‘Colours and words that are unknown to man’
would have failed him
‘To paint the visionary dreariness’
which invested what he saw.
Years afterwards, when he revisited the spot, the ‘loved one at his
side,’ there fell on it
‘A spirit of pleasure and youth’s golden gleam;
And think ye not with radiance more sublime
For these remembrances, and for the power
They had left behind? So feeling comes in aid
Of feeling, and diversity of strength
Attends us, if but once we have been strong.’
This was the experience, then, of ‘distinct pre-eminence’ in whose
recollection his mind was ‘nourished and invisibly repaired.’ It is in
such a moment that the soul’s strength is shown; when common objects
evoke what he calls the imagination, the reality, of which they are a
suggestion. Although he expands here and elsewhere he does not
elaborate. He stops where the fact ends and shuns abstractions.
* * * * *
‘So taught, so trained, we boldly face
All accidents of time and place;
Whatever props may fail,
Trust in that sovereign law can spread
New glory o’er the mountain’s head,
Fresh beauty through the vale.’
This is from _The Wishing-Gate Destroyed_, a late poem, not published
till 1842, when Wordsworth was seventy-two years old. It is his Nicene
and Apostles’ Creed and Thirty-Nine Articles. Trust, with no credentials
but its own existence, and yet they are indisputable.
* * * * *
‘Is it that Man is soon deprest?
A thoughtless Thing! who, once unblest,
Does little on his memory rest,
Or on his reason.’
_To the Daisy_.
An example of Wordsworth’s wisdom disclosing itself in his simplest
pieces. For one sad conclusion to which the reason leads us, the
uncontrolled, baseless procedure in the brain which we call thinking, but
is really day-dreaming, leads us to a score. Reason on the whole is
sanative.
* * * * *
‘Blest Statesman He, whose Mind’s unselfish will
Leaves him at ease among grand thoughts: whose eye
Sees that, apart from magnanimity,
Wisdom exists not, nor the humbler skill
Of Prudence, disentangling good and ill
With patient care.’
Exist not. We are befooled by words. We conceive wisdom, prudence, and
magnanimity as distinct entities, without intercommunication. If we
could but see things as they are without the tyranny of definition!
* * * * *
Wordsworth has a singular power of expressing articulately that which
would be mere mist without him, but is of vital importance.