formed National Assembly. 9. The arcades in the courtyard of the Palais d'Orleans, a fashionable gathering place. 1. The political prison, which had been demolished after being stormed and sacked on July 14, 1789. 2. The painting of the weeping Mary Magdalen by Charles Le Brun (1619?1690) was a tourist attraction. 3. In Orleans.
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37 0 / WILLIA M WORDSWORT H I hasten; there by novelties in speech, Domestic manners, customs, gestures, looks, And all the attire of ordinary life, 85 Attention was engrossed; and, thus amused, I stood 'mid those concussions unconcerned, Tranquil almost, and careless as a flower Glassed in a green-house, or a Parlour shrub That spreads its leaves in unmolested peace 90 While every bush and tree, the country through, Is shaking to the roots; indifference this Which may seem strange; but I was unprepared With needful knowledge, had abruptly passed Into a theatre whose stage was filled, 95 And busy with an action far advanced. Like Others I had skimmed, and sometimes read With care, the master pamphlets of the day;4 Nor wanted' such half-insight as grew wild lacked Upon that meagre soil, helped out by talk ioo And public news; but having never seen A Chronicle that might suffice to shew Whence the main Organs5 of the public Power Had sprung, their transmigrations when and how Accomplished, giving thus unto events 105 A form and body; all things were to me Loose and disjointed, and the affections left Without a vital interest. At that time, Moreover, the first storm was overblown, And the strong hand of outward violence i io Locked up in quiet.6 For myself, I fear Now, in connection with so great a Theme, To speak (as I must be compelled to do) Of one so unimportant; night by night Did I frequent the formal haunts of men 115 Whom, in the City, privilege of birth Sequestered from the rest: societies Polished in Arts, and in punctilio0 versed; social niceties Whence, and from deeper causes, all discourse Of good and evil of the time was shunned 120 With scrupulous care: but these restrictions soon Proved tedious, and I gradually withdrew Into a noisier world, and thus erelong Became a Patriot;7 and my heart was all Given to the People, and my love was theirs.
4. Wordsworth probably refers to the numerous English pamphlets (including Paines Rights of Man, part 1, and Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Men) published in response to Edmund Burke's attack on the revolution, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). 5. Institutions, instruments. 6. The peace that followed the storming of the Bastille in 1789 was dramatically broken when, between September 2and6, 1792, three thousand prisoners suspected of Royalist sympathies were summarily executed by a Paris mob. 7. I.e., became committed to the people's side in the Revolution.
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From Book Tenth France continued1 [THE REVOLUTION: PARIS AND ENGLAND] Cheared with this hope,2 to Paris I returned; And ranged, with ardor heretofore unfelt, 50 The spacious City, and in progress passed The Prison3 where the unhappy Monarch lay, Associate with his Children and his Wife, In Bondage; and the Palace4 lately stormed, With roar of Cannon, by a furious Host. 55 I crossed the Square (an empty Area then!) Of the Carousel, where so late had lain The Dead, upon the Dying heaped; and gazed On this and other Spots, as doth a Man Upon a Volume whose contents he knows 60 Are memorable, but from him locked up, Being written in a tongue he cannot read; So that he questions the mute leaves0 with pain, pages And half-upbraids their silence. But, that night, I felt most deeply in what world I was, 65 What ground I trod on, and what air I breathed. High was my Room and lonely, near the roof Of a large Mansion or Hotel,0 a Lodge town house That would have pleased me in more quiet times, Nor was it wholly without pleasure, then. 70 With unextinguished taper I kept watch, Reading at intervals; the fear gone by Pressed on me almost like a fear to come. I thought of those September massacres, Divided from me by one little month, 75 Saw them and touched;5 the rest was conjured up From tragic fictions, or true history, Remembrances and dim admonishments. The Horse is taught his manage,6 and no Star Of wildest course but treads back his own steps; so For the spent hurricane the air provides As fierce a Successor; the tide retreats But to return out of its hiding place In the great Deep; all things have second birth; The earthquake is not satisfied at once; 85 And in this way I wrought upon myself
1. Book 10 deals with the period between October 1792 and August 1794. 2. I.e., hope that, with the Declaration of the Republic and the French army's recent defeat of an Austrian and Prussian invasion, there would be no more need for violence. 3. I.e., the 'Temple' (it had once housed the religious Order of Templars), where starting in September 1792 the deposed king was held prisoner awaiting trial for his crimes against the people. 4. The Tuileries. On August 10, 1792, the palace was marched upon by a crowd intent on seizing Louis XVI, whose Swiss guards opened fire on the insurgents. The bodies of the thousands who died in the conflict were cremated in the great square of the 'Carousel' (line 56), in front of the palace. 5. I.e., his imagination of the September massacres was so vivid as to be palpable. 6. The French manege, the prescribed action and paces of a trained horse.
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37 2 / WILLIA M WORDSWORT H Until I seemed to hear a voice that cried To the whole City, 'Sleep no more.'7 The Trance Fled with the Voice to which it had given birth, But vainly comments of a calmer mind 90 Promised soft peace and sweet forgetfulness. The place, all hushed and silent as it was, Appeared unfit for the repose of Night, Defenceless as a wood where Tygers roam. * * * In this frame of mind, Dragged by a chain of harsh necessity, So seemed it,?now I thankfully acknowledge, Forced by the gracious providence of Heaven? 225 To England I returned,8 else (though assured That I both was, and must be, of small weight, No better than a Landsman on the deck Of a ship struggling with a hideous storm) Doubtless I should have then made common cause 230 With some who perished, haply0 perished too,9 perhaps A poor mistaken and bewildered offering, Should to the breast of Nature have gone back With all my resolutions, all my hopes, A Poet only to myself, to Men 235 Useless, and even, beloved Friend, a Soul To thee unknown!' ? * * What then were my emotions, when in Arms Britain put forth her free-born strength in league, 265 O pity and shame! with those confederate Powers?2 Not in my single self alone I found, But in the minds of all ingenuous Youth, Change and subversion from that hour. No shock Given to my moral nature had I known 270 Down to that very moment; neither lapse Nor turn of sentiment that might be named A revolution, save at this one time; All else was progress on the self-same path On which, with a diversity of pace, 275 I had been travelling: this a stride at once Into another region.?As a light And pliant hare-bell? swinging in the breeze bluebell On some gray rock, its birth-place, so had I Wantoned, fast rooted on the ancient tower 280 Of my beloved Country, wishing not A happier fortune than to wither there.
7. Macbeth's hallucination after his murder of the king. 'Methought I heard a voice cry, 'Sleep no more, / Macbeth does murder sleep' ' (Shakespeare, Macbeth 2.2.33?34). Louis XVI was guillotined on January 21,1793. 8. Forced by the 'harsh necessity' of a lack of money, Wordsworth returned to England late in 1792. 9. Wordsworth sympathized with the moderate party of the Girondins, almost all of whom were guillotined or committed suicide following Robespierre's rise to power in the National Convention. 1. Wordsworth did not meet Coleridge, the 'beloved Friend,' until 1795. 2. England joined Austria and Prussia in the war against France in February 1793.
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Now was I from that pleasant station torn And tossed about in whirlwind. I rejoiced, Yea, afterwards, truth most painful to record!
285 Exulted, in the triumph of my Soul, When Englishmen by thousands were o'erthrown, Left without glory on the field, or driven, Brave hearts, to shameful flight.3 It was a grief,? Grief call it not, 'twas any thing but that,?
