fine,0 the end
Sick, wearied out with contrarieties, 305 Yielded up moral questions in despair.
This was the crisis of that strong disease, This the soul's last and lowest ebb; I drooped, Deeming our blessed Reason of least use Where wanted most. * * *
2. I.e., schemes that undertook to separate tions on the Revolution in France (p. 152 above) of ('abstract') people's hopes for future happiness the new political theories founded on reason: 'All from reliance on the emotional part of human the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. nature, and instead to ground those hopes on their All the superadded ideas, furnished from the ward- rational natures ('a purer element'). The allusion robe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns, is primarily to William Godwin's Inquiry' Concern-and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to ing Political Justice (1793), which proposed that cover the defects of our naked shivering nature . . . humans' moral and political progress would be are to be exploded as a ridiculous, absurd, and anti- unstoppable if reason were allowed to function quated fashion.' , freely. 4. Deeds to prove legal entitlements. 3. Cf. Edmund Burke's denunciation in Reflec
.
37 8 / WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
* 4 ' Then it was, Thanks to the bounteous Giver of all good! That the beloved Woman5 in whose sight Those days were passed, now speaking in a voice Of sudden admonition?like a brook That does but cross a lonely road, and now Seen, heard, and felt, and caught at every turn, Companion never lost through many a league? Maintained for me a saving intercourse0 communion With my true self: for, though bedimmed and changed Both as a clouded and a waning moon, She whispered still that brightness would return, She in the midst of all preserved me still A Poet, made me seek beneath that name, And that alone, my office0 upon earth. duty And lastly, as hereafter will be shewn, If willing audience fail not, Nature's self, By all varieties of human love Assisted, led me back through opening day To those sweet counsels between head and heart Whence grew that genuine knowledge fraught with peace Which, through the later sinkings of this cause, Hath still upheld me, and upholds me now In the catastrophe (for so they dream, And nothing less), when, finally to close And rivet down the gains of France, a Pope Is summoned in, to crown an Emperor:6 This last opprobrium,0 when we see a people disgrace That once looked up in faith, as if to Heaven For manna, take a lesson from the Dog Returning to his vomit.7 * * *
Book Twelfth Imagination and Taste, how impaired and restored
[SPOTS OF TIME]
* * 4 I shook the habit off1
205 Entirely and for ever, and again In Nature's presence stood, as now I stand, A sensitive Being, a creative Soul.
There are in our existence spots of time,2
5. After a long separation Dorothy Wordsworth 1. The acquired habit of logical analysis, which came to live with her brother at Racedown in 1795 had marred his earlier feelings for the natural and remained a permanent member of his house-world. hold. 2. Wordsworth's account in the lines that follow 6. The ultimate blow to liberal hopes for France of two memories from childhood was originally occurred when on December 2, 1804, Napoleon drafted for book 1 of the two-part Prelude of 1799. summoned Pope Pius VII to officiate at the cere-By transferring these early memories to the end of mony elevating him to emperor. At the last his completed autobiography, rather than present- moment Napoleon took the crown and donned it ing them in its opening books, he enacts his own himself. theory about how remembrance of things past 7. Allusion to Proverbs 26.11: 'As a dog returneth nourishes the mind. He shows that it does so, as to his vomit, a fool returneth to his folly.' he says, 'down to this very time' (line 327): the
.
THE PRELUDE, BOOK THIRTEENTH / 37 9
That with distinct pre-eminence retain
210 A renovating virtue,0 whence, depressed power of renewal By false opinion and contentious thought, Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight, In trivial occupations, and the round Of ordinary intercourse, our minds
215 Are nourished and invisibly repaired; A virtue by which pleasure is inhanced, That penetrates, enables us to mount, When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen. This efficacious Spirit chiefly lurks
220 Among those passages of life that give Profoundest knowledge how and to what point The mind is lord and master?outward sense3 The obedient Servant of her will. Such moments Are scattered every where, taking their date
225 From our first Childhood. I remember well That once, while yet my inexperienced hand Could scarcely hold a bridle, with proud hopes I mounted, and we journied towards the hills: An ancient Servant of my Father's house
230 Was with me, my encourager and Guide. We had not travelled long ere some mischance Disjoined me from my Comrade, and, through fear Dismounting, down the rough and stony Moor I led my horse, and, stumbling on, at length
235 Came to a bottom,0 where in former times valley A Murderer had been hung in iron chains. The Gibbet mast4 had mouldered down, the bones And iron case were gone, but on the turf Hard by, soon after that fell deed was wrought,
240 Some unknown hand had carved the Murderer's name. The monumental Letters were inscribed In times long past, but still from year to year, By superstition of the neighbourhood, The grass is cleared away, and to that hour
245 The characters0 were fresh and visible. letters A casual glance had shewn them, and I fled, Faultering and faint and ignorant of the road: Then, reascending the bare common,0 saw field A naked Pool that lay beneath the hills,
250 The Beacon5 on its summit, and, more near, A Girl who bore a Pitcher on her head, And seemed with difficult steps to force her way Against the blowing wind. It was in truth An ordinary sight; but I should need
255 Colors and words that are unknown to man To paint the visionary dreariness Which, while I looked all round for my lost Guide,
