some features of this tour were the subject of one of his earliest poems, Descriptive Sketches, but it was described more connectedly and its influence upon his imagination traced in The Prelude. In Sept. 1820, he revisited the Simplon, crossing it in the opposite direction. In the interval between the two visits, the carriage-road over the pass had been constructed by order of Napoleon I. The pass, over 6000 feet at its highest point, crosses the Alps from Brieg in the Rhone valley to Domo d' Ossola in Piedmont.

2. this gloomy strait] The gorge of Gondo, one of the grandest and most gloomy in the Alps. It is bounded by slaterocks, whose smooth vertical sides deny support to any vegetation. At the base of these cliffs and in the bed of the stream are heaped the ruins of the mountains; while loosened masses still hanging on the slope seem to threaten the passenger' (Murray, Hand-book to Switzerland). The mountain-torrent which flows through the gorge is called the Diveria.

6. stationary blasts] The noise of the waterfalls was like the blast of trumpet after trumpet, each continuing ceaselessly in its own allotted station. Cf. Intimations of Immortality, 25, P. 44 above.

12. the sick sight] The stream, as seen from the pass, raves in its bed with the restlessness of a sick man. 'Giddy prospect' (1. 13) is, on the other hand, the effect which this restlessness has directly upon the eye.

16-20. Each feature of the scene becomes a token of the indwelling presence which interfuses itself in all Nature and 'reconciles discordant elements' into harmony. Each is, as it were, one of the visible characters in which the revelation of this presence is written (1. 18), and is a symbol of the eternal unseen Being which thus manifests itself through concrete objects (11. 19, 20).

VII. ASCENT OF SNOWDON.

From book XIV (Conclusion), 11–62. The night-ascent of Snowdon from Beddgelert, described in this passage, was made by Wordsworth in the summer of 1791, during a walking tour taken in company with Robert Jones. Wordsworth uses this experience as a symbol of thoughts on which he proceeds to enlarge. The moon in the clear firmament, gazing down upon the sea of mist and the billow-like hill-tops, is

the emblem of a mind

That feeds upon infinity, that broods
Over the dark abyss, intent to hear
Its voices issuing forth to silent light
In one continuous stream.

Such a mind idealises all sensible objects, associating them with
ideas of 'transcendent power.' It shares also the influence, which
Nature exercises over man, of leading others by its own secret
force to hear, see and feel. In its converse with the infinite, it
is detached from the enthralment of the world in which it lives;
but it is quick to catch suggestions from its concrete surroundings
and give them spiritual form. Such a mind is an emanation of
the Deity, a Power in itself. Its consciousness of its origin, its
perpetual communion with Heaven, are the springs of its daily
life, its cheerfulness and fortitude amid adversity,
that peace

Which passeth understanding, that repose

In moral judgments which from this pure source
Must come, or will by man be sought in vain.

This is the perfect freedom of the soul, the 'genuine liberty' in which Wordsworth has learned to see the highest blessing of life; and, while disclaiming for himself the perfect attainment of such a standpoint, he goes on to shew what he owes to his pursuit of a consistent ideal. As he has learned to recognise love as the pervading force of the universe, his early fear of Nature has disappeared, and his imagination, 'Reason in her most

exalted mood,' which is inseparable from love and is its active part, has been brought into play; and from the progress of his imaginative faculty he has drawn

47.

49.

Faith in life endless, the sustaining thought

Of human Being, Eternity, and God.

the roar of waters] See note on Prelude, selection v, 20, 21 (p. 173 above).

VIII. DOROTHY WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE.

From book XIV, 232-301. This apostrophe to Dorothy Wordsworth and to Coleridge follows the passage upon the power of love and imagination, the line of thought of which has been indicated in the introd. note to selection VII, p. 175 above. The progress of Wordsworth's mind towards the attainment of genuine liberty would be incomplete without the recognition of the influence of human love and friendship.

2. Thanks in sincerest verse] See especially the tribute to Dorothy's early influence in The Sparrow's Nest, written in 1801 (Poems referring to the period of Childhood, No. 111), and to its maturity in Tintern Abbey, 112-59, PP. 9, 10 above.

8. genial thought] Thought in harmony with the special genius or cast of mind which Wordsworth was to develop. 14. as Milton sings] See Milton, P. L. IX, 490, 491: Not terrible, though terror be in love And beauty.

See note on Tintern Abbey, 71, p. 7 above, for Wordsworth's early association of fear with natural beauty. Milton, P. L. 1,

781-8, pictures the mingled emotion of a peasant watching the revels of fairies 'by a forest side or fountain':

At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.

17. too reckless of mild grace] Too careless of the milder and more graceful aspects of beauty.

22.

The image of the bare rock adorned with flowers and shrubs recalls the scene described in Who fancied what a pretty sight, p. 33 above.

25-35. Wordsworth refers to the period of his awakening to the true beauty of Nature, described in Tintern Abbey, when the love for external beauty had become subordinate to the sense of the spiritual presence which gave it shape and lent the transforming power of imagination to the commonest things.

36. One whom with thee] Mary Hutchinson, his wife, the cousin and earliest playmate of the Wordsworths.

36-40. Cf. She was a phantom of delight, p. 37 above.

42, 43. See note on Walton's Book of Lives, l. 10, p. 162 above. The contrast between the star and the worm, symbolising the heavenly and the earthly, or the ideal and the actual, is found in many poets. See, e.g., the De contemptu mundi of Bernard of Cluny :

Quid datur et quibus? aether egentibus et cruce dignis,
Sidera vermibus, optima sontibus, astra malignis.

Cf. Shelley, One word is too often profaned, 13: "The desire of the moth for the star.'

46. O capacious Soul] In Prelude, VI, 304, 305, Wordsworth, alluding to Coleridge's learning and eloquence and the philosophical speculations which were to him what the early promptings of 'Nature's living images' were to Wordsworth, characterises his mind as

unrelentingly possessed by thirst

Of greatness, love, and beauty.

Here Wordsworth pays his tribute to Coleridge's active exercise of love and sympathy. As a matter of fact, Coleridge's temperament, on his own confession, demanded love and sympathy for itself as a primary requisite. See, e.g., The Pains of Sleep, 51, 52: To be beloved is all I need,

And whom I love, I love indeed;

and cf. note on these lines in Selections from Coleridge in this series, p. 150. In Excursion, II, 46, Wordsworth refers to the

T. W.

12

'capacious mind' of the Wanderer, with its power of universal love for created things.

50. Thy kindred influence] Wordsworth refers to his fruitful period of intercourse with Coleridge, described later as That summer, under whose indulgent skies, Upon smooth Quantock's airy ridge we roved Unchecked, or loitered 'mid her sylvan combs.

(Prelude, XIV, 396–8.)

55. The incumbent mystery] The mystery which always presses on the mind.

57, 58. a mild Interposition] The weight of the inexplicable contrast between the actual facts of earthly life and the ideals of the life of the soul became more habitually relieved by a growing content with the common cares and duties of every day, which thus interposed to save the spirit from preoccupation with itself.

63. The rapture of the hallelujah] Cf. Prelude, 11, 409-18: Wonder not

If high the transport, great the joy I felt

Communing in this sort through earth and heaven
With every form of creature, as it looked
Towards the Uncreated with a countenance
Of adoration, with an eye of love.
One song they sang, and it was audible,
Most audible, then, when the fleshly ear,
O'ercome by humblest prelude of that strain,
Forgot her functions, and slept undisturbed.

65. pathetic truth] The sense of the pathos of daily life, which gives man active sympathy for his fellow-men and prevents absorption in self.

66. hopeful reason] Cf. Ode to Duty, 55, p. 41 above: 'The confidence of reason give'; and cf. the whole of 11. 51-70 of the present passage with the invocation in ll. 49-56 of the same ode. Man, however lofty his speculations and aims, finds his true content, 'made lowly wise,' in the humble pursuit of the duties which lie about his path.