Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

To noble raptures; while my voice proclaims
How exquisitely the individual Mind

(And the progressive power, 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. *

To

So the whole grand idea is that God has made these two -Man and Nature-for one another and to develop each other, and His mighty object is that we should realise in the marriage of the mind and the external world the pre-arranged harmony. It is a sketch which is filled up in various ways in the minor Poems. It forms the true burden of the "Excursion" and the "Prelude." reveal, to explain this underlying unity, to urge us to realise it by revealing the beauty in Man and Nature, is in Wordsworth's thought, the special work of poetry. "Poetry is the image of Man and Nature," and the object of the Poet is to produce such pleasure in the individual man by his imaging of Nature and Man as to induce love of Nature and union with her. considers Man and the objects which surround him as acting and reacting upon each other, so as to produce an infinite complexity of pain and pleasure." "He considers Man and Nature as essentially adapted to each

"He

*Preface to the "Excursion." See also the Preface to the "Lyrical Ballads," where he says that the Poet is one "pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar"—observe, he says similar, not identical "volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them."

other, and the mind of Man as naturally the mirror of the fairest and most interesting properties of Nature."*

And when we look into our intuitions and emotions, when we are with an open heart alone with Nature, we seem to know that this is a true philosophy. We ask if Nature, so distinct from us, has no longing to unite herself to us, to find the complement of her Being in ours; and we cannot but trace this desire in the animals which love us, in the pleasure all of them, when we are kind, take in our company. And what we trace in the animals we need not fear to apply further, at least in the sphere of poetic feeling. There is a way in which things seem to look at us, and beg for our affection and sympathy. The trees nod to us, and we to them, as Emerson said. In hours when we have most shaken off the coil of self and the troubles of the world, we are impressed with delight by the love which all things seem to bear to us. A real emotion, as deep, but more clear and pure than that awakened by human love, is kindled in us by the knowledge that the trees are whispering their affection in our car, and the brook singing its song to us, and the flowers adorning themselves to please our eye. Nor is there an atom of selfishness in this. We are frankly delighted with it, and accept it with healthy joy. We rejoice as much in the pleasure which Nature feels uniting herself to us as in the pleasure she gives us. And when we feel so, we are ourselves purer and kinder, and less envious than at other times. She loves us and desires the time when her "mar

in

* Preface to the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads.

riage" with us shall be complete; and when we are most conscious of that and most give back the wish, then we know best what St. Paul meant when he said "The earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God."

And we, on our part, we also possess this desire of union. Most of us have felt it at times to be unutterable, so secret and deep is its passion; and when-rarely indeed, for they are the most consecrated moments of life—we have realised the emotion of harmonious alliance with the world, I know not if any purely human joy can be so exquisite. When we cannot realise it, the way in which our whole nature chafes against the secrecy and reticence of Nature shows how much the feeling partakes of true passion, while the very existence of such a passion prophesies the time when the marriage of the soul to the soul of Nature shall be accomplished. Men have tried to explain this longing by saying that it is the human element which we have projected into Nature, or that it is our own thought there to which we desire to reunite ourselves. It may be, they say, that the trees and the stream are really we, and that we love ourselves in loving them; and Philosophy claps her hands and says that she has settled the question for Poetry. But the contradiction of that is rapid and instinctive; in the realm of feeling it is impossible to believe it; one cannot love oneself in that manner. Moreover, whenever we are in that humour, when we try to say that the life of waters, clouds, and leaves is but "the eddying of our living soul," it is curious with what a mocking spirit they look upon us: walk in the woods with only that idea, or by the sea,

and every tree and wave will say to you-" you find my secret, little fellow!"*

But a single rush of love to the great spirit who lives there will make her open her arms and heart to you. Turn to the trees and waves, as to friends, in that sudden expansion which one feels at times to human friends and in which all barriers melt, and there will not be a blade of grass nor a drift of cloud which will not partake its life with you, teach you its lesson, interpose between your heart and yourself its kindness, whisper to you infinite secrets and fill you with joy and calm.

How bountiful is Nature; he shall find

Who seeks not, and to him that hath not asked,

Large measure shall be dealt.

This is the task of Nature, and she fulfils it at the command of God, or rather it is God himself who in all her life gives us this education and help; and teaches us of Himself through her.

In the "Excursion," book iv., Wordsworth traces this work of hers into distant times. Long, long ago it began : Man was not left to himself to corrupt in apathy;

to feel the weight

Of his own reason, without sense or thought

Of higher reason and a purer will,

To benefit and bless, through mightier power.

The Persian, when he sacrificed "to moon and stars, and to the winds, and mother elements," felt through

66

* One remembers Emerson's phrase-"Nature will not have us fret or fume. She does not like our benevolence or learning much better "than she likes our frauds and wars. When we come out of the

[ocr errors]

Caucus, or the bank, or the Abolition Convention, or the Trans"cendental Club, into the fields and woods, she says to us, 'So hot, my "little sir.'"

them "a sensitive existence and a God." The Chaldæan shepherds entered the invisible world through the thoughts which the moving planets and the still star of the Pole awakened in their minds; the Greek idolatrously served a hundred gods:

And yet triumphant o'er this pompous show
Of art, this palpable array of sense,

On every side encountered; in despite
Of the gross fictions chanted in the streets
By wandering Rhapsodists; and in contempt
Of doubt and bold denial hourly urged
Amid the wrangling schools—a spirit hung,
Beautiful region! o'er thy towns and farms,
Statues and temples, and memorial tombs:
And emanations were perceived;—

For Nature spoke through the things of sense and told of spirit; and when the votary, thankful for his son's return, shed his severed locks upon Cephisus' river, then

Doubtless, sometimes, when the hair was shed

Upon the flowing stream, a thought arose
Of Life continuous, Being unimpaired ;
That hath been, is, and where it was and is
There shall endure.

This was the work of Nature teaching an indefinite religion, telling of God to men who knew Him not, speaking of the infinite world beyond, through the emotions which the finite roused.

And now, in our later times, such training has gone so far, that we would not give to the trees or brook a wild half-human soul, and make a Dryad or a Naiad take their place; for that would be to lose the tree or the brook itself. We keep the natural object, but we know within it is the life of God. It tells us in its own way part of the

« НазадПродовжити »