the description of a clear, and tranquil winter morning: "Bright shines the Sun, as if his beams would wake The tender insects sleeping in their cells; Bright shines the Sun and not a breeze to shake The drops that tip the melting icicles :"- Thanksgiving Ode. the picture of the repose and dimness of an evening scene: "A stream is heard - I see it not, but know By its soft music whence the waters flow; Wheels and the tread of hoofs are heard no more; Might give to serious thought a moment's sway, As a last token of man's toilsome day!"— Evening Voluntaries. These may show how faithful a student of nature Wordsworth has been. But the world of the eye and the ear, like the senses that observe them, are subject to decay, and it is not the character of his genius to pause upon what is perishable. The true service of nature cannot be divorced from man's inner spirit : "Oh! 'tis the heart that magnifies this life Making a truth and beauty of her own." Deep and habitual as is Wordsworth's devotion to nature, it is no idolatry of what is material. He fails not to impress on us that her forms, loved as they are, are fugitive-valueless except when contemplated in their relation to man and to his Makerthat "the earth, the dear green earth," when the soul is alienated from it, becomes, as to Hamlet's morbid mood, "a steril promontory," and that the universe is hollow without the presence of faith and imagination : "I have seen A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract Excursion, b. iv. It is the principle of the poet's love of nature that the soul, during its abode in our mortal frame, can gather, from all that meets the senses, food for its nobler faculties, and, in relation to its immortal endowment of spiritual aspirations, the earth is only "the homely Nurse, with something of a Mother's mind." In all Wordsworth's descriptive poetry may be observed "The glorious habit by which sense is made Subservient still to moral purposes, Auxiliar to divine." In this spirit are given the beautiful exhortations to his sister: "Nature never did betray The heart that loved her: 'tis her privilege, For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts Tintern Abbey. Such is Wordsworth's faith in the Infinite Wisdom, that framed the earth, the elements, and the physical heavens, to foster the heart of man, that no spot is too desolate or silent for the communion with nature: "The estate of man would be indeed forlorn, NO. VII.-VOL. IV. Has not the soul, the being of your life, A temple framing of dimensions vast, To glorify the Eternal! What if these One voice the solitary raven, flying Athwart the concave of the dark blue dome, Faint - and still fainter as the cry, with which To expire; yet from the abyss is caught again, But in all Wordsworth's recognitions of the influences of nature, the world of materiality is kept in due subordination to the immortal power in the heart, and the truth steadfastly upheld, that the soul has an existence independent of the frail tenure of sense. The sublime apostrophe to the Deity, in the fourth book of the Excursion, proclaims that though the universe be perishable, there may be an undying communion between God and the soul of man: "Thou, dread source wrap the cloud Of infancy around us, that thyself, - Might'st hold, on earth, communion undisturbed; In youth were mine; when, stationed on the top The sun rise up, from distant climes returned The measure of my soul was filled with bliss, But not only is the independence of the mind thus asserted. In the beautiful churchyard narratives, its power is portrayed, when impaired in its faculties of sight and hearing. The account of the cheerful deaf man is conceived in such a deep sympathy that the poet seems speaking from the very heart of the unfortunate: "The bird of dawn Did never rouse this Cottager from sleep With startling summons; not for his delight Murmured the laboring bee. When stormy winds Was silent as a picture. There is something exquisitely soothing in the passages which go on to show happiness discovering other avenues to the heart, and at last, even over the deaf man's grave a beauty is cast by one of those matchless touches, which grace the muse of Wordsworth: -"Yon tall pine tree, whose composing sound And at the touch of every wandering breeze The description of the blind man, "enlightened" by his other senses, and by the spiritual illumination within, is moralized in even a higher strain, rising into an imagination of the Christian's victory over the grave, and closing with one of Wordsworth's favorite tributes to the congenial mind of Milton: "proof abounds Upon the earth, that faculties which seem A type and shadow of an awful truth; And know we not that from the blind have flowed And wisdom married to immortal verse ?" Excursion, b. vii. |