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 starlight, thus from my first dawn | 5 |
| 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 | 10 |
| 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 | 15 |
| 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, | 20 |
| 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 | 25 |
| 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 | 30 |
| 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 | 35 |
| 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; | 40 |
| 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 | 45 |
| 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; | 50 |
| 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 | 55 |
| 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! | 60 |
| Behind me did they stretch in solemn train, | |
| Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watched | |
| Till all was tranquil as a summer sea. | |
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