420 Bending beneath our life's mysterious weight Of pain, and doubt, and fear; yet yielding not In happiness to the happiest upon earth. Simplicity in habit, truth in speech, Be these the daily strengtheners of their minds!
6. Thomas De Quincey responded to this line in capacities of re-echoing the sublimities of nature, Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets: 'This has always struck me as with a flash of sublime very expression, 'far,' by which space and its infin- revelation.' ities are attributed to the human heart, and to its
.
THE PRELUDE, BOOK THIRTEENTH / 361
425 May books and nature be their early joy! And knowledge, rightly honored with that name, Knowledge not purchased by the loss of power!
['THE MYSTERY OF WORDS']
Here must we pause; this only let me add, From heart-experience, and in humblest sense Of modesty, that he, who, in his youth, A daily Wanderer among woods and fields,
590 With living Nature hath been intimate, Not only in that raw unpractised time Is stirred to extasy, as others are, By glittering verse; but, further, doth receive, In measure only dealt out to himself,
595 Knowledge and increase of enduring joy From the great Nature that exists in works Of mighty Poets. Visionary Power
Attends the motions of the viewless0 winds invisible Embodied in the mystery of words:
600 There darkness makes abode, and all the host Of shadowy things work endless changes there, As in a mansion like their proper home. Even forms and substances are circumfused By that transparent veil with light divine;
605 And, through the turnings intricate of verse, Present themselves as objects recognized, In flashes, and with glory not their own.
From Book Sixth Cambridge, and the Alps
['HUMAN NATURE SEEMING BORN AGAIN']
When the third summer freed us from restraint,' A youthful Friend, he too a Mountaineer,
325 Not slow to share my wishes, took his staff, And, sallying forth, we journeyed, side by side, Bound to the distant Alps. A hardy slight Did this unprecedented course imply Of College studies and their set rewards;2
330 Nor had, in truth, the scheme been formed by me Without uneasy forethought of the pain, The censures, and ill-omening of those
1. After reviewing briefly his second and third years at Cambridge. Wordsworth here describes his trip through France and Switzerland with a college friend, Robert Jones, during the succeeding summer vacation, in 1790. France was then in the 'golden hours' of the early period of the Revolution; the fall of the Bastille had occurred on July 14 of the preceding year.
2. Universities in Britain allow longer vacations than those in North America, on the assumption that they will be used for study. In the upcoming term Wordsworth faces his final examinations. His ranking in those will determine his career prospects.
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362 / WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
To whom my worldly interests were dear.
But Nature then was Sovereign in my mind,
And mighty Forms, seizing a youthful fancy,
Had given a charter3 to irregular hopes.
In any age of uneventful calm
Among the Nations, surely would my heart
Have been possessed by similar desire;
But Europe at that time was thrilled with joy,
France standing on the top of golden hours,
And human nature seeming born again.
[CROSSING SIMPLON PASS]
9
* 4 That very day, From a bare ridge we also first beheld
Unveiled the summit of Mont Blanc, and grieved
To have a soulless image on the eye
Which had usurped upon a living thought
That never more could be.4 The wondrous Vale
Of Chamouny5 stretched far below, and soon
With its dumb0 cataracts, and streams of ice, silent A motionless array of mighty waves,
Five rivers broad and vast, made rich amends,
