The vision and the faculty divine; *
Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse,
(Which, in the docile season of their youth,
It was denied them to acquire, through lack
Of culture and the inspiring aid of books,
Or haply by a temper too severe,
Or a nice backwardness afraid of shame)
Nor having e'er, as life advanced, been led
By circumstance to take unto the height
The measure of themselves, these favoured Beings,
All but a scattered few, live out their time,
Husbanding that which they possess within,
And go to the grave, unthought of.
Are often those of whom the noisy world
Hears least; † else surely this Man had not left
His graces unrevealed and unproclaimed.
But, as the mind was filled with inward light, S
So not without distinction had he lived,
Beloved and honoured-far as he was known.
And some small portion of his eloquent speech,
And something that may serve to set in view
The feeling pleasures of his loneliness,
His observations, and the thoughts his mind 1
Had dealt with-I will here record in verse;
* Compare the Elegiac Stanzas, suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle, in a Storm (vol. iii. p. 54)
The consecration, and the Poet's dream;
and the Discourse on Poetry in the Preface to the "Lyrical Ballads" of 1800. See the Prose Works.-ED.
+ Compare Sir Henry Taylor, Philip van Artevelde, act I. scene v.
The world knows nothing of its greatest men.
Compare Horace, Epistles i. 17, 10
Nec vixit male qui natus moriensque fefellit.
Compare Elegiac Stanzas, suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle
The light that never was, on sea or land.
Which, if with truth it correspond, and sink
Or rise as venerable Nature leads,
The high and tender Muses shall accept
With gracious smile, deliberately pleased,
And listening Time reward with sacred praise.
Among the hills of Athol he was born;
Where,1 on a small hereditary farm,
An unproductive slip of rugged ground,
His Parents, with their numerous offspring, dwelt ; 2
A virtuous household, though exceeding poor!
Pure livers were they all, austere and grave,
And fearing God; * the very children taught
Stern self-respect, a reverence for God's word,
And an habitual piety, maintained
With strictness scarcely known on English ground.
From his sixth year, the Boy of whom I speak, In summer, tended cattle on the hills;
But, through the inclement and the perilous days
His Father dwelt; and died in poverty;
While He, whose lowly fortune I retrace,
The youngest of three sons, was yet a babe,
A little One-unconscious of their loss.
But ere he had outgrown his infant days
His widowed Mother, for a second Mate,
Espoused the Teacher of the Village School;
Who on her offspring zealously bestowed
Needful instruction; not alone in arts
Which to his humble duties appertained,
But in the lore of right and wrong, the rule
Of human kindness, in the peaceful ways
Of honesty, and holiness severe.
* Compare Resolution and Independence, stanza xiv. (vol. ii. p. 319)—
Such as grave Livers do in Scotland use,
Religious men, who give to God and man their dues.
Of long-continuing winter, he repaired,
Equipped with satchel, to a school, that stood1
Sole building on a mountain's dreary edge,
Remote from view 2 of city spire, or sound
Of minster clock! From that bleak tenement
He, many an evening, to his distant home
In solitude returning, saw the hills
Grow larger in the darkness; all alone
Beheld the stars come out above his head,
And travelled through the wood, with no one near
To whom he might confess the things he saw.
So the foundations of his mind were laid.
In such communion, not from terror free,*
While yet a child, and long before his time,
Had he perceived the presence and the power
Of
greatness; and deep feelings had impressed
So vividly great objects that they lay
Upon his mind like substances, whose presence
Perplexed the bodily sense. He had received 4
To his Step-father's School, that stood alone,
Great objects on his mind, with portraiture
And colour so distinct, that on his mind
They lay like substances, and almost seemed
To haunt the bodily sense. He had received
* Compare Byron, Childe Harold, canto iv. stanza clxxxiv.
I wantoned with thy breakers-they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror,-'twas a pleasing fear,
1 A precious gift; for, as he grew in years,
With these impressions would he still compare
All his remembrances, thoughts, shapes, and forms;
And, being still unsatisfied with aught
Of dimmer character, he thence attained
An active power to fasten images
Upon his brain; and on their pictured lines
Intensely brooded, even till they acquired
The liveliness of dreams.* Nor did he fail,
While yet a child, with a child's eagerness
Incessantly to turn his ear and eye
On all things which the moving seasons brought
To feed such appetite-nor this alone
Appeased his yearning :—in the after-day
Of boyhood, many an hour in caves forlorn,
And 'mid the hollow depths of naked crags
He sate, and even in their fixed lineaments,
Or from the power of a peculiar eye,
Or by creative feeling overborne,
Or by predominance of thought oppressed,
Even in their fixed and steady lineaments
He traced an ebbing and a flowing mind,
Expression ever varying!
He had small need of books; for many a tale
* Compare Ode, Intimations of Immortality, stanza ix. (vol. viii.)—
those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things, etc.
and The Prelude, book ii. 1. 350 (vol. iii. p. 164)
Appeared like something in myself, a dream,
A prospect in the mind.
Traditionary, round the mountains hung,
And many a legend, peopling the dark woods,
Nourished Imagination in her growth,
And gave the Mind that apprehensive power
By which she is made quick to recognise
The moral properties and scope of things.
But eagerly he read, and read again,
Whate'er the minister's old shelf supplied;
The life and death of martyrs, who sustained,
With will inflexible, those fearful pangs
Triumphantly displayed in records left
Of persecution, and the Covenant-times
Whose echo rings through Scotland to this hour!
And there, by lucky hap, had been preserved
A straggling volume, torn and incomplete,
That left half-told* the preternatural tale,
Romance of giants, chronicle of fiends,
Profuse in garniture of wooden cuts
Strange and uncouth; dire faces, figures dire,
Sharp-kneed, sharp elbowed, and lean-ankled too,
With long and ghostly shanks-forms which once seen
Could never be forgotten!
In his heart, Where Fear sate thus, a cherished visitant, Was wanting yet the pure delight of love By sound diffused, or by the breathing air,† Or by the silent looks of happy things,
* Compare Milton, Il Penseroso, l. 109—
Or call up him that left half told
The story of Cambuscan bold.
+ Compare Lines Written in Early Spring (vol. i. p. 269)—
And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.
Compare The Prelude, book ii. l. 411 (vol. iii. p. 166)—–
With every form of creature, as it looked
Towards the Uncreated with a countenance
Of adoration, with an eye of love.
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