WILLIAM, EARL OF LONSDALE, K. G. &c. &o.
Or, through thy fair domains, illustrious Peer!
ouh I roamed, on youthful pleasures a
And mused in rocky cell or sylvan tent, Beside swift-flowing Lowther's current clear. --Now, by thy care befriended, I appear Before thee, LONSDALE, and this Work present. A trken (may it prove a monument " Of high respect and gratitude sincere. Gladly would I have waited till my task Had reached its close; but Life is insecure, And Hope full oft fallacious as a dream: Therefore, for what is here produced I ask Thy favour; trusting that thou wilt not deem The Offering, though imperfect, premature.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
RYDAL MOUNT WESTMORELAND,
Pieces, which have been long before the Public, when they shall be properly arranged;* will be found by the attentive Reader to have such connection with the main Work as may give them claim to be likened to the little cells, Oratories, and sepulchral Recesses, ordinarily included in those Edifices.
The Author would not have deemed himself justi
THE Title-page announces that this is only a Portion | allusion, he may be permitted to add, that his minor of a Poem; and the Reader must be here apprised that it belongs to the second part of a long and laborious Work, which is to consist of three parts.-The Author will candidly acknowledge that, if the first of these had been completed, and in such a manner as to satisfy his own mind, he should have preferred the natural order of publication, and have given that to the world first; but, as the second division of the Work was de-fied in saying, upon this occasion, so much of persigned to refer more to passing events, and to an existing state of things, than the others were meant to do, more continuous exertion was naturally bestowed upon it, and greater progress made here than in the rest of the Poem; and as this part does not depend upon the preceding, to a degree which will materially injure its own peculiar interest, the Author, complying with the earnest entreaties of some valued Friends, presents the following pages to the Public.
It may be proper to state whence the Poem, of which The Excursion is a part, derives its Title of THE RECLUSE.-Several years ago, when the Author retired to his native Mountains, with the hope of being enabled to construct a literary Work that might live, it was a reasonable thing that he should take a review of his own Mind, and examine how far Nature and Education had qualified him for such employment. As subsidiary to this preparation, he undertook to record, in Verse, the origin and progress of his own powers, as far as he was acquainted with them. That Work, addressed to a dear Friend, most distinguished for his knowledge and genius, and to whom the Author's Intellect is deeply indebted, has been long finished; and the result of the investigation which gave rise to it was a determination to compose a philosophical Poem, containing views of Man, Nature, and Society; and to be entitled, The Recluse; as having for its principal subject the sensations and opinions of a Poet living in retirement. The preparatory Poem is biographical, and conducts the history of the Author's mind to the point when he was emboldened to hope that his faculties were sufficiently matured for entering upon the arduous labour which he had proposed to himself; and the two Works have the same kind of relation to each ther, if he may so express himself, as the Ante-chapel has to the body of a Gothic Church. Continuing this
formances either unfinished, or unpublished, if he had not thought that the labour bestowed by him upon what he has heretofore and now laid before the Public, entitled him to candid attention for such a statement as he thinks necessary to throw light upon his endeavours to please, and he would hope, to benefit his countrymen. Nothing further need be added, than that the first and third parts of The Recluse will consist chiefly of meditations in the Author's own Person; and that in the intermediate part (The Excursion) the intervention of Characters speaking is employed, and something of a dramatic form adopted.
It is not the Author's intention formally to announce a system: it was more animating to him to proceed in a different course; and if he shall succeed in conveying to the mind clear thoughts, lively images, and strong feelings, the Reader will have no difficulty in extracting the system for himself. And in the meantime the following passage, taken from the conclusion of the first book of The Recluse, may be acceptable as a kind of Prospectus of the design and scope of the whole Poem.
"On Man, on Nature, and on Human Life, Musing in Solitude, I oft perceive Fair trains of imagery before me rise, Accompanied by feelings of delight Pure, or with no unpleasing sadness mixed; And I am conscious of affecting thoughts And dear remembrances, whose presence soothes Or elevates the Mind, intent to weigh The good and evil of our mortal state. -To these emotions, whencesoe'er they come, Whether from breath of outward circumstance, Or from the Soul -an impulse to herself,
I would give utterance in numerous Verse. ! Of Truth, of Grandeur, Beauty, Love, and Hope- And melancholy Fear subdued by Faith; Of blessed consolations in distress;
Of moral strength, and intellectual Power; 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 Bard, Holiest of Men, - 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; 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
- Descend, prophetic Spirit! that inspirest 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
A summer forenoon-The Author reaches a ruined Cottage upon a Common, and there meets with a revered Friend, the Wanderer, of whom he gives an account-The Wanderer, while resting under the shade of the Trees that surround the Cottage, relates the History of its last Inhabitant.
"T WAS 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; Pleasant to him who on the soft cool moss Extends his careless limbs along the front
Of some huge cave, whose rocky ceiling casts
A twilight of its own, an ample shade,
There was he seen upon the Cottage bench, Recumbent in the shade, as if asleep;
An iron-pointed staff lay at his side.
Him had I marked the day before-alone And stationed in the public way, with face Turned toward the sun then setting, while that staff Afforded to the Figure of the Man
Detained for contemplation or repose,
Graceful support; his countenance meanwhile
Was hidden from my view, and he remained Unrecognised; but, stricken by the sight,
Where the Wren warbles; while the dreaming Man, With slackened footsteps I advanced, and soon
Through a parched meadow-ground, in time of drought. Still deeper welcome found his pure discourse: How precious when in riper days I learned To weigh with care his words, and to rejoice In the plain presence of his dignity!
Oh! many are the Poets that are sown
By Nature; Men endowed with highest gifts, The vision and the faculty divine; Yet wanting the accomplishment of Verse (Which, in the docile season of their youth, It was denied them to acquire, through lack Of culture and the inspiring aid of books, Or haply by a temper too severe, Or a nice backwardness afraid of shame) Nor having e'er, as life advanced, been led By circumstance to take unto the height The measure of themselves, these favoured Beings, All but a scattered few, live out their time, Husbanding that which they possess within, And go to the grave, unthought of. Strongest minds Are often those of whom the noisy world Hears least; cise surely this Man. had not left His graces unrevealed and unproclaimed. But, as the mind was filled with inward light, So not without distinction had he lived, Beloved and honoured - far as he was known. And some small portion of his eloquent speech, And something that may serve to set in view The feeling pleasures of his loneliness, His observations, and the thoughts his mind Had dealt with -I will here record in verse; Which, if with truth it correspond, and sink Or rise as venerable Nature leads, The high and tender Muses shall accept With gracious smile, deliberately pleased, And listening Time reward with sacred praise.
Among the hills of Athol he was born; Where, on a small hereditary Farm, An unproductive slip of rugged ground, His Parents, with their numerous Offspring, dwelt; A virtuous Household, though exceeding poor! Pure Livers were they all, austere and grave, And fearing God; the very Children taught Stern self-respect, a reverence for God's word, And an habitual piety, maintained
With strictness scarcely known on English ground.
From his sixth year, the Boy of whom I speak, In summer, tended cattle on the Hills; But, through the inclement and the perilous days Of long-continuing winter, he repaired,
Equipped with satchel, to a School, that stood Sole Building on a mountain's dreary edge, Remote from view of City spire, or sound Of Minster clock! From that bleak Tenement Ile, many an evening, to his distant home In solitude returning, saw the Hills Grow larger in the darkness, all alone Beheld the stars come out above his head,
And travelled through the wood, with no one near To whom he might confess the things he saw. So the foundations of his mind were laid. In such communion, not from terror free, While yet a Child, and long before his time, He had perceived the presence and the power Of greatness; and deep feelings had impressed Great objects on his mind, with portraiture And colour so distinct, that on his mind They lay like substances, and almost seemed To haunt the bodily sense. He had received A precious gift; for, as he grew in years, With these impressions would he still compare All his remembrances, thoughts, shapes, and forms; And, being still unsatisfied with aught Of dimmer character, he thence attained An active power to fasten images Upon his brain; and on their pictured lines Intensely brooded, even till they acquired The liveliness of dreams. Nor did he fail, While yet a Child, with a Child's eagerness Incessantly to turn his ear and eye
On all things which the moving seasons brought To feed such appetite: nor this alone Appeased his yearning:—in the after day Of Boyhood, many an hour in caves forlorn And 'mid the hollow depths of naked crags He sate, and even in their fixed lineaments, Or from the power of a peculiar eye, Or by creative feeling overborne, Or by predominance of thought oppressed, Even in their fixed and steady lineaments He traced an ebbing and a flowing mind, Expression ever varying!
Thus informed, He had small need of books; for many a Tale Traditionary, round the mountains hung, And many a Legend, peopling the dark woods, Nourished Imagination in her growth, And gave the Mind that apprehensive power By which she is made quick to recognise The moral properties and scope of things. But eagerly he read, and read again, Whate'er the Minister's old Shelf supplied; The life and death of Martyrs, who sustained, With will inflexible, those fearful pangs Triumphantly displayed in records left Of Persecution, and the Covenant - Times Whose echo rings through Scotland to this hour'
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