Samuel Coleridge - The Complete Essays, Lectures & Letters of S. T. Coleridge (Illustrated)

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to close

Upon the growing Boy;

But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,

He sees it in his joy!

The Youth who daily further from the East

Must travel, still is Nature’s Priest,

And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended;

At length the Man perceives it die away,

And fade into the light of common day.”

And page 352 to 354 of the same ode.

“O joy! that in our embers

Is something that doth live,

That nature yet remembers

What was so fugitive!

The thought of our past years in me doth breed

Perpetual benedictions: not indeed

For that which is most worthy to be blest;

Delight and liberty, the simple creed

Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,

With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast: —

Not for these I raise

The song of thanks and praise;

But for those obstinate questionings

Of sense and outward things,

Fallings from us, vanishings;

Blank misgivings of a Creature

Moving about in worlds not realized,

High instincts, before which our mortal Nature

Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised!

But for those first affections,

Those shadowy recollections,

Which, be they what they may,

Are yet the fountain light of all our day,

Are yet a master light of all our seeing;

Uphold us — cherish — and have power to make

Our noisy years seem moments in the being

Of the eternal Silence; truths that wake

To perish never;

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,

Nor Man nor Boy,

Nor all that is at enmity with joy,

Can utterly abolish or destroy!

Hence, in a season of calm weather,

Though inland far we be,

Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea

Which brought us hither;

Can in a moment travel thither, —

And see the children sport upon the shore,

And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.”

And since it would be unfair to conclude with an extract, which, though highly characteristic, must yet, from the nature of the thoughts and the subject, be interesting or perhaps intelligible, to but a limited number of readers; I will add, from the poet’s last published work, a passage equally Wordsworthian; of the beauty of which, and of the imaginative power displayed therein, there can be but one opinion, and one feeling. See White Doe, page 5.

“Fast the churchyard fills; — anon

Look again and they all are gone;

The cluster round the porch, and the folk

Who sate in the shade of the Prior’s Oak!

And scarcely have they disappeared

Ere the prelusive hymn is heard; —

With one consent the people rejoice,

Filling the church with a lofty voice!

They sing a service which they feel:

For ‘tis the sunrise now of zeal;

And faith and hope are in their prime

In great Eliza’s golden time.”

“A moment ends the fervent din,

And all is hushed, without and within;

For though the priest, more tranquilly,

Recites the holy liturgy,

The only voice which you can hear

Is the river murmuring near.

— When soft! — the dusky trees between,

And down the path through the open green,

Where is no living thing to be seen;

And through yon gateway, where is found,

Beneath the arch with ivy bound,

Free entrance to the churchyard ground —

And right across the verdant sod,

Towards the very house of God;

Comes gliding in with lovely gleam,

Comes gliding in serene and slow,

Soft and silent as a dream.

A solitary Doe!

White she is as lily of June,

And beauteous as the silver moon

When out of sight the clouds are driven

And she is left alone in heaven!

Or like a ship some gentle day

In sunshine sailing far away

A glittering ship that hath the plain

Of ocean for her own domain.”

“What harmonious pensive changes

Wait upon her as she ranges

Round and through this Pile of state

Overthrown and desolate!

Now a step or two her way

Is through space of open day,

Where the enamoured sunny light

Brightens her that was so bright;

Now doth a delicate shadow fall,

Falls upon her like a breath,

From some lofty arch or wall,

As she passes underneath.”

The following analogy will, I am apprehensive, appear dim and fantastic, but in reading Bartram’s Travels I could not help transcribing the following lines as a sort of allegory, or connected simile and metaphor of Wordsworth’s intellect and genius.—”The soil is a deep, rich, dark mould, on a deep stratum of tenacious clay; and that on a foundation of rocks, which often break through both strata, lifting their backs above the surface. The trees which chiefly grow here are the gigantic, black oak; magnolia grandi-flora; fraximus excelsior; platane; and a few stately tulip trees.” What Mr. Wordsworth will produce, it is not for me to prophesy but I could pronounce with the liveliest convictions what he is capable of producing. It is the FIRST GENUINE PHILOSOPHIC POEM.

The preceding criticism will not, I am aware, avail to overcome the prejudices of those, who have made it a business to attack and ridicule Mr. Wordsworth’s compositions.

Truth and prudence might be imaged as concentric circles. The poet may perhaps have passed beyond the latter, but he has confined himself far within the bounds of the former, in designating these critics, as “too petulant to be passive to a genuine poet, and too feeble to grapple with him; —— men of palsied imaginations, in whose minds all healthy action is languid; —— who, therefore, feed as the many direct them, or with the many are greedy after vicious provocatives.”

So much for the detractors from Wordsworth’s merits. On the other hand, much as I might wish for their fuller sympathy, I dare not flatter myself, that the freedom with which I have declared my opinions concerning both his theory and his defects, most of which are more or less connected with his theory, either as cause or effect, will be satisfactory or pleasing to all the poet’s admirers and advocates. More indiscriminate than mine their admiration may be: deeper and more sincere it cannot be. But I have advanced no opinion either for praise or censure, other than as texts introductory to the reasons which compel me to form it. Above all, I was fully convinced that such a criticism was not only wanted; but that, if executed with adequate ability, it must conduce, in no mean degree, to Mr. Wordsworth’s reputation. His fame belongs to another age, and can neither be accelerated nor retarded. How small the proportion of the defects are to the beauties, I have repeatedly declared; and that no one of them originates in deficiency of poetic genius. Had they been more and greater, I should still, as a friend to his literary character in the present age, consider an analytic display of them as pure gain; if only it removed, as surely to all reflecting minds even the foregoing analysis must have removed, the strange mistake, so slightly grounded, yet so widely and industriously propagated, of Mr. Wordsworth’s turn for simplicity! I am not half as much irritated by hearing his enemies abuse him for vulgarity of style, subject, and conception, as I am disgusted with the gilded side of the same meaning, as displayed by some affected admirers, with whom he is, forsooth, a “sweet, simple poet!” and so natural, that little master Charles and his younger sister are so charmed with them, that they play at “Goody Blake,” or at “Johnny and Betty Foy!”