The Prelude. William Wordsworth

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      As if the change

       ​Had waited on some Fairy's wand, at once

       Behold me rich in monies, and attired

       In splendid garb, with hose of silk, and hair

       Powdered like rimy trees, when frost is keen.

       My lordly dressing-gown, I pass it by,

       With other signs of manhood that supplied

       The lack of beard.—The weeks went roundly on,

       With invitations, suppers, wine and fruit,

       Smooth housekeeping within, and all without

       Liberal, and suiting gentleman's array.

      The Evangelist St. John my patron was:

       Three Gothic courts are his, and in the first

       Was my abiding-place, a nook obscure;

       Right underneath, the College kitchens made

       A humming sound, less tuneable than bees,

       But hardly less industrious; with shrill notes

       Of sharp command and scolding intermixed.

       Near me hung Trinity's loquacious clock,

       Who never let the quarters, night or day,

       Slip by him unproclaimed, and told the hours

       Twice over with a male and female voice.

       Her pealing organ was my neighbour too;

       And from my pillow, looking forth by light

       Of moon or favouring stars, I could behold

       ​The antechapel where the statue stood

       Of Newton with his prism and silent face,

       The marble index of a mind for ever

       Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.

      Of College labours, of the Lecturer's room

       All studded round, as thick as chairs could stand,

       With loyal students faithful to their books,

       Half-and-half idlers, hardy recusants,

       And honest dunces—of important days,

       Examinations, when the man was weighed

       As in a balance! of excessive hopes,

       Tremblings withal and commendable fears,

       Small jealousies, and triumphs good or bad,

       Let others that know more speak as they know.

       Such glory was but little sought by me,

       And little won. Yet from the first crude days

       Of settling time in this untried abode,

       I was disturbed at times by prudent thoughts,

       Wishing to hope without a hope, some fears

       About my future worldly maintenance,

       And, more than all, a strangeness in the mind,

       A feeling that I was not for that hour,

       Nor for that place. But wherefore be cast down?

       For (not to speak of Reason and her pure

       ​Reflective acts to fix the moral law

       Deep in the conscience, nor of Christian Hope,

       Bowing her head before her sister Faith

       As one far mightier), hither I had come,

       Bear witness Truth, endowed with holy powers

       And faculties, whether to work or feel.

       Oft when the dazzling show no longer new

       Had ceased to dazzle, ofttimes did I quit

       My comrades, leave the crowd, buildings and groves,

       And as I paced alone the level fields

       Far from those lovely sights and sounds sublime

       With which I had been conversant, the mind

       Drooped not; but there into herself returning,

       With prompt rebound seemed fresh as heretofore.

       At least I more distinctly recognised

       Her native instincts: let me dare to speak

       A higher language, say that now I felt

       What independent solaces were mine,

       To mitigate the injurious sway of place

       Or circumstance, how far soever changed

       In youth, or to be changed in manhood's prime; Or for the few who shall be called to look On the long shadows in our evening years, Ordained precursors to the night of death. As if awakened, summoned, roused, constrained, ​I looked for universal things; perused The common countenance of earth and sky: Earth, nowhere unembellished by some trace Of that first Paradise whence man was driven; And sky, whose beauty and bounty are expressed By the proud name she bears—the name of Heaven. I called on both to teach me what they might; Or turning the mind in upon herself Pored, watched, expected, listened, spread my thoughts And spread them with a wider creeping; felt Incumbencies more awful, visitings Of the Upholder of the tranquil soul, That tolerates the indignities of Time, And, from the centre of Eternity All finite motions overruling, lives In glory immutable. But peace! enough Here to record that I was mounting now To such community with highest truth— A track pursuing, not untrod before, From strict analogies by thought supplied Or consciousnesses not to be subdued. To every natural form, rock, fruit or flower, Even the loose stones that cover the high-way, I gave a moral life: I saw them feel, Or linked them to some feeling: the great mass ​Lay bedded in a quickening soul, and all That I beheld respired with inward meaning. Add that whatever of Terror or of Love Or Beauty, Nature's daily face put on From transitory passion, unto this I was as sensitive as waters are To the sky's influence in a kindred mood Of passion; was obedient as a lute That waits upon the touches of the wind. Unknown, unthought of, yet I was most rich— I had a world about me—'twas my own; I made it, for it only lived to me, And to the God who sees into the heart. Such sympathies, though rarely, were betrayed By outward gestures and by visible looks: Some called it madness—so indeed it was, If child-like fruitfulness in passing joy, If steady moods of thoughtfulness matured To inspiration, sort with such a name; If prophecy be madness; if things viewed By poets in old time, and higher up By the first men, earth's first inhabitants, May in these tutored days no more be seen With undisordered sight. But leaving this, It was no madness, for the bodily eye ​Amid СКАЧАТЬ