Wordsworth | Page 4

yellow tassels from every spray, Wordsworth used to
linger long "Scarcely Spenser's self," he tells us,
Could have more tranquil visions in his youth, Or could more bright
appearances create Of human forms with superhuman powers, Than I
beheld loitering on calm clear nights Alone, beneath this fairy work of
earth.
And there was another element in Wordsworth's life at Cambridge
more peculiarly his own--that exultation which a boy born among the
mountains may feel when he perceives that the delight in the external
world which the mountains have taught him has not perished by
uprooting, nor waned for want of nourishment in field or fen; that even
here, where nature is unadorned, and scenery, as it were, reduced to its
elements,--where the prospect is but the plain surface of the earth,
stretched wide beneath an open heaven,--even here he can still feel the
early glow, can take delight in that broad and tranquil greenness, and in
the august procession of the day.
As if awakened, summoned, roused, constrained, I looked for universal
things; perused The common countenance of earth and sky-- Earth,

nowhere unembellished by some trace Of that first Paradise whence
man was driven; And sky, whose beauty and bounty are expressed By
the proud name she bears--the name of Heaven.
Nor is it only in these open-air scenes that Wordsworth has added to
the long tradition a memory of his own. The "storied windows richly
dight," which have passed into a proverb in Milton's song, cast in
King's College Chapel the same "soft chequerings" upon their
framework of stone while Wordsworth watched through the pauses of
the anthem the winter afternoon's departing glow:
Martyr, or King, or sainted Eremite, Whoe'er ye be that thus,
yourselves unseen, Imbue your prison-bars with solemn sheen, Shine
on, until ye fade with coming Night.
From those shadowy seats whence Milton had heard "the pealing organ
blow to the full-voiced choir below," Wordsworth too gazed upon--
That branching roof Self-poised, and scooped into ten thousand cells
Where light and shade repose, where music dwells Lingering, and
wandering on as both to die-- Like thoughts whose very sweetness
yieldeth proof That they were born for immortality.
Thus much, and more, there was of ennobling and unchangeable in the
very aspect and structure of that ancient University, by which
Wordsworth's mind was bent towards a kindred greatness. But of active
moral and intellectual life there was at that time little to be found
within her walls. The floodtide of her new life had not yet set in: she
was still slumbering, as she had slumbered long, content to add to her
majesty by the mere lapse of generations, and increment of her
ancestral calm. Even had the intellectual life of the place been more
stirring, it is doubtful how far Wordsworth would have been welcomed,
or deserved, to be welcomed, by authorities or students. He began
residence at seventeen, and his northern nature was late to flower.
There seems, in fact, to have been even less of visible promise about
him than we should have expected; but rather something untamed and
insubordinate, something heady and self-confident; an independence
that seemed only rusticity, and an indolent ignorance which assumed

too readily the tones of scorn. He was as yet a creature of the lakes and
mountains, and love for Nature was only slowly leading him to love
and reverence for man. Nay, such attraction as he had hitherto felt for
the human race had been interwoven with her influence in a way so
strange that to many minds it will seem a childish fancy not worth
recounting. The objects of his boyish idealization had been Cumbrian
shepherds--a race whose personality seems to melt into Nature's--who
are united as intimately with moor and mountain as the petrel with the
sea.
A rambling schoolboy, thus I felt his presence in his own domain As of
a lord and master--or a power, Or genius, under Nature, under God;
Presiding; and severest solitude Had more commanding looks when he
was there. When up the lonely brooks on rainy days Angling I went, or
trod the trackless hills By mists bewildered, suddenly mine eyes Have
glanced upon him distant a few steps, In size a giant, stalking through
thick fog, His sheep like Greenland bears; or, as he stepped Beyond the
boundary line of some hill-shadow, His form hath flashed upon me,
glorified By the deep radiance of the setting sun; Or him have I
descried in distant sky, A solitary object and sublime, Above all height!
Like an aërial cross Stationed alone upon a spiry rock Of the
Chartreuse, for worship. Thus was man Ennobled outwardly before my
sight; And thus my heart was early introduced To an unconscious love
and reverence Of human nature; hence the human form To me