To speak of you, ye mountains, and ye lakes And sounding cataracts, ye mists and winds That dwell among the hills where I was born. If in my youth I have been pure in heart, If, mingling with the world, I am content With my own modest pleasures, and have lived With God and Nature communing, removed From little enmities and low desires, The gift is yours; if in these times of fear, This melancholy waste of hopes o'erthrown, If, 'mid indifference and apathy,
And wicked exultation when good men On every side fall off, we know not how, To selfishness, disguised in gentle names Of peace and quiet and domestic love, Yet mingled not unwillingly with sneers On visionary minds; if, in this time Of dereliction and dismay, I yet Despair not of our nature, but retain A more than Roman confidence, a faith That fails not, in all sorrow my support, The blessing of my life; the gift is yours, Ye winds and sounding cataracts! 'tis yours,
Ye mountains! thine, O Nature! Thou hast fed My lofty speculations; and in thee,
For this uneasy heart of ours, I find
A never-failing principle of joy
Thou, my Friend! wert reared
In the great city, 'mid far other scenes;
But we, by different roads, at length have gained
The self-same bourne. And for this cause to thee
I speak, unapprehensive of contempt,
The insinuated scoff of coward tongues, And all that silent language which so oft In conversation between man and man Blots from the human countenance all trace Of beauty and of love. For thou hast sought The truth in solitude, and, since the days That gave thee liberty, full long desired, To serve in Nature's temple, thou hast been The most assiduous of her ministers; In many things my brother, chiefly here In this our deep devotion.
Health and the quiet of a healthful mind
Attend thee! seeking oft the haunts of men,
And yet more often living with thyself, And for thyself, so haply shall thy days Be many, and a blessing to mankind.
RESIDENCE AT CAMBRIDGE
T was a dreary morning when the wheels Rolled over a wide plain o'erhung with clouds, And nothing cheered our way till first we saw The long-roofed chapel of King's College lift Turrets and pinnacles in answering files, Extended high above a dusky grove.
Advancing, we espied upon the road
A student clothed in gown and tasselled cap, Striding along as if o'ertasked by Time, Or covetous of exercise and air;
He passed-nor was I master of my eyes Till he was left an arrow's flight behind. As near and nearer to the spot we drew, It seemed to suck us in with an eddy's force. Onward we drove beneath the Castle; caught, While crossing Magdalene Bridge, a glimpse of Cam; And at the Hoop alighted, famous Inn.
My spirit was up, my thoughts were full of hope; Some friends I had, acquaintances who there
Seemed friends, poor simple schoolboys, now hung round
With honour and importance: in a world
Of welcome faces up and down I roved; Questions, directions, warnings and advice, Flowed in upon me, from all sides; fresh day Of pride and pleasure! to myself I seemed A man of business and expense, and went From shop to shop about my own affairs, To Tutor or to Tailor, as befell,
From street to street with loose and careless mind.
I was the Dreamer, they the Dream; I roamed Delighted through the motley spectacle;
Gowns grave, or gaudy, doctors, students, streets, Courts, cloisters, flocks of churches, gateways, towers:
Migration strange for a stripling of the hills, A northern villager.
Had waited on some Fairy's wand, at once Behold me rich in monies, and attired In splendid garb, with hose of silk, and hair Powdered like rimy trees, when frost is keen. My lordly dressing-gown, I pass it by, With other signs of manhood that supplied The lack of beard.-The weeks went roundly on, With invitations, suppers, wine and fruit, Smooth housekeeping within, and all without Liberal, and suiting gentleman's array.
The Evangelist St. John my patron was: Three Gothic courts are his, and in the first Was my abiding-place, a nook obscure; Right underneath, the College kitchens made A humming sound, less tuneable than bees, But hardly less industrious; with shrill notes Of sharp command and scolding intermixed. Near me hung Trinity's loquacious clock, Who never let the quarters, night or day, Slip by him unproclaimed, and told the hours Twice over with a male and female voice. Her pealing organ was my neighbour too; And from my pillow, looking forth by light Of moon or favouring stars, I could behold The antechapel where the statue stood Of Newton with his prism and silent face, The marble index of a mind for ever Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.
Of College labours, of the Lecturer's room All studded round, as thick as chairs could stand, With loyal students faithful to their books, Half-and-half idlers, hardy recusants, And honest dunces-of important days, Examinations, when the man was weighed As in a balance! of excessive hopes, Tremblings withal and commendable fears, Small jealousies, and triumphs good or bad- Let others that know more speak as they know. Such glory was but little sought by me,
Yet from the first crude days
Of settling time in this untried abode,
I was disturbed at times by prudent thoughts,
Wishing to hope without a hope, some fears. About my future worldly maintenance, And, more than all, a strangeness in the mind, A feeling that I was not for that hour, Nor for that place.
But wherefore be cast down? For (not to speak of Reason and her pure Reflective acts to fix the moral law Deep in the conscience, nor of Christian Hope, Bowing her head before her sister Faith As one far mightier), hither I had come, Bear witness Truth, endowed with holy powers And faculties, whether to work or feel. Oft when the dazzling show no longer new Had ceased to dazzle, ofttimes did I quit
My comrades, leave the crowd, buildings and groves, And as I paced alone the level fields
Far from those lovely sights and sounds sublime With which I had been conversant, the mind Drooped not; but there into herself returning, With prompt rebound seemed fresh as heretofore. At least I more distinctly recognised Her native instincts: let me dare to speak A higher language, say that now I felt What independent solaces were mine, To mitigate the injurious sway of place Or circumstance, how far soever changed In youth, or to be changed in after years. As if awakened, summoned, roused, constrained, I looked for universal things; perused The common countenance of earth and sky: Earth, nowhere unembellished by some trace Of that first Paradise whence man was driven; 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;
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.
And here, O Friend! have I retraced my life
Up to an eminence, and told a tale
Of matters which not falsely may be called
The glory of my youth. Of genius, power,
« AnteriorContinuar » |