poetic imagination he brings to the composition of 4. The post with a projecting arm used for hanging this book has been revived by recollections. criminals.
3. Perception of the external world. 5. A signal beacon on a hill above Penrith.
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38 0 / WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Invested Moorland waste and naked Pool, The Beacon crowning the lone eminence,
260 The Female and her garments vexed and tossed By the strong wind.?When, in the blessed hours Of early love, the loved One6 at my side, I roamed, in daily presence of this scene, Upon the naked Pool and dreary Crags,
265 And on the melancholy Beacon, fell A spirit of pleasure, and Youth's golden gleam; And think ye not with radiance more sublime For these remembrances, and for the power They had left behind? So feeling comes in aid
270 Of feeling, and diversity of strength Attends us, if but once we have been strong. Oh! mystery of Man, from what a depth Proceed thy honors! I am lost, but see In simple child-hood something of the base
275 On which thy greatness stands; but this I feel, That from thyself it comes, that thou must give, Else never canst receive. The days gone by Return upon me almost from the dawn Of life: the hiding-places of Man's power
280 Open; I would approach them, but they close. I see by glimpses now; when age comes on May scarcely see at all, and I would give, While yet we may, as far as words can give, Substance and life to what I feel, enshrining,
285 Such is my hope, the spirit of the past For future restoration.?Yet another Of these memorials.
One Christmas-time,7 On the glad Eve of its dear holidays, Feverish, and tired, and restless, I went forth
290 Into the fields, impatient for the sight Of those led Palfreys8 that should bear us home, My Brothers and myself. There rose a Crag That, from the meeting point of two highways Ascending, overlooked them both, far stretched;
295 Thither, uncertain on which road to fix My expectation, thither I repaired, Scout-like, and gained the summit; 'twas a day Tempestuous, dark, and wild, and on the grass 1 sate, half-sheltered by a naked wall;
300 Upon my right hand couched a single sheep, Upon my left a blasted hawthorn stood: With those Companions at my side, I sate, Straining my eyes intensely, as the mist Gave intermitting prospect of the copse
305 And plain beneath. Ere we to School returned
6. Mary Hutchinson. Hawkshead School with two of his brothers. 7. In 1783. Wordsworth, aged thirteen, was at 8. Small saddle horses.
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THE PRELUDE, BOOK THIRTEENTH / 381
That dreary time, ere we had been ten days Sojourners in my Father's House, he died,9 And I and my three Brothers, Orphans then, Followed his Body to the Grave. The Event,
310 With all the sorrow that it brought, appeared A chastisement; and when I called to mind That day so lately passed, when from the Crag I looked in such anxiety of hope, With trite reflections of morality,
315 Yet in the deepest passion, I bowed low To God, who thus corrected my desires; And afterwards, the wind and sleety rain And all the business1 of the Elements, The single Sheep, and the one blasted tree,
320 And the bleak music of that old stone wall, The noise of wood and water, and the mist That on the line of each of those two Roads Advanced in such indisputable shapes;2 All these were kindred spectacles and sounds
325 To which I oft repaired, and thence would drink As at a fountain; and on winter nights, Down to this very time, when storm and rain
Beat on my roof, or haply0 at noon-day, perhaps While in a grove I walk whose lofty trees,
330 Laden with summer's thickest foliage, rock In a strong wind, some working of the spirit, Some inward agitations, thence are brought,3 Whate'er their office, whether to beguile Thoughts over-busy in the course they took,
335 Or animate an hour of vacant ease.
From Book Thirteenth Subject concluded
[POETRY OF 'UNASSUMING THINGS']
From Nature doth emotion come, and moods Of calmness equally are Nature's gift: This is her glory; these two attributes Are sister horns that constitute her strength.1
5 Hence Genius, born to thrive by interchange Of peace and excitation, finds in her His best and purest friend, from her receives That energy by which he seeks the truth, From her that happy stillness of the mind
9. John Wordsworth died on December 30, 1783. speak to thee' (Shakespeare, Hamlet 1.4.24?25). William's mother had died five years earlier. 3. Another instance of Wordsworth's inner 1. Busy-ness; motions. response to an outer breeze (cf. 1.33?38, p. 325). 2. I.e., shapes one did not dare question. Cf. Ham-1. In the Old Testament the horn of an animal let's declaration to the ghost of his father: 'Thou signifies power. com'st in such questionable shape / That I will
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38 2 / WILLIA M WORDSWORT H 10 Which fits him to receive it, when unsought. Such benefit the humblest intellects Partake of, each in their degree: 'tis mine To speak of what myself have known and felt. Smooth task! for
