INFLUENCE OF NATURAL OBJECTS IN CALLING FORTH AND STRENGTHENING
THE IMAGINATION IN BOYHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH

                Wisdom and Spirit of the universe!
                Thou Soul, that art the Eternity of thought!
                And giv'st to forms and images a breath
                And everlasting motion! not in vain
                By day or star-light, thus from my first dawn
                Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me
                The passions that build up our human soul;
                Not with the mean and vulgar works of Man;
                But with high objects, with enduring things
                With life and nature; purifying thus
                The elements of feeling and of thought,
                And sanctifying by such discipline
                Both pain and fear, — until we recognise
                A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.
                   Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me
                With stinted kindness. In November days,
                When vapours rolling down the valleys made
                A lonely scene more lonesome; among woods
                At noon; and 'mid the calm of summer nights,
                When, by the margin of the trembling lake,
                Beneath the gloomy hills, homeward I went
                In solitude, such intercourse was mine:
                Mine was it in the fields both day and night,
                And by the waters, all the summer long.
                And in the frosty season, when the sun
                Was set, and, visible for many a mile,
                The cottage-windows through the twilight blazed,
                I heeded not the summons: happy time
                It was indeed for all of us; for me
                It was a time of rapture! Clear and loud
                The village-clock tolled six — I wheeled about,
                Proud and exulting like an untired horse
                That cares not for his home. - All shod with steel
                We hissed along the polished ice, in games
                Confederate, imitative of the chase
                And woodland pleasures, — the resounding horn,
                The pack loud-chiming, and the hunted hare.
                So through the darkness and the cold we flew,
                And not a voice was idle: with the din
                Smitten, the precipices rang aloud;
                The leafless trees and every icy crag
                Tinkled like iron; while far-distant hills
                Into the tumult sent an alien sound
                Of melancholy, not unnoticed while the stars,
                Eastward, were sparkling clear, and in the west
                The orange sky of evening died away.
                   Not seldom from the uproar I retired
                Into a silent bay, or sportively
                Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng,
                To cut across the reflex of a star;
                Image, that, flying still before me, gleamed
                Upon the glassy plain: and oftentimes,
                When we had given our bodies to the wind,
                And all the shadowy banks on either side
                Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still
                The rapid line of motion, then at once
                Have I, reclining back upon my heels,
                Stopped short; yet still the solitary cliffs
                Wheeled by me — even as if the earth had rolled
                With visible motion her diurnal round!
                Behind me did they stretch in solemn train,
                Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watched
                Till all was tranquil as a summer sea.

Отправить