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328 / WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
To summon back from lonesome banishment, And make them dwellers in the hearts of men
165 Now living, or to live in future years. Sometimes the ambitious Power of choice, mistaking Proud spring- tide swellings for a regular sea, Will settle on some British theme, some old Romantic Tale by Milton left unsung:4
170 More often turning to some gentle place Within the groves of Chivalry, I pipe To Shepherd Swains, or seated, harp in hand, Amid reposing knights by a River side Or fountain, listen to the grave reports
175 Of dire enchantments faced, and overcome By the strong mind, and Tales of warlike feats Where spear encountered spear, and sword with sword Fought, as if conscious of the blazonry That the shield bore, so glorious was the strife;
180 Whence inspiration for a song that winds Through ever changing scenes of votive quest,5 Wrongs to redress, harmonious tribute paid To patient courage and unblemished truth, To firm devotion, zeal unquenchable, 185 And Christian meekness hallowing faithful loves.6 Sometimes, more sternly moved, I would relate How vanquished Mithridates northward passed, And, hidden in the cloud of years, became Odin, the Father of a Race by whom i9o Perished the Roman Empire;7 how the friends And followers of Sertorius, out of Spain Flying, found shelter in the Fortunate Isles; And left their usages, their arts, and laws To disappear by a slow gradual death; 195 To dwindle and to perish, one by one, Starved in those narrow bounds: but not the soul Of Liberty, which fifteen hundred years Survived, and, when the European came With skill and power that might not be withstood, 200 Did, like a pestilence, maintain its hold, And wasted down by glorious death that Race Of natural Heroes;8?or I would record How, in tyrannic times, some high-souled Man, Unnamed among the chronicles of Kings,
4. In Paradise Lost 9.24-41 Milton relates that, in revenge on the conquering Romans links him to seeking a subject for his epic poem, he rejected other figures whom Wordsworth here considers as
'fabled Knights' and medieval romance. potential subjects for his poem, all of them battlers
5. A quest undertaken to fulfill a vow. against tyranny. 6. An echo of the prefatory statement to Spenser's 8. Sertorius, a Roman general allied with Mithri- Faerie Qiteene, line 9: 'Fierce warres and faithfull dates, fought off the armies of Pompey and others
loves shall moralize my song.' until he was assassinated in 72 B.C.E. There is a
7. Mithridates VI, king of Pontus, was defeated by legend that after his death his followers, to escape the Roman Pompey in 66 B.C.E. In his Decline and Roman tyranny, fled from Spain to the Canary
Fall of the Roman Empire (published between Islands (known in ancient times as 'the Fortunate
1776 and 1788), the historian Edward Gibbon had Isles,' line 192), where their descendants flour-
discussed Mithridates as a historical prototype for ished until subjugated and decimated by invading
the legendary Norse god Odin. Mithridates' deter-Spaniards late in the 1 5th century.
mination to found a family line that would take
.
THE PRELUDE, BOOK FIRST / 329
205 Suffered in silence for truth's sake: or tell
How that one Frenchman, through continued force
Of meditation on the inhuman deeds
Of those who conquered first the Indian isles,
Went, single in his ministry, across 210 The Ocean;?not to comfort the Oppressed,
But, like a thirsty wind, to roam about,
Withering the Oppressor:9?how Gustavus sought
Help at his need in Dalecarlia's mines:1
How Wallace2 fought for Scotland, left the name 215 Of Wallace to be found, like a wild flower, All over his dear Country, left the deeds Of Wallace, like a family of Ghosts, To people the steep rocks and river banks, Her natural sanctuaries, with a local soul
220 Of independence and stern liberty. Sometimes it suits me better to invent A Tale from my own heart, more near akin To my own passions, and habitual thoughts, Some variegated Story, in the main 225 Lofty, but the unsubstantial Structure melts Before the very sun that brightens it, Mist into air dissolving! Then, a wish, My last and favourite aspiration, mounts, With yearning, tow'rds some philosophic Song 230 Of Truth3 that cherishes our daily life; With meditations passionate, from deep Recesses in man's heart, immortal verse Thoughtfully fitted to the Orphean lyre;4 But from this awful burthen I full soon 235 Take refuge, and beguile myself with trust That mellower years will bring a riper mind And clearer insight. Thus my days are passed In contradiction; with no skill to part Vague longing, haply bred by want of power, 240 From paramount impulse?not to be withstood; A timorous capacity from prudence; From circumspection, infinite delay.5 Humility and modest awe themselves Betray me, serving often for a cloke 245 To a more subtile selfishness; that now Locks every function up in blank0 reserve,0 absolute / inaction Now dupes me, trusting to an anxious eye That with intrusive restlessness beats off
9. Dominique de Gourges, a French gentleman to Bannockburn,' p. 145. who went in 1568 to Florida to avenge the mas-3. I.e., The Recluse.
sacre of the French by the Spaniards there [foot-4. The lyre of Orpheus. In Greek myth Orpheus
note in The Prelude of 1850]. was able to enchant not only human listeners but
1. Gustavus I of Sweden (1496-1530) worked to also the natural world by his singing and playing. advance Sweden's liberation from Danish rule 5. The syntax is complex and inverted; in outline
while toiling in disguise as a miner in his country's the sense of lines 238?42 seems to be: 'With no
