TO THE MEMORY OF RAISLEY CALVERT1
CALVERT! it must not be unheard by them Who may respect my name, that I to thee Owed many years of early liberty.
This care was thine when sickness did condemn Thy youth to hopeless wasting, root and stem That I, if frugal and severe, might stray Where'er I liked; and finally array My temples with the Muse's diadem.
Hence, if in freedom I have loved the truth; If there be aught of pure, or good, or great In my past verse; or shall be, in the lays Of higher mood, which now I meditate; - It gladdens me, O worthy, short-lived Youth! To think how much of this will be thy praise.
FROM "THE PRELUDE," BOOK XI
THE POET'S TRIBUTE TO HIS SISTER]
In temperament, withal a happy man,
And therefore bold to look on painful things,
Free likewise of the world, and thence more bold,
I summoned my best skill, and toiled, intent
To anatomise the frame of social life;
Yea, the whole body of society
1 Calvert died in 1795; sonnet composed in 1806.
Searched to its heart. Share with me, Friend! the wish That some dramatic tale, endued with shapes Livelier, and flinging out less guarded words Than suit the work we fashion, might set forth What then I learned, or think I learned, of truth, And the errors into which I fell, betrayed By present objects, and by reasonings false From their beginnings, inasmuch as drawn Out of a heart that had been turned aside From Nature's way by outward accidents, And which was thus confounded, more and more Misguided, and misguiding. So I fared, Dragging all precepts, judgments, maxims, creeds, Like culprits to the bar; calling the mind, Suspiciously, to establish in plain day Her titles and her honours; now believing, Now disbelieving; endlessly perplexed
With impulse, motive, right and wrong, the ground Of obligation, what the rule and whence The sanction; till, demanding formal proof, And seeking it in every thing, I lost All feeling of conviction, and, in fine, Sick, wearied out with contrarieties, Yielded up moral questions in despair.
This was the crisis of that strong disease, This the soul's last and lowest ebb; I drooped, Deeming our blessèd reason of least use
Where wanted most: "The lordly attributes Of will and choice," I bitterly exclaimed,
"What are they but a mockery of a Being Who hath in no concerns of his a test
Of good and evil; knows not what to fear Or hope for, what to covet or to shun;
And who, if those could be discerned, would yet Be little profited, would see, and ask Where is the obligation to enforce ?
And, to acknowledged law rebellious, still, As selfish passion urged, would act amiss; The dupe of folly, or the slave of crime."
Depressed, bewildered thus, I did not walk With scoffers, seeking light and gay revenge From indiscriminate laughter, nor sate down In reconcilement with an utter waste
Of intellect; such sloth I could not brook, (Too well I loved, in that my spring of life, Pains-taking thoughts, and truth, their dear reward) But turned to abstract science, and there sought Work for the reasoning faculty enthroned Where the disturbances of space and time Whether in matters various, properties Inherent, or from human will and power
Derived find no admission. Then it was
Thanks to the bounteous Giver of all good! — That the beloved Sister in whose sight
Those days were passed, now speaking in a voice Of sudden admonition like a brook
That did but cross a lonely road, and now
Is seen, heard, felt, and caught at every turn,
Companion never lost through many a league - Maintained for me a saving intercourse
With my true self; for, though bedimmed and changed Much, as it seemed, I was no further changed
Than as a clouded and a waning moon:
She whispered still that brightness would return;
She, in the midst of all, preserved me still A Poet, made me seek beneath that name, And that alone, my office upon earth; And, lastly, as hereafter will be shown, If willing audience fail not, Nature's self, By all varieties of human love
Assisted, led me back through opening day
To those sweet counsels between head and heart
Whence grew that genuine knowledge, fraught with peace, Which, through the later sinkings of this cause, Hath still upheld me, and upholds me now In the catastrophe (for so they dream, And nothing less), when, finally to close And seal up all the gains of France, a Pope Is summoned in, to crown an Emperor 1 This last opprobrium, when we see a people, That once looked up in faith, as if to Heaven For manna, take a lesson from the dog Returning to his vomit; when the sun That rose in splendour, was alive, and moved In exultation with a living pomp
Of clouds his glory's natural retinue —
1 Buonaparte summoned the Pope to anoint him Emperor of France
PORTRAIT of Dorothy Wordsworth at the age of sixty-two.
"She, in the midst of all, preserved me still A Poet, made me seek beneath that name, And that alone, my office upon earth."
-The Prelude, Book xi, p. 86.
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