Part 13

... I require, And cannot find; what I myself have lost, 1814. ]

[Footnote 280: 1836.

Inverted trees, and rocks, and azure sky; 1814. ]

[Footnote 281: 1836.

Perchance, a roar or murmur; ... 1814.

A softened roar, a murmur; ... 1827.

... Meanwhile, a roar Is heard or soften'd murmur; ... MS. ]

[Footnote 282: 1845.

Must be again encountered.-- ... 1814. ]

[Footnote 283: 1836.

... its ... 1814. ]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote CS: There is still a single "yew-tree" high up the eastern side of the valley on the face of Lingmoor Fell,

Darkening the silver bosom of the crag. ED. ]

[Footnote CT: The local allusions in this passage, and in what follows, are most exact and literal. The three men are supposed to leave the cottage, and to cross to the west side of the tarn, just a little to the north of the fir-wood which overshadows it. The "barrier of steep rock" is the low perpendicular crag to the west of the tarn, immediately below the fir-wood, and the "semicirque of turf-clad ground" is apparent at a glance, whether seen from below the rock or from above it. There are many fragments of ice-borne rock, high up the flank of Blake Rigg to the west, and on the slopes of Lingmoor to the east, which might at first sight be mistaken for the stone, like

A stranded ship, with keel upturned, that rests Fearless of winds and waves,

or the

fragment, like an altar;

but this particular mass of rock lay

Right at the foot of that moist precipice,

and there it still lies, obvious enough even to the casual eye. The "semicirque" is the cup-shaped recess between the fir-wood and the cliff; and on entering it, the mass of rock is seen lying north-west to north-east. It is not ice-borne, but a fragment dislodged from the crag above it. It is now broken into three smaller fragments, by the weathering of many years. Cracked probably when it fell, the rents have widened, and the fragments are separated by the frosts of many winters. A sycamore of average size is now growing at its side; its root being in the cleft, where the stone is broken. Holly grows luxuriantly all along the face of the crag above; so that the existence of the bush, described as growing in the stone which resembled an altar, is easily explained. The brook is a short one, flowing through the meadow-pastures of the wood, and after a hundred yards is lost in the turfy slope, but is seen again upon the face of the "moist precipice," "softly creeping"--precisely as described in the poem. The "three several stones" that "stand near" are, I think, the one to the front, in a line with the keel of the ship; and the other two to the right and left respectively. The "pair," with the "fragment like an altar, flat and smooth," are to the left, and close at hand.

In connection with all this a remark of Southey's to J. Neville White may be quoted. "Keswick, September 7, 1814.... Have you read Wordsworth's poem? If not, read it, if you can, before you see the author. You will see him with the more pleasure, and look with more interest at the scenery he describes." (_Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey_, vol. ii. p. 376.)--ED.]

[Footnote CU: Lady Richardson writes thus of a visit Wordsworth paid to Lancrigg in 1841:--"We took a walk on the terrace, and he went as usual to his favourite points. On our return he was struck with the berries on the holly tree, and said, 'Why should not you and I go and pull some berries from the other side of the tree, which is not seen from the window? and then we can go and plant them in the rocky ground behind the house.' We pulled the berries, and set forth with our tools. I made the holes, and the poet put in the berries. He was as earnest and eager about it as if it had been a matter of importance, and, as he put the seeds in, he every now and then muttered, in his low, solemn tone, that beautiful verse from Burns' _Vision_:--

'And wear thou this,' she solemn said, And bound the holly round my head: The polish'd leaves, and berries red, Did rustling play; And, like a passing thought, she fled In light away.

He clambered to the highest rocks in the 'Tom Intak,' and put in the berries in such situations as Nature sometimes does, with such true and beautiful effect. He said, 'I like to do this for posterity.'"--ED.]

[Footnote CV:

--Voiceless the stream descends ... With timid lapse ...

is a perfect description of this tiniest and gentlest of rills, flowing through the meadow-grass; while the "chasm of sky above," of which the Wanderer speaks, though an obvious exaggeration, is more appropriate to this spot than to any other in the vale.--ED.]

[Footnote CW: See Wordsworth's note, p. 385.--ED.]

[Footnote CX: Stonehenge. Old legends gave it a mythic origin. Geoffrey of Monmouth attributed it to Merlin, the stones having been brought over from Ireland by magic. It was not a Druid Temple, but a Saxon ring, set up--after the Romans had left Britain--for parliamentary and coronation purposes. "Roman pottery and coins have been found under the stones, and they are fitted with mortice and tenon, an art unknown in Britain till it was taught by the Romans." Compare Dryden's _Epistle to Dr. Charleton_ (Ep. II.)

Stonehenge, once thought a temple, you have found A throne, where kings, our earthly Gods, were crown'd.

and Henry Crabb Robinson's account of a visit to Stonehenge, in the second volume of his _Diary and Correspondence_, p. 230.--ED.]

[Footnote CY: This must refer to Palmyra. The Baalbec ruins are, for the most part, not marble, but limestone.--ED.]

[Footnote CZ: The Navagos and several other American tribes have this legend; but see Note B in the Appendix to this volume, p. 392.--ED.]

[Footnote DA: Before the time of Solon, the Athenians wore golden τέττιγες--probably either brooches, or pins with a golden cicada for the head--as a sign that they considered themselves αὐτόχθονες, since the grasshopper τέττιξ (cicada) was supposed to spring out of the ground.--ED.]

[Footnote DB: The Ganges--sacred river of India--rising in the snow-clad Himalaya, was believed to have a celestial origin.--ED.]

[Footnote DC: The great river of Western Africa, which was supposed, until recent geographical discovery, to lose itself in the sand.--ED.]

[Footnote DE: Compare _The Prelude_, book viii. I. 133 (see vol. iii. p. 276). Also _In Memoriam_, stanza xxiii.--

And round us all the thicket rang To many a flute of Arcady. ED. ]

[Footnote DF: The end sought by Epicurus, the _summum bonum_ of the Epicurean school, was ἀταραξία, repose or peace of mind. This was to be obtained by freedom from pain of body or distraction of mind; but it consisted in the harmony or equilibrium that resulted, when disturbing influences were withdrawn. To attain to it, little was needed--mental enjoyments being superior to bodily ones, and the social joys of friendship the highest of all. Public life was renounced, and private friendship became the bond of union amongst the members of the Epicurean confraternity: but the root principle of the system was emotional, not intellectual.--ED.]

[Footnote DG: Rational self-control being regarded as the chief good by the Stoics, the emotion of happiness was looked upon as an interruption of the equilibrium in which the wise man should live. All the emotions were diseases, or disturbances of human nature less or more. They had therefore to be uprooted, rather than regulated: and virtue consisted in being emotionless, passionless, apathetic, with life conformed to the laws of the pure reason, so that one came to be

A reasoning self-sufficing thing, An intellectual all-in-all. ED. ]

[Footnote DH: Compare the No. vi. Sonnet on _The Trosachs_ (ll. 1-5), in "Yarrow Revisited, and other Poems" (1831).--ED.]

[Footnote DI: These are reminiscences of Wordsworth's life at Racedown and Alfoxden. His sister wrote thus of their residence at Alfoxden:--"We are three miles from Stowey, and not two miles from the sea. Wherever we turn we have woods, smooth downs, and valleys with small brooks running down them, through green meadows, hardly ever intersected with hedgerows, but scattered over with trees. The hills that cradle these valleys are either covered with fern and bilberries, or oak woods, which are cut for charcoal.... Walks extend for miles over the hill-tops; the great beauty of which is their wild simplicity: they are perfectly smooth, without rocks."--_Memoirs of William Wordsworth_, by his nephew Christopher Wordsworth, late Bishop of Lincoln, vol. i. p. 103.--ED.]

[Footnote DJ: See the note on the preceding page.--ED.]

[Footnote DK: Wordsworth's own children, Catherine and Thomas, were removed by death, in a manner very similar to this, in June and December 1812, while they were living in the Grasmere Parsonage. Compare the two sonnets--

Surprised by joy--impatient as the Wind,

(1815)

and

Desponding Father! mark this altered bough,

(1835).--ED.]

[Footnote DL: Compare _The Borderers_, act IV. 11. 124, 125 (see vol. i. p. 198)--

Three sleepless nights I passed in sounding on, Through words and things, a dim and perilous way. ED. ]

[Footnote DM: See _The Prelude_, book ix. 1. 68 (vol. iii. p. 295).--ED.]

[Footnote DN: During the American War of Independence, trees were planted as symbols of freedom. This custom passed over to France. The Jacobins planted the first tree of Liberty in Paris in 1790, and the practice spread rapidly. At each revolutionary period it was revived, and during the Empire again suppressed. A treatise has been written on the custom, by the Abbé Grégoire.--ED.]

[Footnote DO: It is recorded by Dion Cassius (see _Dionis Cassii Cocceiani Historiarum Romanarum quae supersunt_, lib. xlvii. § 49) that Brutus before his death repeated this saying of Hercules,

O misera virtus, nomen inane. Te quidem Ceu rem colebam; at serva tu Fortunae eras. ED. ]

[Footnote DP: "At the commencement of the French Revolution, in the remotest villages every tongue was employed in echoing and enforcing the almost geometrical abstractions of the physiocratic politicians and economists. The public roads were crowded with armed enthusiasts disputing on the inalienable sovereignty of the people, the imprescriptible laws of the pure reason, and the universal constitution, which, as rising out of the nature and rights of man as man, all nations alike were under the obligation of adopting."-S.T. Coleridge, _The Statesman's Manual, a Lay Sermon_ (1816), p. 19.--ED.]

[Footnote DQ: The Hudson river, some of the sources of which rise in the Adirondack wilderness.--ED.]

[Footnote DR: New York.--ED.]

[Footnote DS: See Wordsworth's note, p. 386.--ED.]

[Footnote DT: The St. Lawrence.--ED.]

[Footnote DU: "The Mocking Bird (_Turdus polyglottus_, Linn.), the American nightingale. He has a voice full, strong, and musical, and capable of almost every modulation, from the clear mellow tones of the Wood Thrush, to the savage scream of the Bald Eagle. In measure and accent he faithfully follows his originals. In force and sweetness of expression he greatly improves upon them. In his native groves, his song rises pre-eminent over every competitor. Neither is his strain altogether imitative. His notes are bold and full, and varied seemingly beyond all limits. They consist of short expressions of two, three, or, at the most, five or six syllables; generally interspersed with imitations, and all of them uttered with great emphasis and rapidity, and continued with undiminished ardour for half an hour, or an hour at a time."--_American Ornithology_, by Wilson, Bonaparte, and Jardine, vol. i. p. 164, etc.--ED.]

[Footnote DV: I was indebted to Mr. Edward B. Tylor, and also to the Rev. Charles M. Addison, of Arlington, Mass., for identifying the "melancholy Muccawiss" as the Whip-poor-will (_Caprimulgus vociferus_, or _Antrostomus vociferus_). "Their melancholy night song has led some Indians to consider them the souls of ancestors killed in battle."--Mr. Tylor. For letters in reference to the Muccawiss, see Note C in the Appendix to this volume, p. 393; and compare Charles Waterton's _Wanderings in South America_, etc. etc. (1828), and Wordsworth's poem, _A Morning Exercise_, written in 1828.

Since Messrs. Tylor, Addison, and Col. Trumbull identified the Muccawiss with the Whip-poor-will, I have had access to the original MSS. of _The Excursion_; and have found that the point which is discussed--in the above note and in Note C in the Appendix--is set conclusively at rest, by one of the earlier (discarded) readings of the text in Wordsworth's own handwriting.

"and verily was cheered By the blithe Mocking Bird, and heard alone The melancholy cry of whip-pow-will."

Another version of the last line is also given,

"The plaintive cry repeated whip-poor-will."

I entertain no doubt that Wordsworth first of all met with the name of this bird, whip-pow-will, in Waterton's _Wanderings_ (a copy of which he possessed), and that he afterwards exchanged it--before sending his _Excursion_ to press, in 1814--for the more musical Indian name, Muccawiss.

It is also worthy of note that Southey had transferred to his _Commonplace Book_ (see vol. ii. p. 567), Carver's account of the Whipper-will, or as it is termed by the Indians, Muckawiss. "As soon as night comes on these birds will place themselves on the fences, stumps, or stones that lie near some house, and repeat their melancholy note without any variation till midnight." (_Travels_, by Jonathan Carver, p. 467.)--ED.]

=Book Fourth=

DESPONDENCY CORRECTED

ARGUMENT

_State of feeling produced by the foregoing Narrative--A belief in a superintending Providence the only adequate support under affliction--Wanderer's ejaculation[284]--Acknowledges the difficulty of a lively faith--Hence immoderate sorrow[285]--Exhortations--How received--Wanderer applies[286] his discourse to that other cause of dejection in the Solitary's mind--Disappointment from[287] the French Revolution--States grounds[288] of hope, and insists[289] on the necessity of patience and fortitude with respect to the course of great revolutions[290]--Knowledge the source of tranquillity--Rural Solitude favourable to[291] knowledge of the inferior Creatures; Study of their habits and ways recommended;[292] exhortation to bodily exertion and communion[293] with Nature--Morbid Solitude pitiable[294]--Superstition better than apathy--Apathy and destitution unknown in the infancy of society--The various modes of Religion prevented it--Illustrated[295] in the Jewish, Persian, Babylonian, Chaldean, and Grecian modes of belief--Solitary interposes--Wanderer[296] points out the influence of religious and imaginative feeling in the humble ranks of society, illustrated[297] from present and past times--These principles[298] tend to recal exploded superstitions and popery--Wanderer rebuts this charge, and contrasts the dignities of the Imagination with the presumptuous[299] littleness of certain modern Philosophers--Recommends[300] other lights and guides--Asserts the power of the Soul to regenerate herself; Solitary asks how[301]--Reply--Personal appeal[302]-- Exhortation to activity of body renewed--How to commune with Nature--Wanderer concludes with a[303] legitimate union of the imagination, affections, understanding, and reason[304]--Effect of his discourse[305]--Evening; return to the Cottage._

Here closed the Tenant of that lonely vale His mournful narrative--commenced in pain, In pain commenced, and ended without peace: Yet tempered, not unfrequently, with strains Of native feeling, grateful to our minds; 5 And yielding surely[306] some relief to his, While we sate listening with compassion due. A pause of silence followed; then, with voice That did not falter though the heart was moved,[307] The Wanderer said:-- "One adequate support 10 For the calamities of mortal life Exists--one only; an assured belief That the procession of our fate, howe'er Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being Of infinite benevolence and power; 15 Whose everlasting purposes embrace All accidents, converting them to good. --The darts of anguish _fix_ not where the seat Of suffering hath been thoroughly fortified By acquiescence in the Will supreme 20 For time and for eternity; by faith, Faith absolute in God, including hope, And the defence that lies in boundless love Of his perfections; with habitual dread Of aught unworthily conceived, endured 25 Impatiently, ill-done, or left undone, To the dishonour of his holy name. Soul of our Souls, and safeguard of the world! Sustain, thou only canst, the sick of heart; Restore their languid spirits, and recal 30 Their lost affections unto thee and thine!"[DW]

Then, as we issued from that covert nook, He thus continued, lifting up his eyes To heaven:--"How beautiful this dome of sky; And the vast hills, in fluctuation fixed 35 At thy command, how awful! Shall the Soul, Human and rational, report of thee Even less than these?--Be mute who will, who can, Yet I will praise thee with impassioned voice: My lips, that may forgot[*printer's error?] thee in the crowd, 40 Cannot forget thee here; where thou hast built, For thy own glory, in the wilderness! Me didst thou constitute a priest of thine, In such a temple as we now behold Reared for thy presence: therefore, am I bound 45 To worship, here, and every where--as one Not doomed to ignorance, though forced to tread, From childhood up, the ways of poverty; From unreflecting ignorance preserved, And from debasement rescued.--By thy grace 50 The particle divine remained unquenched; And, 'mid the wild weeds of a rugged soil, Thy bounty caused to flourish deathless flowers, From paradise transplanted: wintry age Impends; the frost will gather round my heart; 55 If the flowers wither,[308] I am worse than dead! --Come, labour, when the worn-out frame requires Perpetual sabbath; come, disease and want; And sad exclusion through decay of sense; But leave me unabated trust in thee-- 60 And let thy favour, to the end of life, Inspire me with ability to seek Repose and hope among eternal things-- Father of heaven and earth! and I am rich, And will possess my portion in content! 65

"And what are things eternal?--powers depart," The grey-haired Wanderer stedfastly replied, Answering the question which himself had asked, "Possessions vanish, and opinions change, And passions hold a fluctuating seat: 70 But, by the storms of circumstance unshaken, And subject neither to eclipse nor[309] wane, Duty exists;--immutably survive, For our support, the measures and the forms, Which an abstract intelligence supplies; 75 Whose kingdom is, where time and space are not.[DX] Of other converse which mind, soul, and heart, Do, with united urgency, require, What more that may not perish?--Thou, dread source, Prime, self-existing cause and end of all 80 That in the scale of being fill their place; Above our human region, or below, Set and sustained;--thou, who didst wrap the cloud Of infancy around us, that thyself, Therein, with our simplicity awhile 85 Might'st hold, on earth, communion undisturbed;[DY] Who from the anarchy of dreaming sleep, Or from its death-like void, with punctual care, And touch as gentle as the morning light, Restor'st us, daily, to the powers of sense 90 And reason's stedfast rule--thou, thou alone Art everlasting, and the blessed Spirits, Which thou includest, as the sea her waves: For adoration thou endur'st; endure For consciousness the motions of thy will; 95 For apprehension those transcendent truths Of the pure intellect, that stand as laws (Submission constituting strength and power) Even to thy Being's infinite majesty! This universe shall pass away--a work[310] 100 Glorious! because the shadow of thy might, A step, or link, for intercourse with thee. Ah! if the time must come, in which my feet No more shall stray where meditation leads, By flowing stream, through wood, or craggy wild, 105 Loved haunts like these; the unimprisoned Mind May yet have scope to range among her own, Her thoughts, her images, her high desires. If the dear faculty of sight should fail, Still, it may be allowed me to remember 110 What visionary powers of eye and soul In youth were mine; when, stationed on the top Of some huge hill--expectant, I beheld The sun rise up,[DZ] from distant climes returned Darkness to chase, and sleep; and bring the day 115 His bounteous gift! or saw him toward the deep[311] Sink, with a retinue of flaming clouds Attended; then, my spirit was entranced With joy exalted to beatitude;[EA] The measure of my soul was filled with bliss, 120 And holiest love; as earth, sea, air, with light, With pomp, with glory, with magnificence!