Of joy in widest commonalty spread;

Of the individual Mind that keeps her own
Inviolate retirement, subject there

To Conscience only, and the law supreme
Of that Intelligence which governs all-

I sing fit audience let me find though few!'

So prayed, more gaining than he asked, the BardIn holiest mood.1 Urania,* I shall need

Thy guidance, or a greater Muse, if such
Descend to earth or dwell in highest heaven!
For I must tread on shadowy ground, must sink
Deep-and, aloft ascending, breathe in worlds
To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil.
All strength-all terror, single or in bands,
That ever was put forth in personal form-
Jehovah with his thunder, and the choir
Of shouting Angels, and the empyreal thrones-
I pass them unalarmed. Not Chaos, not
The darkest pit of lowest Erebus,

Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out

By help of dreams-can breed such fear and awe
As fall upon us often when we look

Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man-
My haunt, and the main region of my song.
-Beauty-a living Presence of the earth,
Surpassing the most fair ideal Forms

Which craft of delicate Spirits hath composed

From earth's materials-waits upon my steps;

1 1849.

Holiest of men.

1814.

* "One of the Muses, daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne (Hesiod, Theog., 78; Ovid, Fast. v. 55). She was regarded as the Muse of Astronomy, and was represented with a celestial globe, to which she points with a little staff" (Hirt., Mythol. Bilderb, p. 210).—ED.

Pitches her tents before me as I move,

An hourly neighbour. Paradise, and groves
Elysian, Fortunate Fields-like those of old
Sought in the Atlantic Main*—why should they be
A history only of departed things,

Or a mere fiction of what never was?
For the discerning intellect of Man,
When wedded to this goodly universe
In love and holy passion, shall find these
A simple produce of the common day.
-I, long before the blissful hour arrives,
Would chant, in lonely peace, the spousal verse
Of this great consummation:-and, by words
Which speak of nothing more than what we are,
Would I arouse the sensual from their sleep
Of Death, and win the vacant and the vain
To noble raptures; while my voice proclaims
How exquisitely the individual Mind
(And the progressive powers perhaps no less
Of the whole species) to the external World
Is fitted-and how exquisitely, too-
Theme this but little heard of among men—
The external World is fitted to the Mind;
And the creation (by no lower name

Can it be called) which they with blended might
Accomplish-this is our high argument.
-Such grateful haunts foregoing, if I oft
Must turn elsewhere-to travel near the tribes
And fellowships of men, and see ill sights
Of madding passions mutually inflamed;
Must hear Humanity in fields and groves
Pipe solitary anguish; or must hang

Compare The Prelude, Vol. III. p. 136, notes * and †; Strabo, 1; Pliny, 6, c. 31 and 32; Horace, Odes IV., 8, v. 27; Plutarch, Sertorius.—ED.

Brooding above the fierce confederate storm
Of sorrow, barricadoed evermore

Within the walls of cities-may these sounds

Have their authentic comment; that even these
Hearing, I be not downcast or forlorn!-
Descend, prophetic Spirit ! that inspir'st
The human Soul of universal earth,

Dreaming on things to come;* and dost possess
A metropolitan temple in the hearts
Of mighty Poets: upon me bestow

A gift of genuine insight; that my Song
With star-like virtue in its place may shine,
Shedding benignant influence, and secure,
Itself, from all malevolent effect

Of those mutations that extend their sway
Throughout the nether sphere!—And if with this
I mix more lowly matter; with the thing
Contemplated, describe the Mind and Man
Contemplating; and who, and what he was—
The transitory Being that beheld

This Vision; when and where, and how he lived;
Be not this labour useless. If such theme

May sort with highest objects, then-dread Power!
Whose gracious favour is the primal source
Of all illumination-may my Life

Express the image of a better time,

More wise desires, and simpler manners :-nurse
My Heart in genuine freedom:-all pure thoughts
Be with me;-so shall thy unfailing love
Guide, and support, and cheer me to the end!"

Book First.

THE WANDERER.

ARGUMENT.

A summer forenoon-The Author reaches a ruined Cottage upon a Common, and there meets with a revered Friend, the Wanderer, of whose education and course of life he gives an account1-The Wanderer, while resting under the shade of the Trees that surround the Cottage, relates the History of its last Inhabitant.

2

'Twas summer, and the sun had mounted high:
Southward the landscape indistinctly glared
Through a pale steam;* but all the northern downs,
In clearest air ascending, showed far off
A surface dappled o'er with shadows flung
From brooding clouds; shadows that lay in spots
Determined and unmoved, with steady beams
Of bright and pleasant sunshine interposed;
To him most pleasant who on soft cool moss 3
Extends his careless limbs along the front
Of some huge cave, whose rocky ceiling casts
A twilight of its own,† an ample shade,

3

Where the wren warbles, while the dreaming man,
Half-conscious of the soothing melody,

From many a brooding cloud; far as the sight
Could reach, these many shadows lay in spots

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3 1849.

Pleasant to him who on the soft cool moss

1814.

Compare the Evening Walk (Vol I. p. 7)—

"When, in the south, the wan moon, brooding still,

Breathed a pale steam around the glaring hill."

-ED.

Compare the Evening Walk (Vol. I. p. 8)—

"And its own twilight softens the whole scene."

-ED.

With side-long eye looks out upon the scene,*
By power of that impending covert, thrown
To finer distance. Mine was at that hour
Far other lot, yet with good hope that soon
Under a shade as grateful I should find
Rest, and be welcomed there to livelier joy.1
Across a bare wide Common I was toiling
With languid steps that by the slippery turf 2
Were baffled; nor could my weak arm disperse
The host of insects gathering round my face,
And ever with me as I paced along.3

Though with good hope to cheer the sultry hour
That under shade as grateful I should soon

The host of insects gathered round my face,

And ever with me as I paced along.

Now with eyes turned towards the far-distant hills,
Now towards a grove that from the wide-spread moor
Rose up the port to which my course was bound.

C.

Compare the Sonnet composed in early boyhood (Vol. IV. p. 23).

-ED.