Unutterable love. Sound needed none, Nor any voice of joy; his spirit drank The spectacle: sensation, soul, and form, All melted into him; they swallowed up His animal being; in them did he live, And by them did he live; they were his life. In such access of mind, in such high hour Of visitation from the living God,
Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired. No thanks he breathed, he proffered no request; Rapt into still communion that transcends The imperfect offices of prayer and praise, His mind was a thanksgiving to the power That made him; it was blessedness and love!
A Herdsman on the lonely mountain tops, Such intercourse was his, and in this sort Was his existence oftentimes possessed. O then how beautiful, how bright, appeared The written promise! Early had he learned To reverence the volume that displays The mystery, the life which cannot die; But in the mountains did he feel his faith. All things, responsive to the writing, there Breathed immortality, revolving life, And greatness still revolving; infinite : There littleness was not; the least of things Seemed infinite; and there his spirit shaped Her prospects, nor did he believe,—he saw. What wonder if his being thus became Sublime and comprehensive! Low desires, Low thoughts had there no place: yet was his heart Lowly; for he was meek in gratitude,
Oft as he called those ecstasies to mind,
And whence they flowed; and from them he ac
Wisdom, which works through patience; thence he learned
In oft-recurring hours of sober thought To look on Nature with a humble heart, Self-questioned where it did not understand, And with a superstitious eye of love.
So passed the time; yet to the nearest town He duly went with what small overplus His earnings might supply, and brought away The book that most had tempted his desires While at the stall he read. Among the hills He gazed upon that mighty orb of song, The divine Milton. Lore of different kind, The annual savings of a toilsome life,
His School-master supplied; books that explain The purer elements of truth involved
In lines and numbers, and, by charm severe, (Especially perceived where nature droops And feeling is suppressed) preserve the mind Busy in solitude and poverty. ́
These occupations oftentimes deceived
The listless hours, while in the hollow vale, Hollow and green, he lay on the green turf In pensive idleness. What could he do, Thus daily thirsting, in that lonesome life, With blind endeavors? Yet, still uppermost, Nature was at his heart as if he felt,
Though yet he knew not how, a wasting power In all things that from her sweet influence
Might tend to wean him. Therefore with her hues, Her forms, and with the spirit of her forms, He clothed the nakedness of austere truth. While yet he lingered in the rudiments Of science, and among her simplest laws, His triangles-they were the stars of heaven, The silent stars! Oft did he take delight To measure the altitude of some tall crag That is the eagle's birth-place, or some peak Familiar with forgotten years, that shows Inscribed upon its visionary sides,
The history of many a winter storm, Or obscure records of the path of fire.
And thus before his eighteenth year was told, Accumulated feelings pressed his heart With still increasing weight; he was o'erpowered By Nature; by the turbulence subdued
Of his own mind; by mystery and hope, And the first virgin passion of a soul Communing with the glorious universe.
Full often wished he that the winds might rage When they were silent: far more fondly now Than in his earlier season did he love Tempestuous nights-the conflict and the sounds That live in darkness. From his intellect And from the stillness of abstracted thought He asked repose; and, failing oft to win The peace required, he scanned the laws of light Amid the roar of torrents, where they send From hollow clefts up to the clearer air A cloud of mist, that smitten by the sun Varies its rainbow hues. But vainly thus,
And vainly by all other means, he strove To mitigate the fever of his heart.
In dreams, in study, and in ardent thought, Thus was he reared; much wanting to assist The growth of intellect, yet gaining more, And every moral feeling of his soul
Strengthened and braced, by breathing in content The keen, the wholesome air of poverty, And drinking from the well of homely life. -But, from past liberty, and tried restraints, He now was summoned to select the course Of humble industry that promised best To yield him no unworthy maintenance. Urged by his Mother, he essayed to teach
A village-school-but wandering thoughts were then A misery to him; and the Youth resigned A task he was unable to perform.
That stern yet kindly Spirit, who constrains The Savoyard to quit his naked rocks, The free-born Swiss to leave his narrow vales, (Spirit attached to regions mountainous Like their own stedfast clouds) did now impel His restless mind to look abroad with hope. -An irksome drudgery seems it to plod on, Through hot and dusty ways, or pelting storm, A vagrant Merchant under a heavy load Bent as he moves, and needing frequent rest; Yet do such travellers find their own delight; And their hard service, deemed debasing now, Gained merited respect in simpler times;
Far other lot, yet with good hope that soon Under a shade as grateful I should find Rest, and be welcomed there to livelier joy. Across a bare wide Common I was toiling With languid steps that by the slippery turf Were baffled; nor could my weak arm disperse The host of insects gathering round my face, And ever with me as I paced along.
open moorland stood a grove,
The wished-for port to which my course was bound. Thither I came, and there, amid the gloom Spread by a brotherhood of lofty elms, Appeared a roofless Hut; four naked walls
That stared upon each other!—I looked round, And to my wish and to my hope espied The Friend I sought; a man of reverend age, But stout and hale, for travel unimpaired. There was he seen upon the cottage-bench, Recumbent in the shade, as if asleep;
An iron-pointed staff lay at his side.
Him had I marked the day before—alone
And stationed in the public way, with face Turned toward the sun then setting, while that staff Afforded, to the figure of the man
Detained for contemplation or repose,
Graceful support; his countenance as he stood Was hidden from my view, and he remained Unrecognized; but, stricken by the sight, With slackened footsteps I advanced, and soon A glad congratulation we exchanged At such unthought-of meeting.-For the night We parted, nothing willingly; and now
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