VIII. DOROTHY WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE.
Child of my parents! Sister of my soul! Thanks in sincerest verse have been elsewhere Poured out for all the early tenderness Which I from thee imbibed: and 'tis most true That later seasons owed to thee no less; For, spite of thy sweet influence and the touch Of kindred hands that opened out the springs Of genial thought in childhood, and in spite Of all that unassisted I had marked
In life or Nature of those charms minute That win their way into the heart by stealth, Still (to the very going-out of youth) I too exclusively esteemed that love,
And sought that beauty, which, as Milton sings, Hath terror in it. Thou didst soften down This over-sternness; but for thee, dear Friend! My soul, too reckless of mild grace, had stood In her original self too confident, Retained too long a countenance severe; A rock with torrents roaring, with the clouds Familiar, and a favourite of the stars:
But thou didst plant its crevices with flowers, Hang it with shrubs that twinkle in the breeze, And teach the little birds to build their nests And warble in its chambers. At a time When Nature, destined to remain so long
Foremost in my affections, had fallen back
Into a second place, pleased to become
A handmaid to a nobler than herself,
When every day brought with it some new sense Of exquisite regard for common things,
And all the earth was budding with these gifts
Of more refined humanity, thy breath,
Dear Sister! was a kind of gentler spring
That went before my steps. Thereafter came
One whom with thee friendship had early paired; She came, no more a phantom to adorn A moment, but an inmate of the heart, And yet a spirit, there for me enshrined To penetrate the lofty and the low; Even as one essence of pervading light Shines, in the brightest of ten thousand stars, And, the meek worm that feeds her lonely lamp Couched in the dewy grass.
Coleridge! with this my argument, of thee Shall I be silent? O capacious Soul!
Placed on this earth to love and understand, And from thy presence shed the light of love, Shall I be mute, ere thou be spoken of? Thy kindred influence to my heart of hearts Did also find its way. Thus fear relaxed
Her overweening grasp; thus thoughts and things In the self-haunting spirit learned to take More rational proportions; mystery,
The incumbent mystery of sense and soul,
Of life and death, time and eternity,
Admitted more habitually a mild
Interposition-a serene delight
In closelier gathering cares, such as become
A human creature, howsoe'er endowed,
Poet, or destined for a humbler name;
And so the deep enthusiastic joy,
The rapture of the hallelujah sent
From all that breathes and is, was chastened, stemmed And balanced by pathetic truth, by trust
In hopeful reason, leaning on the stay Of Providence; and in reverence for duty, Here, if need be, struggling with storms, and there Strewing in peace life's humblest ground with herbs, At every season green, sweet at all hours.
SELECTIONS FROM THE EXCURSION.
I. THE WANDERER'S BOYHOOD.
From his sixth year, the Boy of whom I speak, In summer, tended cattle on the hills; But, through the inclement and the perilous days Of long-continuing winter, he repaired, Equipped with satchel, to a school, that stood Sole building on a mountain's dreary edge, Remote from view of city spire, or sound Of minster clock! From that bleak tenement He, many an evening, to his distant home In solitude returning, saw the hills
Grow larger in the darkness; all alone
Beheld the stars come out above his head, And travelled through the wood, with no one near To whom he might confess the things he saw. So the foundations of his mind were laid.
In such communion, not from terror free,
While yet a child, and long before his time, Had he perceived the presence and the power Of greatness; and deep feelings had impressed So vividly great objects that they lay Upon his mind like substances, whose presence Perplexed the bodily sense. He had received A precious gift; for, as he grew in years, With these impressions would he still compare All his remembrances, thoughts, shapes, and forms; 25 And, being still unsatisfied with aught
Of dimmer character, he thence attained An active power to fasten images
Upon his brain; and on their pictured lines Intensely brooded, even till they acquired The liveliness of dreams. Nor did he fail, While yet a child, with a child's eagerness Incessantly to turn his ear and eye
On all things which the moving seasons brought To feed such appetite-nor this alone Appeased his yearning:-in the after-day Of boyhood, many an hour in caves forlorn, And 'mid the hollow depths of naked crags He sate, and even in their fixed lineaments,
Or from the power of a peculiar eye, Or by creative feeling overborne,
Or by predominance of thought oppressed, Even in their fixed and steady lineaments He traced an ebbing and a flowing mind, Expression ever varying!
He had small need of books; for many a tale Traditionary round the mountains hung, And many a legend, peopling the dark woods, Nourished Imagination in her growth, And gave the Mind that apprehensive power By which she is made quick to recognise The moral properties and scope of things. But eagerly he read, and read again, Whate'er the minister's old shelf supplied; The life and death of martyrs, who sustained, With will inflexible, those fearful pangs Triumphantly displayed in records left Of persecution, and the Covenant-times
Whose echo rings through Scotland to this hour! And there, by lucky hap, had been preserved
A straggling volume, torn and incomplete, That left half-told the preternatural tale, Romance of giants, chronicle of fiends, Profuse in garniture of wooden cuts
Strange and uncouth; dire faces, figures dire, Sharp-kneed, sharp-elbowed, and lean-ankled too,
With long and ghostly shanks-forms which once seen
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