He consecrates earth by the mere influences of sentiment and thought, and renders its scenes as enchanted as though he had filled them with Oriental wonders. Touched by him, the hills, the rocks, the hedge-rows, and the humblest flowers shine in a magic lustre "which never was by sea or land," and which yet is strangely familiar to our hearts. These are not hallowed by him with "angel visits," nor by the presence of fair and immortal shapes, but by the remembrances of early joy, by lingering gleams of a brightness which has passed away, and dawnings of a glory to be revealed in the fulness of time. The lowliest of nature's graces have power to move and to delight him. "The clouds are touched, and in their silent faces does he read unutterable love." He listens to the voice of the cuckoo in early spring, till he "begets again the golden time of his childhood," and till the world, which is "fit home" for that mysterious bird, appears “an airy unsubstantial place." At the root of some old thorn, or beneath the branches of some time-honoured tree, he opens the sources of delicious musing, and suggests the first hints which lead through a range of human thoughts to the glories of our final destiny. When we traverse with him the "bare earth and mountains bare," we feel that "the place whereon we are standing is holy ground;" the melancholy brook can touch our souls as truly as a tragic catastrophe; the splendours of the western sky give intimation of "a joy past joy;" and the meanest flowers, and scanty blades of grass, awaken within us hopes too rapturous for smiles, and "thoughts which do often lie too deep for tears." 66 To give all the instances of this sublime operation of the imaginative faculty in Wordsworth, would be to quote the far larger portion of his works. A few lines, however, from the poem composed on the Banks of the Wye, will give our readers a deep glimpse into the inmost heart of his poetry, and of his poetical system, on the communion of the soul of man with the spirit of the universe. In this rapturous effusion-in which, with a wise prodigality, he hints and intimates the profoundest of those feelings which vivify all he has created-he gives the following view of the progress of his sympathy with the external world: "Nature then (The coarser pleasures of my boyish days And their glad animal movements, all gone by) That had no need of a remoter charm That time is past, Not harsh, nor grating, though of ample power All thinking things, all objects of all thought, There are none of the workings of our poet's imaginative faculty more wonderful in themselves, or more productive of high thoughts and intense sympathies, than those which have for their objects the grand abstractions of humanity-Life and Death, Childhood and Old Age. Every period of our being is to him not only filled with its own peculiar endearments and joys, but dignified by its own sanctities. The common forms of life assume a new venerableness when he touches them-for he makes us feel them in their connexion with our immortality-even as the uncouth vessels of the Jewish law appeared sublime to those who felt that they were dedicated to the immediate service of Heaven. He ever leaves us conscious that the existence on whose beginning he expatiates, will endure for ever. He traces out those of its fibres which are eternal in their essence. He discovers in every part of our earthly course manifold intimations that these our human hearts will never die. Childhood is, to him not only the season of novelty, of innocence, of joyous spirits, and of mounting hope-but of a dream-like glory which assures to us that this world is not our final home. Age to him, is not a descent into a dark valley, but a "final eminence," where the wise may sit "in awful sovereignty" as on a high peak among the mountains in placid summer, and commune with Heaven, undisturbed by the lesser noises of the tumultuous world. One season of life is bound to another by “ the natural piety” which the unchanging forms of nature preserve, and death comes at last over the deep and tranquil stream as it is about to emerge into a lovelier sunshine, as "a shadow thrown softly and lightly from a passing cloud." 66 66 The Ode in which Wordsworth particularly developes the intimations of immortality to be found in the recollections of early childhood, is, to our feelings, the noblest piece of lyric poetry in the world. It was the first poem of its author which we read, and never shall we forget the sensations which it excited within us. We had heard the cold sneers attached to his name-we had glanced over criticisms, 'lighter than vanity," which represented him as an object for scorn "to point its slow unmoving finger at "—and here -in the works of this derided poet-we found a new vein of imaginative sentiment opened to us-sacred recollections brought back on our hearts with all the freshness of novelty, and all the venerableness of far-off time-the most mysterious of old sensations traced to a celestial origin—and the shadows cast over the opening of life from the realities of eternity renewed before us with a sense of their supernal causes! What a gift did we then inherit! To have the best and most imperishable of intellectual treasures—the mighty world of reminiscences of the days of infancy-set before us in a new and holier light; to find objects of deepest veneration where we had only been accustomed to love; to feel in all the touching mysteries of our past being the symbols and assurances of our immortal destiny! The poet has here spanned our mortal life as with a glorious rain-bow, terminating on one side in infancy, and on the other in the realms of blessedness beyond the grave, and shedding even upon the middle of that course tints of unearthly colouring. The following is the view he has given of the fading glory of childhood-drawn in part from Oriental fiction, but embodying the profoundest of elemental truths :— "Our birth is but a sleep, and a forgetting: And cometh from afar; And not in utter nakedness, Heaven lies about us in our infancy! But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, The Youth that daily farther from the east Is on his way attended; At length the man perceives it die away, But the following is the noblest passage of the whole; and such an outpouring of thought and feeling-such a piece of inspired philosophy-we do not believe exists elsewhere in human language:— "O joy! that in our embers Is something that doth live, The thought of our past years in me doth breed For that which is most worthy to be blest; Of Childhood, whether fluttering or at rest, The song of thanks and praise; Moving about in worlds not realiz'd, High instincts, before which our mortal Nature Which, be they what they may, Are yet the fountain light of all our day, Uphold us, cherish us, and make Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, Nor all that is at enmity with joy, Can utterly abolish or destroy ! Hence, in a season of calm weather, Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea Can in a moment travel thither, And see the Children sport upon the shore, After this rapturous flight the author thus leaves to repose on the quiet lap of humanity, and soothes us with a strain of such mingled solemnity and tenderness, as angels weep :" 66 might make "What though the radiance which was once so bright, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; Strength in what remains behind, In the primal sympathy Which having been, must ever be, In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind. And oh ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves, Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might; To live beneath your more habitual sway. I love the Brooks which down their channels fret, Is lovely yet; The Clouds that gather round the setting sun |