Chapter 1

seeming ubiquity of the cuckoo, and dispossesses the creature almost of corporeal existence; the Imagination being tempted to this exertion of her power, by a consciousness in the memory that the cuckoo is almost perpetually heard throughout the season of spring, but seldom becomes an object of sight." The cuckoo is the bird we associate with the name of the vale of sunshine and of flowers, and yet its wandering voice brings back to him the thought of his vanished childhood. We have already noticed the almost sacred value which Wordsworth attaches to the impressions of his youth, and even to the memory of these impressions which remains with him to console his maturer life. The bird is a link which binds him to his childhood:

"And I can listen to thee yet; Can lie upon the plain And listen, till I do beget That golden time again."

In other poems, especially in the _Intimaticns of Immortality_, he speaks of "the glory and the freshness of a dream," which hallowed nature for him as a child, and which grew fainter as the "shades of the prison-house began to close upon the growing Boy".

NUTTING

COMPOSED 1799; PUBLISHED 1800.

"Written in Germany; intended as a part of a poem on my own life, but struck out as not being wanted there. Like most of my schoolfellows, I was an impassioned Nutter. For this pleasure, the Vale of Esthwaite, abounding in coppice wood, furnished a very wide range. These verses arose out of the remembrance of feelings I had often had when a boy, and particularly in the extensive woods that still stretch from the side of Esthwaite Lake towards Graythwaite."

Wordsworth possessed in an unusual degree the power of reviving the impressions of his youth. Few autobiographical records are so vivid in this respect as his _Prelude_. In his famous ode on the _Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood_, he dwells upon the unreflective exultation which in the child responds to the joyousness of nature, and with a profound intuition that may not be justified in the facts, he sees in this heedless delight a mystical intimation of immortality.

In the poem _Nutting_ the animal exhilaration of boyhood is finely blended with this deeper feeling of mystery. The boy exultingly penetrates into one of those woodland retreats where nature seems to be holding communion with herself. For some moments he is subdued by the beauty of the place, and lying among the flowers he hears with ecstasy the murmur of the stream. Then the spirit of ravage peculiar to boyhood comes over him, and he rudely mars the beauty of the spot:

"And the shady nook Of hazels, and the green and mossy bower, Deformed and sullied, patiently gave up Their quiet being:"

Such wantonness seems to his maturer reflection a sacrilege, and even the boy was not insensible to the silent reproach of the "intruding sky."

TOUCH,--FOR THERE IS A SPIRIT IN THE WOODS. Many lines might be quoted from Wordsworth to illustrate his theory of the personal attributes of nature. In some of his more elevated passages nature in all her processes is regarded as the intimate revelation of the Godhead, the radiant garment in which the Deity clothes Himself that our senses may apprehend Him. Thus, when we touch a tree or a flower we may be said to touch God himself. In this way the beauty and power of nature become sacred for Wordsworth, and inspired his verse at times with a solemn dignity to which other poets have rarely attained.

The immanence of God in nature, and yet His superiority to His own revelation of Himself is beautifully expressed in some of the later verses of _Hart Leap Well_:

"The Being, that is in the clouds and air, That is in the green leaves among the groves, Maintains a deep and reverential care For the unoffending creatures whom he loves."

Yet the life in nature is capable of multiplying itself infinitely, and each of her manifold divisions possesses a distinctive mood; one might almost say a separate life of its own. It is, in his ability to capture the true emotional mood which clings to some beautiful object or scene in nature, and which that object or scene may truly be said to inspire, that Wordsworth's power lies.

Wordsworth possessed every attribute necessary to the descriptive poet,--subtle powers of observation, ears delicately tuned to seize the very shadow of sound, and a diction of copious strength suggestive beyond the limits of ordinary expression. Yet purely descriptive poetry he scorned. "He expatiated much to me one day," writes Mr. Aubrey de Vere, "as we walked among the hills above Grasmere, on the mode in which Nature had been described by one of the most justly popular of England's modern poets--one for whom he preserved a high and affectionate respect [evidently Sir Walter Scott]. 'He took pains,' Wordsworth said; 'he went out with his pencil and note-book, and jotted down whatever struck him most--a river rippling over the sands, a ruined tower on a rock above it, a promontory, and a mountain-ash waving its red berries. He went home and wove the whole together into a poetical description.' After a pause, Wordsworth resumed, with a flashing eye and impassioned voice; 'But Nature does not permit an inventory to be made of her charms! He should have left his pencil and note-book at home, fixed his eye as he walked with a reverent attention on all that surrounded him, and taken all into a heart that could understand and enjoy. Then, after several days had passed by, he should have interrogated his memory as to the scene. He would have discovered that while much of what he had admired was preserved to him, much was also most wisely obliterated; that which remained--the picture surviving in his mind--would have presented the ideal and essential truth of the scene, and done so in a large part by discarding much which, though in itself striking, was not characteristic. In every scene many of the most brilliant details are but accidental; a true eye for Nature does not note them, or at least does not dwell on them.'"

The student should learn to compare the descriptive methods of Coleridge and Wordsworth. See especially Lowell's note quoted on pp. 197-198; also see pp. 47 f.

INFLUENCE OF NATURAL OBJECTS

This poem was composed at Goslar in 1799 as part of the first book of _The Prelude_ (published in 1850). It was first printed in Coleridge's periodical _The Friend_, in December, 1809, with the instructive though pedantic title, "Growth of Genius from the Influences of Natural Objects on the Imagination, in Boyhood and Early Youth." It appeared in Wordsworth's poems of 1815 with the following title:--"Influence of Natural Objects in calling forth and strengthening the Imagination in Boyhood and Early Youth."

The opening verses of this poem are still another instance of the identification of God with nature. As Mr. Stopford Brooke writes, "we are here in contact with a Person, not with a thought. But who is this person? Is she only the creation of imagination, having no substantive reality beyond the mind of Wordsworth? No, she is the poetic impersonation of an actual Being, the form which the poet gives to the living Spirit of God in the outward world, in order that he may possess a metaphysical thought as a subject for his work as an artist."

_The Lines Composed above Tintern Abbey_ contain the highest expression which Wordsworth has given to this thought, To the heedless animal delight in nature had succeeded a season in his youth when the beauty and power of nature "haunted him like a passion," though he knew not why. The "dizzy rapture" of those moods he can no longer feel. Yet,

"Not for this Faint I nor murmur; other gifts Have followed, for such loss, I would believe Abundant recompense. For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. _And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts: a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things_."

In ll. 42-46, of _The Influence of Natural Objects_, we have an inimitable Wordsworthian effect. Into the midst of his wild sport the voice of Nature steals, and subdues his mind to receive the impulses of peace and beauty from without. We involuntarily think of the boy he has celebrated, his playmate upon Windermere, who loved to rouse the owls with mimic hootings, but

"When a lengthened pause Of silence came and baffled his best skill, Then sometimes, in that silence while he hung Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise Has carried far into his heart the voice Of mountain torrents; or the visible scene Would enter unawares into his mind, With all its solemn imagery, its rocks, Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received Into the bosom of the steady lake." _The Prelude_, v. 379 f.

ELEGIAC STANZAS

COMPOSED 1805: PUBLISHED 1807.

Further references to John Wordsworth will be found in the following poems:--_To the Daisy_ ("Sweet Flower"), _Elegiac Verses in Memory of My Brother_, _When to the Attractions of the Busy World_, _The Brothers_, and _The Happy Warrior_.

With lines 33-40, and 57-60, compare the _Intimations of Immortality_,