And singing, while th' accordant hand
Sweeps his harp, the Master rides;

So shall he touch at length a friendly strand,
And he, with his preserver, shine star-bright
In memory, through silent night.

The pipe of Pan, to shepherds

Couch'd in the shadow of Mænalian pines,"
Was passing sweet; the eyeballs of the leopards,
That in high triumph drew the Lord of vines,
How did they sparkle to the cymbal's clang!
While Fauns and Satyrs beat the ground
In cadence, and Silenus swang

This way and that, with wild-flowers crown'd.-
To life, to life give back thine ear:
Ye who are longing to be rid

Of fable, though to truth subservient, hear
The little sprinkling of cold earth that fell
Echo'd from the coffin-lid;

The convict's summons in the steeple's knell;
"The vain distress-gun," from a leeward shore,
Repeated, heard, and heard no more!

For terror, joy, or pity,

Vast is the compass and the swell of notes:
From the babe's first cry to voice of regal city,
Rolling a solemn sea-like bass, that floats
Far as the woodlands, - with the trill to blend
Of that shy songstress whose love-tale
Might tempt an angel to descend,
While hovering o'er the moonlit vale.

Ye wandering Utterances, has Earth no scheme,
No scale of moral music, to unite

Powers that survive but in the faintest dream
Of memory?—O, that ye might stoop to bear

7 Mænalian is the same as Arcadian; Manalus being the name of the mountains in Arcadia, which were celebrated as the favourite haunts of the god Pan. Arcadia is the old name of the central portion of Peloponnesus. The Arcadians were noted as a simple pastoral people, passionately fond of music, and devoted to the worship of Pan.

8 Fauns and Satyrs appear to have been much the same, only the former were Roman, the latter Grecian. They were among the minor divinities of the ancient mythology: in form, half man and half goat, with horns; vastly given to music and wine, and to sensual pleasures of all sorts. Silenus was their chief, and a very funny god withal. He was generally intoxicated, and is described as a jovial old man, with a bald head, a puck nose, fat and round like his wine-bag, which he always carried with him. He was specially given to dancing, and so was called the dancer: in other respects, his addiction was about equally divided between wine, sleep, and music. But his main peculiarity lay in his being an inspired prophet, who knew all the past and the remotest future, and also a sage who despised all the gifts of fortune. When drunk or asleep, he was in the power of mortals, who could compel him to prophesy and sing by tying him up with chains of flowers.

Chains, such precious chains of sight
As labour'd minstrelsies through ages wear!
O, for a balance fit the truth to tell

Of th' Unsubstantial, ponder'd well!

By one pervading spirit

Of tones and numbers all things are controll'd,
As sages taught, where faith was found to merit
Initiation in that mystery old.

The heavens, whose aspect makes our minds as still
As they themselves appear to be,
Innumerable voices fill

With everlasting harmony;

The towering headlands, crown'd with mist,

Their feet among the billows, know

That Ocean is a mighty harmonist;

Thy pinions, universal Air,

Ever waving to and fro,

Are delegates of harmony, and bear

Strains that support the Seasons in their round;

Stern Winter loves a dirge-like sound.

Break forth into thanksgiving,

Ye banded instruments of wind and chords;

Unite, to magnify the Ever-living,

Your inarticulate notes with the voice of words!

Nor hush'd be service from the lowing mead,

Nor mute the forest hum of noon;

Thou too be heard, lone eagle! freed
From snowy peak and cloud, attune
Thy hungry barkings to the hymn
Of joy, that from her utmost walls
The six-days' Work, by flaming Seraphim,
Transmits to Heaven! As Deep to Deep
Shouting through one valley calls,

All worlds, all natures, mood and measure keep
For praise and ceaseless gratulation, pour'd

Into the ear of God, their Lord!

9 Alluding to what is called "the music of the spheres,"-an ancient mystery which taught that the heavenly bodies in their revolutions sing together in a concert so loud, various, and sweet, as to exceed all proportion to the human ear. The same thing is apparently referred to in Job, xxxviii. 7: The morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." And the greatest souls in every age seem to have been raised above themselves by the idea that the universe was knit together by a principle of which musical harmony is the aptest and clearest expression. So the well-known passage in The Merchant of Venice, v. 1:

"There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st

But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins."

A Voice to Light gave Being;

To Time, and Man his earth-born chronicler;
A Voice shall finish doubt and dim foreseeing,
And sweep away life's visionary stir:

The trumpet, (we, intoxicate with pride,
Arm at its blast for deadly wars,)
To archangelic lips applied,

The grave shall open, quench the stars.
O Silence! are Man's noisy years
No more than moments of thy life?

Is Harmony, blest queen of smiles and tears,
With her smooth tones and discords just,
Temper'd into rapturous strife,

Thy destined bond-slave? No! though Earth be dust
And vanish, though the heavens dissolve, her stay
Is in the WORD, that shall not pass away.1

ODE.

[1828

INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.2

The Child is Father of the Man;

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.

See page 129.

I.

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell'd in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;
Turn whereso'er I may,

By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

1 This has long seemed to me one of the author's greatest poems; hardly infe rior, indeed, to his Ode on Immortality, though less celebrated than that. The classi cal allusions, of which there are many, are selected with rare judgment, and used with consummate art: the scope of the piece is as wide-sweeping and inclusive as the theme can well admit of; yet all the parts are toned and balanced in exquisite harmony; and the effect of the whole is inspiring and soul-lifting in the highest degree. Nor can its freshness be exhausted: after a close familiarity of more than thirty-five years, it still affects me in a manner quite beyond my powers of ex pression. It is as if all the voices and utterances of the world were gathered and attempered into a multitudinous anthem, now thrilling the heart with the deepest notes of awe, now soothing it with the softest notes of joy, and anon blending the two in a strain that leaves no part of our emotional nature untouched. Thus much is the least I can say of this magnificent poem.

2 The little poem, We are Seven, page 133, ought to be read in connection with

II.

The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the Rose;

The Moon doth with delight

Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night

Are beautiful and fair;

The sunshine is a glorious birth;

But yet I know, where'er I go,

That there hath past away a glory from the earth.

III.

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound,

To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:

The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng;
The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;

Land and sea

Give themselves up to jollity,

this Ode. In his notes dictated 1843, the author has the following: "This was com posed during my residence at Townend, Grasmere. Two years at least passed be. tween the writing of the first four stanzas and the remaining part. To the attentive and competent reader the whole sufficiently explains itself; but there may be no harm in adverting here to particular feelings or experiences of my own mind on which the structure of the poem partly rests. Nothing was more difficult for me in childhood than to admit the notion of death as a state applicable to my own being. I used to brood over the stories of Enoch and Elijah, and almost to persuade myself that, whatever might become of others, I should be translated, in something of the same way, to Heaven. With a feeling congenial to this, I was often unable to think of external things as having external existence; and I communed with all that I saw as something not apart from, but inherent in, my own immaterial nature. Many times while going to school have I grasped at a wall or tree, to recall myself from this abyss of idealism to the reality. At that time I was afraid of such processes. In later periods of life I have deplored, as we all have reason to do, a subjugation of an opposite character. To that dream-like vividness and splendour which invest objects of sight in childhood, every one, I believe, if he would look back, could bear testimony, and I need not dwell upon it here; but, having in the poem regarded it as presumptive evidence of a prior state of existence, I think it right to protest against a conclusion, which has given pain to some good and pious persons, that I meant to inculcate such a belief. But let us bear in mind that, though the idea is not advanced in revelation, there is nothing there to contradict it, and the fall of man presents an analogy in its favour. Accordingly, a pre-existent state has entered into the popular creeds of many nations; and, among all persons acquainted with classic literature, is known as an ingredient in the Platonic philosophy. Ar chimedes said that he could move the world, if he had a point whereon to rest his machine. Who has not felt the same aspirations as regards the world of his own mind? Having to wield some of its elements when I was impelled to write this poem on the Immortality of the Soul,' I took hold of the notion of pre-existonce as having sufficient foundation in humanity for authorizing me to make for my p irpose the best use of it I could as a poet."

And with the heart of May
Doth every Beast keep holiday;-
Thou Child of Joy,

Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy
Shepherd-boy!

IV.

Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see

The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,

My head hath its coronal,

The fulness of your bliss, I feel-I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning,
And the children are culling
On every side,

In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the Sun shines warm,
And the Babe leaps up on his mother's arm:
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!-
But there's a Tree, of many, one,
A single Field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The Pansy at my feet

Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

V.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,

But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;

The Youth, who daily further from the East
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,