FROM AN UNPUBLISHED POEM
[This extract is reprinted from "THE FRIEND."[A] ]
Composed 1799.--Published 1809
It was included by Wordsworth among the "Poems referring to the Period of Childhood."--Ed.
Wisdom and Spirit of the universe!
Thou Soul, that art the Eternity of thought!
And giv'st [1] to forms and images a breath
And everlasting motion! not in vain,
By day or star-light, thus from my first dawn
Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me
The passions that build up our human soul;
Not [2] with the mean and vulgar works of Man:
But with high objects, with enduring things,
With life and nature: purifying thus
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
With stinted kindness. In November days,
When vapours rolling down the valleys [3] 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,
Beneath the gloomy hills, homeward I went [4]
In solitude, such intercourse was mine:
Mine was it in the fields [5] both day and night,
And by the waters, all the summer long.
And in the frosty season, when the sun
Was set, and, visible for many a mile,
YOU ARE READING
THE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH - VOL. 2 (Completed)
ClassicsThe poetical works of William Wordsworth, edited by William Knight.
