Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

CHAPTER XVII.

WORDSWORTH, COLERIDGE, SOUTHEY, AND OTHER
MODERN POETS.

William Wordsworth. 1770-1850. (History, pp. 235-238.)
206. From 'THE EXCURSION.'

THE GREEK MYTHOLOGY.

-In that fair clime, the lonely herdsman, stretched

On the soft grass through half a summer's day,
With music lulled his indolent repose:

And, in some fit of weariness, if he,

When his own breath was silent, chanced to hear
A distant strain, far sweeter than the sounds
Which his poor skill could make, his fancy fetched,
Even from the blazing chariot of the sun,
A beardless youth,1 who touched a golden lute,
And filled the illumined groves with ravishment.
The nightly hunter, lifting a bright eye

Up towards the crescent moon, with grateful heart
Called on the lovely wanderer who bestowed
That timely light, to share his joyous sport:
And hence, a beaming goddess2 with her nymphs,
Across the lawn and through the darksome grove,
Not unaccompanied with tuneful notes
By echo multiplied from rock or cave,

1. A beardless youth: Apollo, called by Horace "intonsus."

2. A beaming goddess: Diana. The identity between beam, a ray, and beam, a tree, Ger. baum, existed even in O. E. beám. No doubt the point of resemblance between the two phenomena is

their straightness.-Milton, Comus, line 340, calls a light ray a "long-levell'd rule of streaming light;" Euripides in the Supplices (650), a “κavшv σaþýs;" and Tennyson, in Enoch Arden, speaks of the "scarlet shafts of sunrise."

Swept in the storm of chase; as moon and stars
Glance rapidly along the clouded heaven,

When winds are blowing strong. The traveller slaked
His thirst from rill or gushing fount, and thanked
The Naiad.3-Sunbeams, upon distant hills
Gliding apace, with shadows in their train,
Might, with small help from fancy, be transformed
Into fleet Oreads" sporting visibly.

The Zephyrs fanning, as they passed, their wings,
Lacked not, for love, fair objects whom they wooed
With gentle whisper. Withered boughs grotesque,
Stripped of their leaves and twigs by hoary age,
From depth of shaggy covert peeping forth
In the low vale, or on steep mountain-side;
And, sometimes, intermixed with stirring horns
Of the live deer, or goat's depending beard,-
These were the lurking Satyrs, a wild brood
Of gamesome deities; or Pan himself,

The simple shepherd's awe-inspiring god!

3. Naiads and Oreads were nymphs of the springs and mountains respectively.

207. TINTERN ABBEY.

Oh! how oft

In darkness and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight; when the fretful1 stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart-
How oft, in spirit, have I turn'd to thee,

O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer through the woods,
How often has my spirit turn'd to thee!

And now, with gleams of half-extinguish'd thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,

1. Fretful: the original meaning of the fret of this word was to eat, as in the phrase "the moth that fretteth a garment;" and is still seen in Ger. fressen,

to eat. The Homeric phrase ov Ovμòv KaτédWV will show us how it passed to its modern sense. Fret, to adorn, is an entirely different word.

And somewhat of a sad perplexity,

The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense

Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food

For future years. And so I dare to hope,

2

Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led: more like a man

Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by)
To me was all in all.-I cannot paint

What then I was.

The sounding cataract

Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock,

The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love,

That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, or any interest
Unborrow'd from the eye.-That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn, nor murmur; other gifts
Have follow'd; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense. For I have learn'd
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,

2. Changed: Fr. changer, E. change, come from L. L. cambiare (Gk. KάμTTEL,

SPECS. ENG. LIT.

Káμßew, to bend), through It. cambiare, cangiare (Diez).

X

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. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,-both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature, and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.

208. PORTRAIT.

Mr. De Quincey (Autobiographic Sketches,' vol. ii. p. 237) states that the following beautiful lines were intended to describe the poet's wife, Mary Hutchinson, who had also been his cousin. She was married to him at the beginning of the present century, and survived him for some years.

She was a Phantom of delight

When first she gleam'd upon my sight;

A lovely Apparition, sent

To be a moment's ornament;

Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair;

Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn

From May-time and the cheerful Dawn;
A dancing Shape, an Image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and waylay.

I saw her upon nearer view,
A Spirit, yet a Woman too!
Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin liberty;

A countenance in which did meet

Sweet records, promises as sweet;

A Creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.

And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A Being breathing thoughtful breath,
A Traveller between life and death;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
A perfect Woman, nobly plann'd,
To warn,
to comfort, and command;
And yet a Spirit still, and bright
With something of angelic light.

209. YARROW UNVISITED.

The river Yarrow, so famous in poetry, is a tributary of the Ettrick, which is itself a tributary of the Tweed. Burns, Scott, Hogg have contributed to its lustre as well as Wordsworth; but its special distinction is Hamilton's remarkable ballad The Broes of Yarrow, from which the phrase "winsome Marrow" in the verses below is taken. For the poem itself see Percy's 'Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.' We have two other pieces, possessing at least equal merit, from Wordsworth's pen, called Yarrow Visited and Yarrow Revisited, the latter of which derives a melancholy interest from its connection with the last years of Sir Walter Scott.

From Stirling Castle we had seen

The mazy Forth unravelled;

Had trod the banks of Clyde, and Tay,
And with the Tweed had travelled;
And when we came to Clovenford,
Then said my "winsome Marrow," 1
"Whate'er betide, we 'll turn aside,
And see the Braes of Yarrow." 2

"Let Yarrow folk, frae Selkirk town,

Who have been buying, selling,
Go back to Yarrow, 'tis their own;
Each maiden to her dwelling!
On Yarrow's bank let herons feed,

Hares couch, and rabbits burrow!
But we will downward with the Tweed,
Nor turn aside to Yarrow.

1. Marrow: a provincial word, meaning travelling companion. The poet's sister, Miss Dorothy Wordsworth, is the person referred to.

2. Yarrow, a word of Celtic origin, means the "rough water." The first syllable is found in the Yare, and the second in the Avon (Celtic aon, water).

« VorigeDoorgaan »