words find easy way, inspired 15 By gratitude and confidence in truth. Long time in search of knowledge did I range The field of human life, in heart and mind Benighted, but the dawn beginning now To reappear,2 'twas proved that not in vain 20 I had been taught to reverence a Power That is the visible quality and shape And image of right reason,3 that matures Her processes by steadfast laws, gives birth To no impatient or fallacious hopes, 25 No heat of passion or excessive zeal, No vain conceits,?provokes to no quick turns Of self-applauding intellect,?but trains To meekness, and exalts by humble faith;4 Holds up before the mind, intoxicate 30 With present objects, and the busy dance Of things that pass away, a temperate shew Of objects that endure; and by this course Disposes her, when over-fondly set On throwing off incumbrances,0 to seek burdens 35 In Man, and in the frame of social life, Whate'er there is desireable and good Of kindred permanence, unchanged in form And function, or through strict vicissitude Of life and death revolving.5 Above all 40 Were re-established now those watchful thoughts Which (seeing little worthy or sublime In what the Historian's pen so much delights To blazon,0 Power and Energy detached celebrate From moral purpose) early tutored me 45 To look with feelings of fraternal love Upon the unassuming things that hold A silent station in this beauteous world. [DISCOVERY OF HIS POETIC SUBJECT. SALISBURY PLAIN. SIGHT OF 'A NEW WORLD'] 220 Here, calling up to mind what then I saw, A youthful Traveller, and see daily now In the familiar circuit of my home, Here might I pause and bend in reverence
2. I.e., he is beginning to recover from the spiritual crisis recorded in 11.293?309. 3. Wordsworth follows Milton's use of the term 'right reason' to denote a human faculty that is inherently attuned to truth. 4. In the text of 1805: 'but lifts / The being into magnanimity.' 5. Cf. the 1802 Preface to Lyrical Ballads and Wordsworth's discussion of how the plain language of rural life that he draws on for his poetry expresses 'the essential passions of the heart' and how, 'arising out of repeated experience and regular feelings, [it] is a more permanent, and a far more philosophical language, than that which is frequently substituted for it by poets' (p. 262 above).
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THE PRELUDE, BOOK THIRTEENTH / 383
To Nature, and the power of human minds,
225 To Men as they are Men within themselves. How oft high service is performed within, When all the external Man is rude in shew! Not like a Temple rich with pomp and gold, But a mere mountain Chapel that protects
230 Its simple Worshippers from sun and shower. Of these, said I, shall be my song, of these, If future years mature me for the task, Will I record the praises, making Verse Deal boldly with substantial things; in truth
235 And sanctity of passion speak of these,
That justice may be done, obeisance paid Where it is due: thus haply? shall I teach, perhaps Inspire, through unadulterated0 ears uncorrupted Pour rapture, tenderness, and hope, my theme
240 No other than the very heart of Man As found among the best of those who live Not unexalted by religious faith, Nor uninformed by Books, good books, though few, In Nature's presence: thence may I select
245 Sorrow, that is not sorrow, but delight, And miserable love that is not pain To hear of, for the glory that redounds Therefrom to human kind and what we are.
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* * ' Dearest Friend, If thou partake the animating faith
300 That Poets, even as Prophets, each with each Connected in a mighty scheme of truth, Have each his own peculiar faculty, Heaven's gift, a sense that fits him to perceive Objects unseen before, thou wilt not blame
305 The humblest of this band6 who dares to hope That unto him hath also been vouchsafed0 given An insight, that in some sort he possesses A Privilege, whereby a Work of his, Proceeding from a source of untaught things,
310 Creative and enduring, may become A Power like one of Nature's. To a hope Not less ambitious once among the Wilds Of Sarum's Plain7 my youthful Spirit was raised; There, as I ranged at will the pastoral downs8
315 Trackless and smooth, or paced the bare white roads Lengthening in solitude their dreary line, Time with his retinue of ages fled Backwards, nor checked his flight until I saw Our dim Ancestral Past in Vision clear;9
6. Wordsworth himself. Plain. 7. Salisbury Plain, which Wordsworth crossed 8. Open hills used to pasture sheep. alone on foot in the summer of 1793. The journey 9. Wordsworth shared the common, but mistaken, occasioned the poem Adventures on Salisbury belief of his time that Stonehenge, the giant meg
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38 4 / WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
320 Saw multitudes of men, and here and there
A single Briton clothed in Wolf-skin vest,
With shield and stone-axe, stride across the wold;1
The voice of Spears was heard, the rattling spear
Shaken by arms of mighty bone, in strength,
325 Long mouldered, of barbaric majesty. I called on Darkness?but before the word
Was uttered, midnight darkness seemed to take
All objects from my sight; and lo! again
The Desart visible by dismal flames;
330 It is the Sacrificial Altar, fed
With living Men?how deep the groans! the voice
Of those that crowd the giant wicker thrills
The monumental hillocks,2 and the pomp
