BOOK EIGHT

What sounds are those, Helvellyn, thatare heard

Up to thy summit, through the depth of air

Ascending, as if distance had the power

To make the sounds more audible? What crowd

Covers, or sprinkles o'er, yon village green?

Crowd seems it, solitary hill! to thee,

Though but a little family of men,

Shepherds and tillers of the ground — betimes

Assembled with their children and their wives,

And here and there a stranger interspersed.

They hold a rustic fair — a festival,

Such as, on this side now, and now on that,

Repeated through his tributary vales,

Helvellyn, in the silence of his rest,

Sees annually, if clouds towards either ocean

Blown from their favourite resting-place, or mists

Dissolved, have left himan unshrouded head.

Delightful day it is for all who dwell

In this secluded glen, and eagerly

They give it welcome.Long ere heat of noon,

From byre or field the kine were brought; the sheep

Are penned in cotes; the chaffering is begun.

The heifer lows, uneasy at the voice

Of a new master; bleat the flocks aloud.

Booths are there none; a stall or two is here;

A lame man or a blind, the one to beg,

The other to make music; hither, too,

From far, with basket, slung upon her arm,

Of hawker's wares — books, pictures, combs, and pins —

Some aged woman finds her way again,

Year after year, a punctual visitant!

There also stands a speech-maker by rote,

Pulling the strings of his boxed raree-show;

And in the lapse of many years may come

Prouder itinerant, mountebank, or he

Whose wonders in a covered wain lie hid.

But one there is,the loveliest of them all,

Some sweet lass of the valley, looking out

For gains, and who that sees her would not buy?

Fruits of her father's orchard, are her wares,

And with the ruddy produce, she walks round

Among the crowd, half pleased with, half ashamed

Of her new office,blushing restlessly.

The children now are rich, for the old to-day

Are generous as the young; and, if content

With looking on, some ancient wedded pair

Sit in the shade together, while they gaze,

“A cheerful smile unbends the wrinkled brow,

The days departed start again to life,

And all the scenes of childhood reappear,

Faint, but more tranquil, like the changing sun

To him who slept at noon and wakes at eve.”

Thus gaiety and cheerfulness prevail,

Spreading from young to old, from old to young,

And no one seems to want his share.— Immense

Is the recess, the circumambient world

Magnificent, by which they are embraced:

They move about upon the soft green turf:

How little they, they and their doings, seem,

And all that they can further or obstruct!

Through utter weakness pitiably dear,

As tender infants are: and yet how great!

For all things serve them: them the morning light

Loves, as it glistens on the silent rocks;

And them the silent rocks, which now from high

Look down upon them; the reposing clouds;

The wild brooks prattling frominvisible haunts;

And old Helvellyn, conscious of the stir

Which animates this daytheir calm abode.

With deep devotion, Nature, did I feel,

In that enormous City's turbulent world

Of men and things, what benefit I owed

To thee, and those domains of rural peace,

Where to the sense of beauty first my heart

Was opened; tract more exquisitely fair

Than that famed paradise often thousand trees,

Or Gehol's matchless gardens, for delight

Of the Tartarian dynasty composed

( Beyond that mighty wall, not fabulous,

China's stupendous mound ) by patient toil

Of myriads and boon nature's lavish help;

There, in a clime from widest empire chosen,

Fulfilling ( could enchantment have done more? )

A sumptuous dream of flowery lawns, with domes

Of pleasure sprinkled over, shady dells

For eastern monasteries, sunny mounts

With temples crested, bridges, gondolas,

Rocks, dens, and groves of foliage taught to melt

Into each other their obsequious hues,

Vanished and vanishing in subtle chase,

Too fine to be pursued; or standing forth

In no discordant opposition, strong

And gorgeous as the colours side by side

Bedded among rich plumes of tropic birds;

And mountains over all, embracing all;

And all the landscape, endlessly enriched

With waters running, falling, or asleep.

But lovelier far than this, the paradise

Where I was reared; in Nature's primitive gifts

Favoured no less, and more to every sense

Delicious, seeing that the sun and sky,

The elements, and seasons as they change,

Do find a worthy fellow-labourer there —

Man free, man working for himself, with choice

Of time, and place, and object; by his wants,

His comforts, native occupations, cares,

Cheerfully led to individual ends

Or social, and still followed by a train

Unwooed, unthought-of even — simplicity,

And beauty, and inevitable grace.

Yea, when a glimpse of those imperial bowers

Would to a child be transport over-great,

When but a half-hour's roam through such a place

Would leave behind a dance of images,

That shall break in upon his sleep for weeks;

Even then the common haunts of the green earth,

And ordinary interests of man,

Which they embosom, all without regard

As both may seem, are fastening on the heart

Insensibly, each with the other's help.

For me, when my affections first were led

From kindred, friends, and playmates, to partake

Love for the human creature's absolute self,

That noticeable kindliness of heart

Sprang out of fountains, there abounding most

Where sovereign Nature dictated the tasks

And occupations which her beauty adorned,

And Shepherds were the men that pleased me first;

Not such as Saturn ruled‘ mid Latian wilds,

With arts and laws so tempered, that their lives

Left, even to us toiling in this late day,

A bright tradition of the golden age;

Not such as,‘ mid Arcadian fastnesses

Sequestered, handed down among themselves

Felicity, in Grecian song renowned;

Nor such as — when an adverse fate had driven,

From house and home, the courtly band whose fortunes

Entered, with Shakespeare's genius, the wild woods

Of Arden — amid sunshine or in shade,

Culled the best fruits of Time's uncounted hours,

Ere Phoebe sighed for the false Ganymede;

Or there where Perdita and Florizel

Together danced, Queen of the feast, and King;

Nor such as Spenser fabled. True it is,

That I had heard ( what he perhaps had seen )

Of maids at sunrise bringing in from far

Their May-bush , and along the streets in flocks

Parading with a song of taunting rhymes,

Aimed at the laggards slumbering within doors;

Had also heard, from those who yet remembered,

Tales of the May-pole dance, and wreaths that decked

Porch, door-way, or kirk-pillar; and of youths,

Each with his maid, before the sun was up,

By annual custom, issuing forth in troops,

To drink the waters of some sainted well,

And hang it round with garlands. Love survives;

But, for such purpose, flowers no longer grow:

The times, too sage, perhaps too proud, have dropped

These lighter graces; and the rural ways

And manners which my childhood looked upon

Were the unluxuriant produce of a life

Intent on little but substantial needs,

Yet rich in beauty, beauty that was felt.

But images of danger and distress,

Man suffering among awful Powers and Forms;

Of this I heard, and saw enough to make

Imagination restless; nor was free

Myself from frequent perils; nor were tales

Wanting,— the tragedies of former times,

Hazards and strange escapes, of which the rocks

Immutable and overflowing streams,

Where'er I roamed, were speaking monuments.

Smooth life had flock and shepherd in old time,

Long springs and tepid winters, on the banks

Of delicate Galesus ; and no less

Those scattered along Adria's myrtle shores:

Smooth life had herdsman, and his snow-white herd

To triumphs and to sacrificial rites

Devoted, on the inviolable stream

Of rich Clitumnus ; and the goat-herd lived

As calmly, underneath the pleasant brows

Of cool Lucretilis , where the pipe was heard

Of Pan, Invisible God, thrilling the rocks

With tutelary music, from all harm

The fold protecting. I myself, mature

In manhood then, have seen a pastoral tract

Like one of these, where Fancy might run wild,

Though under skies less generous, less serene:

There, for her own delight had Nature framed

A pleasure-ground, diffused a fair expanse

Of level pasture, islanded with groves

And banked with woody risings; but the Plain

Endless, here opening widely out, and there

Shut up in lesser lakes or beds of lawn

And intricate recesses, creek or bay

Sheltered within a shelter, where at large

The shepherd strays, a rolling hut his home.

Thither he comes with spring-time, there abides

All summer, and at sunrise ye may hear

His flageolet to liquid notes of love

Attuned, or sprightly fife resounding far.

Nook is there none, nor tract of that vast space

Where passage opens, but the same shall have

In turn its visitant, telling there his hours

In unlaborious pleasure, with no task

More toilsome than to carve a beechen bowl

For spring or fountain, which the traveller finds,

When through the region he pursues at will

His devious course. A glimpse of such sweet life

I saw when, from the melancholy walls

Of Goslar, once imperial, I renewed

My daily walk along that wide champaign,

That, reaching to her gates, spreads east and west,

And northwards, from beneath the mountainous verge

Of the Hercynian forest, Yet, hail to you

Moors, mountains, headlands, and ye hollow vales,

Ye long deep channels for the Atlantic's voice,

Powers of my native region! Ye that seize

The heart with firmer grasp! Your snows and streams

Ungovernable, and your terrifying winds,

That howl so dismally for him who treads

Companionless your awful solitudes!

There,‘ tis the shepherd's task the winter long

To wait upon the storms: of their approach

Sagacious, into sheltering coves he drives

His flock, and thither from the homestead bears

A toilsome burden up the craggy ways,

And deals it out, their regular nourishment

Strewn on the frozen snow. And when the spring

Looks out, and all the pastures dance with lambs,

And when the flock, with warmer weather, climbs

Higher and higher, him his office leads

To watch their goings, whatsoever track

The wanderers choose. For this he quits his home

At day-spring, and no sooner doth the sun

Begin to strike him with a fire-like heat,

Than he lies down upon some shining rock,

And breakfasts with his dog. When they have stolen,

As is their wont, a pittance from strict time,

For rest not needed or exchange of love,

Then from his couch he starts; and now his feet

Crush out a livelier fragrance from the flowers

Of lowly thyme, by Nature's skill enwrought

In the wild turf: the lingering dews of morn

Smoke round him, as from hill to hill he hies,

His staff protending like a hunter's spear,

Or by its aid leaping from crag to crag,

And o'er the brawling beds of unbridged streams.

Philosophy, methinks, at Fancy's call,

Might deign to follow him through what he does

Or sees in his day's march; himself he feels,

In those vast regions where his service lies,

A freeman, wedded to his life of hope

And hazard, and hard labour interchanged

With that majestic indolence so dear

To native man. A rambling school-boy, thus

I felt his presence in his own domain,

As of a lord and master, or a power,

Or genius, under Nature, under God,

Presiding; and severest solitude

Had more commanding looks when he was there.

When up the lonely brooks on rainy days

Angling I went, or trod the trackless hills

By mists bewildered, suddenly mine eyes

Have glanced upon him distant a few steps,

In size a giant, stalking through thick fog,

His sheep like Greenland bears; or, as he stepped

Beyond the boundary line of some hill-shadow,

His form hath flashed upon me, glorified

By the deep radiance of the setting sun:

Or him have I descried in distant sky,

A solitary object and sublime,

Above all height! like an aerial cross

Stationed alone upon a spiry rock

Of the Chartreuse, for worship. Thus was man

Ennobled outwardly before my sight,

And thus my heart was early introduced

To an unconscious love and reverence

Of human nature; hence the human form

To me became an index of delight,

Of grace and honour, power and worthiness.

Meanwhile this creature — spiritual almost

As those of books, but more exalted far;

Far more of an imaginative form

Than the gay Corin of the groves, who lives

For his own fancies, or to dance by the hour,

In coronal, with Phyllis in the midst —

Was, for the purposes of kind, a man

With the most common; husband, father; learned,

Could teach, admonish; suffered with the rest

From vice and folly, wretchedness and fear;

Of this I little saw, cared less for it,

But something must have felt.

Call ye these appearances

Which I beheld of shepherds in my youth,

This sanctity of Nature given to man,

A shadow, a delusion? ye who pore

On the dead letter, miss the spirit of things;

Whose truth is not a motion or a shape

Instinct with vital functions, but a block

Or waxen image which yourselves have made,

And ye adore! But blessed be the God

Of Nature and of Man that this was so;

That men before my inexperienced eyes

Did first present themselves thus purified,

Removed, and to a distance that was fit:

And so we all of us in some degree

Are led to knowledge, wheresoever led,

And howsoever; were it otherwise,

And we found evil fast as we find good

In our first years, or think that it is found,

How could the innocent heart bear up and live!

But doubly fortunate my lot; not here

Alone, that something of a better life

Perhaps was round me than it is the privilege

Of most to move in, but that first I looked

At Man through objects that were great or fair;

First communed with him by their help. And thus

Was founded a sure safeguard and defence

Against the weight of meanness, selfish cares,

Coarse manners, vulgar passions, that beat in

On all sides from the ordinary world

In which we traffic. Starting from this point

I had my face turned toward the truth, began

With an advantage furnished by that kind

Of prepossession, without which the soul

Receives no knowledge that can bring forth good,

No genuine insight ever comes to her.

From the restraint of over-watchful eyes

Preserved, I moved about, year after year,

Happy, and now most thankful that my walk

Was guarded from too early intercourse

With the deformities of crowded life,

And those ensuing laughters and contempts,

Self-pleasing, which, if we would wish to think

With a due reverence on earth's rightful lord,

Here placed to be the inheritor of heaven,

Will not permit us; but pursue the mind,

That to devotion willingly would rise,

Into the temple and the temple's heart.

Yet deem not, Friend! that human kind with me

Thus early took a place pre-eminent;

Nature herself was, at this unripe time,

But secondary to my own pursuits

And animal activities, and all

Their trivial pleasures; and when these had drooped

And gradually expired, and Nature, prized

For her own sake, became my joy, even then —

And upwards through late youth, until not less

Than two-and-twenty summers had been told —

Was Man in my affections and regards

Subordinate to her, her visible forms

And viewless agencies: a passion, she,

A rapture often, and immediate love

Ever at hand; he, only a delight

Occasional, an accidental grace,

His hour being not yet come. Far less had then

The inferior creatures, beast or bird, attuned

My spirit to that gentleness of love

( Though they had long been carefully observed ),

Won from me those minute obeisances

Of tenderness, which I may number now

With my first blessings. Nevertheless, on these

The light of beauty did not fall in vain,

Or grandeur circumfuse them to no end.

But when that first poetic faculty

Of plain Imagination and severe,

No longer a mute influence of the soul,

Ventured, at some rash Muse's earnest call,

To try her strength among harmonious words;

And to book-notions and the rules of art

Did knowingly conform itself; there came

Among the simple shapes of human life

A wilfulness of fancy and conceit;

And Nature and her objects beautified

These fictions, as in some sort, in their turn,

They burnished her. From touch of this new power

Nothing was safe: the elder-tree that grew

Beside the well-known charnel-house had then

A dismal look: the yew-tree had its ghost,

That took his station there for ornament:

The dignities of plain occurrence then

Were tasteless, and truth's golden mean, a point

Where no sufficient pleasure could be found.

Then, if a widow, staggering with the blow

Of her distress, was known to have turned her steps

To the cold grave in which her husband slept,

One night, or haply more than one, through pain

Or half-insensate impotence of mind,

The fact was caught at greedily, and there

She must be visitant the whole year through,

Wetting the turf with never-ending tears.

Through quaint obliquities I might pursue

These cravings; when the fox-glove, one by one,

Upwards through every stage of the tall stem,

Had shed beside the public way its bells,

And stood of all dismantled, save the last

Left at the tapering ladder's top, that seemed

To bend as doth a slender blade of grass

Tipped with a rain-drop, Fancy loved to seat,

Beneath the plant despoiled, but crested still

With this last relic, soon itself to fall,

Some vagrant mother, whose arch little ones,

All unconcerned by her dejected plight,

Laughed as with rival eagerness their hands

Gathered the purple cups that round them lay,

Strewing the turf's green slope.

A diamond light

( Whene'er the summer sun, declining, smote

A smooth rock wet with constant springs ) was seen

Sparkling from out a copse-clad bank that rose

Fronting our cottage. Oft beside the hearth

Seated, with open door, often and long

Upon this restless lustre have I gazed,

That made my fancy restless as itself.

‘ Twas now for me a burnished silver shield

Suspended over a knight's tomb, who lay

Inglorious, buried in the dusky wood:

An entrance now into some magic cave

Or palace built by fairies of the rock;

Nor could I have been bribed to disenchant

The spectacle, by visiting the spot.

Thus wilful Fancy, in no hurtful mood,

Engrafted far-fetched shapes on feelings bred

By pure Imagination: busy Power

She was, and with her ready pupil turned

Instinctively to human passions, then

Least understood. Yet,‘ mid the fervent swarm

Of these vagaries, with an eye so rich

As mine was through the bounty of a grand

And lovely region, I had forms distinct

To steady me: each airy thought revolved

Round a substantial centre, which at once

Incited it to motion, and controlled.

I did not pine like one in cities bred,

As was thy melancholy lot, dear Friend!

Great Spirit as thou art, in endless dreams

Of sickliness, disjoining, joining, things

Without the light of knowledge. Where the harm,

If, when the woodman languished with disease

Induced by sleeping nightly on the ground

Within his sod-built cabin, Indian-wise,

I called the pangs of disappointed love,

And all the sad etcetera of the wrong,

To help him to his grave? Meanwhile the man,

If not already from the woods retired

To die at home, was haply as I knew,

Withering by slow degrees,‘ mid gentle airs,

Birds, running streams, and hills so beautiful

On golden evenings, while the charcoal pile

Breathed up its smoke, an image of his ghost

Or spirit that full soon must take her flight.

Nor shall we not be tending towards that point

Of sound humanity to which our Tale

Leads, though by sinuous ways, if here I shew

How Fancy, in a season when she wove

Those slender cords, to guide the unconscious Boy

For the Man's sake, could feed at Nature's call

Some pensive musings which might well beseem

Maturer years.

A grove there is whose boughs

Stretch from the western marge of Thurston-mere,

With length of shade so thick, that whoso glides

Along the line of low-roofed water, moves

As in a cloister. Once — while, in that shade

Loitering, I watched the golden beams of light

Flung from the setting sun, as they reposed

In silent beauty on the naked ridge

Of a high eastern hill — thus flowed my thoughts

In a pure stream of words fresh from the heart:

Dear native Regions, wheresoe'er shall close

My mortal course, there will I think on you;

Dying, will cast on you a backward look;

Even as this setting sun ( albeit the Vale

Is no where touched by one memorial gleam )

Doth with the fond remains of his last power

Still linger, and a farewell lustre sheds

On the dear mountain-tops where first he rose.

Enough of humble arguments; recal,

My Song! those high emotions which thy voice

Has heretofore made known; that bursting forth

Of sympathy, inspiring and inspired,

When everywhere a vital pulse was felt,

And all the several frames of things, like stars,

Through every magnitude distinguishable,

Shone mutually indebted, or half lost

Each in the other's blaze, a galaxy

Of life and glory. In the midst stood Man,

Outwardly, inwardly contemplated,

As, of all visible natures, crown, though born

Of dust, and kindred to the worm; a Being,

Both in perception and discernment, first

In every capability of rapture,

Through the divine effect of power and love;

As, more than anything we know, instinct

With godhead, and, by reason and by will,

Acknowledging dependency sublime.

Ere long, the lonely mountains left, I moved,

Begirt, from day to day, with temporal shapes

Of vice and folly thrust upon my view,

Objects of sport, and ridicule, and scorn,

Manners and characters discriminate,

And little bustling passions that eclipse,

As well they might, the impersonated thought,

The idea, or abstraction of the kind.

An idler among academic bowers,

Such was my new condition, as at large

Has been set forth; yet here the vulgar light

Of present, actual, superficial life,

Gleaming through colouring of other times,

Old usages and local privilege,

Was welcome, softened, if not solemnised.

This notwithstanding, being brought more near

To vice and guilt, forerunning wretchedness

I trembled,— thought, at times, of human life

With an indefinite terror and dismay,

Such as the storms and angry elements

Had bred in me; but gloomier far, a dim

Analogy to uproar and misrule,

Disquiet, danger, and obscurity.

It might be told ( but wherefore speak of things

Common to all? ) that, seeing, I was led

Gravely to ponder — judging between good

And evil, not as for the mind's delight

But for her guidance — one who was to act,

As sometimes to the best of feeble means

I did, by human sympathy impelled:

And, through dislike and most offensive pain,

Was to the truth conducted; of this faith

Never forsaken, that, by acting well,

And understanding, I should learn to love

The end of life, and every thing we know.

Grave Teacher, stern Preceptress! for at times

Thou canst put on an aspect most severe;

London, to thee I willingly return.

Erewhile my verse played idly with the flowers

Enwrought upon thy mantle; satisfied

With that amusement, and a simple look

Of child-like inquisition now and then

Cast upwards on thy countenance, to detect

Some inner meanings which might harbour there.

But how could I in mood so light indulge,

Keeping such fresh remembrance of the day,

When, having thridded the long labyrinth

Of the suburban villages, I first

Entered thy vast dominion? On the roof

Of an itinerant vehicle I sate,

With vulgar men about me, trivial forms

Of houses, pavement, streets, of men and things,—

Mean shapes on every side: but, at the instant,

When to myself it fairly might be said,

The threshold now is overpast, ( how strange

That aught external to the living mind

Should have such mighty sway! yet so it was ),

A weight of ages did at once descend

Upon my heart; no thought embodied, no

Distinct remembrances, but weight and power,—

Power growing under weight: alas! I feel

That I am trifling:‘ twas a moment's pause,—

All that took place within me came and went

As in a moment; yet with Time it dwells,

And grateful memory, as a thing divine.

The curious traveller, who, from open day,

Hath passed with torches into some huge cave,

The Grotto of Antiparos, or the Den

In old time haunted by that Danish Witch,

Yordas; he looks around and sees the vault

Widening on all sides; sees, or thinks he sees,

Erelong, the massy roof above his head,

That instantly unsettles and recedes,—

Substance and shadow, light and darkness, all

Commingled, making up a canopy

Of shapes and forms and tendencies to shape

That shift and vanish, change and interchange

Like spectres,— ferment silent and sublime!

That after a short space works less and less,

Till, every effort, every motion gone,

The scene before him stands in perfect view

Exposed, and lifeless as a written book!—

But let him pause awhile, and look again,

And a new quickening shall succeed, at first

Beginning timidly, then creeping fast,

Till the whole cave, so late a senseless mass,

Busies the eye with images and forms

Boldly assembled,— here is shadowed forth

From the projections, wrinkles, cavities,

A variegated landscape,— there the shape

Of some gigantic warrior clad in mail,

The ghostly semblance of a hooded monk.

Veiled nun, or pilgrim resting on his staff:

Strange congregation! yet not slow to meet

Eyes that perceive through minds that can inspire.

Even in such sort had I at first been moved,

Nor otherwise continued to be moved,

As I explored the vast metropolis,

Fount of my country's destiny and the world's;

That great emporium, chronicle at once

And burial-place of passions, and their home

Imperial, their chief living residence.

With strong sensations teeming as it did

Of past and present, such a place must needs

Have pleased me, seeking knowledge at that time

Far less than craving power; yet knowledge came,

Sought or unsought, and influxes of power

Came, of themselves, or at her call derived

In fits of kindliest apprehensiveness,

From all sides, when whate'er was in itself

Capacious found, or seemed to find, in me

A correspondent amplitude of mind;

Such is the strength and glory of our youth!

The human nature unto which I felt

That I belonged, and reverenced with love,

Was not a punctual presence, but a spirit

Diffused through time and space, with aid derived

Of evidence from monuments, erect,

Prostrate, or leaning towards their common rest

In earth, the widely scattered wreck sublime

Of vanished nations, or more clearly drawn

From books and what they picture and record.

‘ Tis true, the history of our native land,

With those of Greece compared and popular Rome,

And in our high-wrought modern narratives

Stript of their harmonising soul, the life

Of manners and familiar incidents,

Had never much delighted me. And less

Than other intellects had mine been used

To lean upon extrinsic circumstance

Of record or tradition; but a sense

Of what in the Great City had been done

And suffered, and was doing, suffering, still,

Weighed with me, could support the test of thought;

And, in despite of all that had gone by,

Or was departing never to return,

There I conversed with majesty and power

Like independent natures. Hence the place

Was thronged with impregnations like the Wilds

In which my early feelings had been nursed —

Bare hills and valleys, full of caverns, rocks,

And audible seclusions, dashing lakes,

Echoes and waterfalls, and pointed crags

That into music touch the passing wind.

Here then my young imagination found

No uncongenial element; could here

Among new objects serve or give command,

Even as the heart's occasions might require,

To forward reason's else too scrupulous march.

The effect was, still more elevated views

Of human nature. Neither vice nor guilt,

Debasement undergone by body or mind,

Nor all the misery forced upon my sight,

Misery not lightly passed, but sometimes scanned

Most feelingly, could overthrow my trust

In what we may become; induce belief

That I was ignorant, had been falsely taught,

A solitary, who with vain conceits

Had been inspired, and walked about in dreams.

From those sad scenes when meditation turned,

Lo! every thing that was indeed divine

Retained its purity inviolate,

Nay brighter shone, by this portentous gloom

Set off; such opposition as aroused

The mind of Adam, yet in Paradise

Though fallen from bliss, when in the East he saw

Darkness ere day's mid course, and morning light

More orient in the western cloud, that drew

O'er the blue firmament a radiant white,

Descending slow with something heavenly fraught.

Add also, that among the multitudes

Of that huge city, oftentimes was seen

Affectingly set forth, more than elsewhere

Is possible, the unity of man,

One spirit over ignorance and vice

Predominant, in good and evil hearts;

One sense for moral judgments, as one eye

For the sun's light. The soul when smitten thus

By a sublime idea, whencesoe'er

Vouchsafed for union or communion, feeds

On the pure bliss, and takes her rest with God.

Thus from a very early age, O Friend!

My thoughts by slow gradations had been drawn

To human-kind, and to the good and ill

Of human life: Nature had led me on;

And oft amid the “busy hum” I seemed

To travel independent of her help,

As if I had forgotten her; but no,

The world of human-kind outweighed not hers

In my habitual thoughts; the scale of love,

Though filling daily, still was light, compared

With that in which her mighty objects lay.