
Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
VI
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,-
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
On whom those truths do rest,
And, even with something of a Mother's mind,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
And no unworthy aim,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
The homely Nurse doth all she can
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave,
Forget the glories he hath known,
A Presence which is not to be put by;
And that imperial palace whence he came.
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
VII
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
A six years' Darling of a pigmy size!
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
See where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,
Fre�ted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
150
THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION
·-·-··-··-··-·-·-·-··-·-·-··--·-··-··-·-··-··-.. -··-··-11·--··
The Immortality Ode
151
-••---••-•-•-••-•-•-•-••-••-••-••-••-•-u•-••-••-••-••-••-••-••-11.
IX
X
0 joy! that in our embers
Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
Is something that doth live,
And let the young Lambs bound
That nature yet remembers
As to the tabor's sound!
What was so fugitive!
We in thought will join your throng,
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
Ye that through your hearts to-day
For that which is most worthy to be blest;
Feel the gladness of the May!
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Not for these I raise
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
The song of thanks and praise;
We will grieve not, rather find
But for those obstinate questionings
Strength in what remains behind;
Of sense and outward things,
In the primal sympathy
Failings from us, vanishings;
Which having been must ever be;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Moving about in worlds not realised,
Out of human suffering;
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
In the faith that looks through death,
Did tremble like a guilt
y Thing surprised:
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
XI
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
And 0, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
I only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,
To perish never:
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Nor Man nor Boy,
Is lovely yet;
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Can utterly abolish or destroy.
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
Hence in a season of calm weather
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Though inland far we be,
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Which brought us hither,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
Can in a moment travel thither,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
And see the Children sport upon the shore,
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
---- . -- --------
Art and Neurosis
153
-------"--·· .. .. ··-·--·--·-·--·-··-·-··-..-··-·-·
istic notions of our culture. I should like to bring it into question.
To do so is to bring also into question certain early ideas of Freud's
and certain conclusions which literary laymen have drawn from the
Art and Neurosis
whole tendency of the Freudian psychology. From the very start it
was recognized that psychoanalysis was likely to have important
things to say about art �nd artists. Freud himself thought so, yet
when he first addressed himself to the subject he said many clumsy
and misleading things. I have elsewhere and at length tried to separate the useful from the useless and even dangerous statements about T
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