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And sky, whose beauty and bounty are expressed
By the proud name she bears, the name of Heaven.
I called on both to teach me what they might;
Or turning the mind in upon herself,

Pored, watched, expected, listened, spread my thoughts

And spread them with a wider creeping; felt
Incumbencies more awful, visitings
Of the Upholder of the tranquil soul,
That tolerates the indignities of time,
And, from the centre of eternity
All finite motions overruling, lives
In glory immutable. But peace! enough
Here to record that I was mounting now
To such community with highest truth—
A track pursuing, not untrod before,
From strict analogies by thought supplied
Or consciousnesses not to be subdued.
To every natural form, rock, fruit, or flower,
Even the loose stones that cover the highway,
I gave a moral life: I saw them feel,

Or linked them to some feeling: the great mass
Lay bedded in a quickening soul, and all
That I beheld respired with inward meaning.
Add that whate'er of terror or of love
Or beauty, Nature's daily face put on
From transitory passion, unto this

I was as sensitive as waters are

To the sky's influence in a kindred mood
Of passion; was obedient as a lute

That waits upon the touches of the wind.
Unknown, unthought of, yet I was most rich-
I had a world about me, 'twas my own;
I made it, for it only lived to me,

And to the God who sees into the heart.
Such sympathies, though rarely, were betrayed
By outward gestures and by visible looks:
Some called it madness-so indeed it was,
If child-like fruitfulness in passing joy,
If steady moods of thoughtfulness matured

To inspiration, sort with such a name;
If prophecy be madness; if things viewed
By poets in old time, and higher up
By the first men, earth's first inhabitants,
May in these tutored days no more be seen
With undisordered sight. But leaving this,
It was no madness, for the bodily eye
Amid my strongest workings evermore
Was searching out the lines of difference
As they lie hid in all external forms,
Near or remote, minute or vast; an eye
Which, from a tree, a stone, a withered leaf,
To the broad ocean and the azure heavens
Spangled with kindred multitudes of stars,
Could find no surface where its power might sleep;
Which spake perpetual logic to my soul,
And by an unrelenting agency

Did bind my feelings even as in a chain.

O Heavens! how awful is the might of souls,
And what they do within themselves while yet
The yoke of earth is new to them, the world
Nothing but a wild field where they were sown.

Points have we all of us within our souls
Where all stand single; this I feel, and make
Breathings for incommunicable powers;
But is not each a memory to himself?-

Imagination slept,

And yet not utterly. I could not print

Ground where the grass had yielded to the steps Of generations of illustrious men,

Unmoved. I could not always lightly pass Through the same gateways, sleep where they had slept.

Beside the pleasant mill of Trompington
I laughed with Chaucer in the hawthorn shade;

Heard him, while birds were warbling, tell his tales
Of amorous passion. And that gentle bard,
Chosen by the muses for their page of state,
Sweet Spenser, moving through his clouded heaven
With the moon's beauty and the moon's soft pace,
I called him brother, Englishman, and friend!
Yea, our blind Poet, who, in his later day,
Stood almost single; uttering odious truth,
Darkness before, and danger's voice behind,
Soul awful, if the earth has ever lodged
An awful soul, I seemed to see him here
Familiarly, and in his scholar's dress
Bounding before me, yet a stripling youth,
A boy, no better, with his rosy cheeks
Angelical, keen eye, courageous look,
And conscious step of purity and pride.

BOOK FOURTH

SUMMER VACATION

BRIGHT was the summer's noon when quickening steps
Followed each other till a dreary moor

Was crossed, a bare ridge clomb, upon whose top
Standing alone, as from a rampart's edge,

I overlooked the bed of Windermere,
Like a vast river, stretching in the sun.
With exultation, at my feet I saw

Lake, islands, promontories, gleaming bays,
A universe of Nature's fairest forms
Proudly revealed with instantaneous burst,
Magnificent, and beautiful, and gay.

I bounded down the hill shouting amain
For the old ferryman; to the shout the rock
Replied, and when the Charon of the flood
Had staid his oars, and touched the jutting pier,
I did not step into the well-known boat

Without a cordial greeting. Thence with speed

Up the familiar hill I took my way

1

Towards that sweet valley 1 where I had been reared; 'Twas but a short hour's walk, ere veering round

I saw the snow-white church upon her hill
Sit like a throned Lady, sending out

A gracious look all over her domain.
Yon azure smoke betrays the lurking town;
With eager footsteps I advance and reach
The cottage threshold where my journey closed.
Glad welcome had I, with some tears, perhaps,
From my old dame, so kind and motherly,
While she perused me with a parent's pride.
The thoughts of gratitude shall fall like dew
Upon thy grave, good creature! While my heart
Can beat never will I forget thy name.

Heaven's blessing be upon thee where thou liest
After thy innocent and busy stir

In narrow cares, thy little daily growth
Of calm enjoyments, after eighty years,
And more than eighty, of untroubled life,
Childless, yet by the strangers to thy blood
Honoured with little less than filial love.
What joy was mine to see thee once again,
Thee and thy dwelling, and a crowd of things
About its narrow precincts all beloved,
And many of them seeming yet my own!
Why should I speak of what a thousand hearts
Have felt, and every man alive can guess?
The rooms, the court, the garden were not left
Long unsaluted, nor the sunny seat
Round the stone table under the dark pine,
Friendly to studious or to festive hours;
Nor that unruly child of mountain birth,
The famous brook, who, soon as he was boxed
Within our garden, found himself at once,
As if by trick insidious and unkind.
Stripped of his voice and left to dimple down

1 Hawkshead.

(Without an effort and without a will)
A channel paved by man's officious care.

The memory of one particular hour

Doth here rise up against me.

'Mid a throng

Of maids and youths, old men, and matrons staid, A medley of all tempers, I had passed

The night in dancing, gaiety, and mirth,

Ere we retired,

The cock had crowed, and now the eastern sky
Was kindling, not unseen, from humble copse
And open field, through which the pathway wound,
And homeward led my steps. Magnificent
The morning rose, in memorable pomp,
Glorious as e'er I had beheld; in front,
The sea lay laughing at a distance; near,
The solid mountains shone, bright as the clouds,
Grain-tinctured, drenched in empyrean light;
And in the meadows and the lower grounds
Was all the sweetness of a common dawn-
Dews, vapours, and the melody of birds,
And labourers going forth to till the fields.
Ah! need I say, dear friend! that to the brim
My heart was full; I made no vows, but vows
Were then made for me; bond unknown to me
Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly,
A dedicated spirit. On I walked

In thankful blessedness, which yet survives.

BOOK FIFTH

BOOKS

A thought is with me sometimes, and I say,
Should the whole frame of earth by inward throes
Be wrenched, or fire come down from far to scorch
Her pleasant habitations, and dry up

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