Wordsworth, The Prelude (1805)
From Book Eleventh: Imagination, How Impaired and Restored
(Line numbers for the 1805 text are on the left; numbers on the right correspond to the 1850 edition.)
This history, my friend, hath chiefly told
Of intellectual power from stage to stage [45]
Advancing hand in hand with love and joy,
{L 45} And of imagination teaching truth
Until that natural graciousness of mind [50]
Gave way to over-pressure of the times
And their disastrous issues. What availed,
When spells forbade the voyager to land,
{L 50} The fragrance which did ever and anon
Give notice of the shore, from arbours breathed [55]
Of blessed sentiment and fearless love?
What did such sweet remembrances avail --
Perfidious then, as seemed -- what served they then?
{L 55} My business was upon the barren seas,
My errand was to sail to other coasts.
Shall I avow that I had hope to see
(I mean that future times would surely see)
The man to come parted as by a gulph
{L 60} From him who had been? -- that I could no more [60]
Trust the elevation which had made me one
With the great family that here and there
Is scattered through the abyss of ages past,
Sage, patriot, lover, hero; for it seemed
{L 65} That their best virtues were not free from taint [65]
Of something false and weak, which could not stand
The open eye of reason. Then I said,
'Go to the poets, they will speak to thee
More perfectly of purer creatures -- yet
{L 70} If reason be nobility in man, [70]
Can aught be more ignoble than the man
Whom they describe, would fasten if they may
Upon our loin by sympathies of truth?'
Thus strangely did I war against myself; [76]
{L 75} A bigot to a new idolatry,
Did like a monk who hath forsworn the world
Zealously labour to cut off my heart
From all the sources of her former strength; [80]
And, as by simple waving of a wand,
{L 80} The wizard instantaneously dissolves
Palace or grove, even so did I unsoul
As readily by syllogistic words
(Some charm of logic, ever within reach)
Those mysteries of passion which have made, [85]
{L 85} And shall continue evermore to make
In spite of all that reason hath performed,
And shall perform, to exalt and to refine --
One brotherhood of all the human race,
Through all the habitations of past years,
{L 90} And those to come: and hence an emptiness
Fell on the historian's page, and even on that
Of poets, pregnant with more absolute truth.
The works of both withered in my esteem,
Their sentence was, I thought, pronounced -- their rights
{L 95} Seemed mortal, and their empire passed away.
What then remained in such eclipse, what light
To guide or chear? The laws of things which lie
Beyond the reach of human will or power,
The life of Nature, by the God of love
{L 100} Inspired -- celestial presence ever pure --
These left, the soul of youth must needs be rich
Whatever else be lost; and these were mine,
Not a deaf echo merely of the thought
(Bewildered recollections, solitary),
{L 105} But living sounds. Yet in despite of this --
This feeling, which howe'er impaired or damped,
Yet having been once born can never die --
'Tis true that earth with all her appanage
Of elements and organs, storm and sunshine,
{L 110} With its pure forms and colours, pomp of clouds,
Rivers, and mountains, objects among which
It might be thought that no dislike or blame,
No sense of weakness or infirmity
Or aught amiss, could possibly have come,
{L 115} Yea, even the visible universe was scanned
With something of a kindred spirit, fell
Beneath the domination of a taste [90]
Less elevated, which did in my mind
With its more noble influence interfere,
{L 120} Its animation and its deeper sway.
There comes (if need be now to speak of this
After such long detail of our mistakes),
There comes a time when reason -- not the grand
And simple reason, but that humbler power
{L 125} Which carries on its no inglorious work
By logic and minute analysis --
Is of all idols that which pleases most
The growing mind. A trifler would he be
Who on the obvious benefits should dwell
{L 130} That rise out of this process; but to speak
Of all the narrow estimates of things
Which hence originate were a worthy theme
For philosophic verse. Suffice it here
To hint that danger cannot but attend
Upon a function rather proud to be
{L 135} The enemy of falsehood, than the friend
Of truth -- to sit in judgement than to feel.
Oh soul of Nature, excellent and fair,
That didst rejoice with me, with whom I too
{L 140} Rejoiced, through early youth, before the winds [95]
And powerful waters, and in lights and shades
That marched and countermarched about the hills
In glorious apparition, now all eye
And now all ear, but ever with the heart [100]
{L 145} Employed, and the majestic intellect!
O soul of Nature, that dost overflow
With passion and with life, what feeble men
Walk on this earth, how feeble have I been [105]
When thou wert in thy strength! Nor this through stroke
{L 150} Of human suffering, such as justifies
Remissness and inaptitude of mind,
But through presumption, even in pleasure pleased
Unworthily, disliking here, and there [110]
Liking, by rules of mimic art transferred
{L 155} To things above all art. But more -- for this,
Although a strong infection of the age,
Was never much my habit -- giving way
To a comparison of scene with scene, [115]
Bent overmuch on superficial things,
{L 160} Pampering myself with meagre novelties
Of colour and proportion, to the moods
Of Nature, and the spirit of the place, [120]
Less sensible. Nor only did the love
Of sitting thus in judgment interrupt
{L 165} My deeper feelings, but another cause,
More subtle and less easily explained,
That almost seems inherent in the creature, [125]
Sensuous and intellectual as he is,
A twofold frame of body and of mind:
{L 170} The state to which I now allude was one
In which the eye was master of the heart,
When that which is in every stage of life
The most despotic of our senses gained
Such strength in me as often held my mind [130]
{L 175} In absolute dominion. Gladly here,
Entering upon abstruser argument,
Would I endeavour to unfold the means
Which Nature studiously employs to thwart
This tyranny, summons all the senses each [135]
{L 180} To counteract the other and themselves,
And makes them all, and the objects with which all
Are conversant, subservient in their turn
To the great ends of liberty and power.
But this is matter for another song;
{L 185} Here only let me add that my delights,
Such as they were, were sought insatiably. [141]
Though 'twas a transport of the outward sense,
Not of the mind -- vivid but not profound --
Yet was I often greedy in the chace,
{L 190} And roamed from hill to hill, from rock to rock,
Still craving combinations of new forms,
New pleasure, wider empire for the sight, [145]
Proud of its own endowments, and rejoiced
To lay the inner faculties asleep.