That later seasons owed to thee no less;
For, spite of thy sweet influence and the touch
Of kindred hands that open'd out the springs
Of genial thought in childhood; and in spite
Of all that unassisted I had mark'd

In life or nature of those charms minute
That win their way into the heart by stealth;
Still, to the very going-out of youth,

I too exclusively esteem'd that love,

And sought that beauty which, as Milton sings,
Hath terror in it. Thou didst soften down
This over-sternness; but for thee, dear Friend!
My soul, too reckless of mild grace, had stood
In her original self too confident,

Retain'd, too long, a countenance severe;
A rock with torrents roaring, with the clouds
Familiar, and a favourite of the stars:

But thou didst plant its crevices with flowers,
Hang it with shrubs that twinkle in the breeze,
And teach the little birds to build their nests
And warble in its chambers. At a time
When Nature, destined to remain so long
Foremost in my affections, had fallen back
Into a second place, pleased to become
A handmaid to a nobler than herself,

When every day brought with it some new sense
Of exquisite regard for common things,
And all the Earth was budding with these gifts
Of more refined humanity, thy breath,
Dear Sister! was a kind of gentler Spring
That went before my steps. Thereafter came
One whom with thee friendship had early pair'd;
She came, no more a phantom to adorn
A moment, but an inmate of the heart,
And yet a spirit, there for me enshrined
To penetrate the lofty and the low;
Even as one essence of pervading light
Shines in the brightest of ten thousand stars,
And the meek worm that feeds her lonely lamp
Couch'd in the dewy grass.

See the little piece, beginning, "She was a Phantom of delight,” page 134.

THE EXCURSION.

PREFATORY NOTE.

THE EXCURSION, first published in 1814, was originally designed as the second part of a larger work, to consist of three parts, and to be entitled The Recluse. The first and third parts of this work were never completed: in fact, only a small portion of the first -one book, I think-was written; and nothing at all was done towards the third; though the author tells us that much, if not most, of the matter intended for that use was worked up into various of his other poems. In the preface to the original edition, we have the following: "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; and the result was a determination to compose a philosophical poern, 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 same Preface informs us, also, that the first and third parts of The Recluse were to "consist chiefly of medi tations in the Author's own person; " while The Excursion, as will readily be seen, is cast into something of a dramatic form, with various interlocutors speaking in a manner suited to their respective characters.

It may not be amiss to add, that The Excursion, on its first appearance, was re ceived with many howls of censure by the professional critics and reviewers of that day. Jeffrey, in particular, spouted against it in the Edinburgh Review, opening his article with the dictum, "This will never do." But the poem held its ground, notwithstanding, and slowly won its way, educating a "fit audience" for itself as time wore on; and it has been steadily growing in favour and influence ever since. On the other hand, many of the best contemporary judges, such as Coleridge, Southey, Lamb, Wilson, and others, were from the first most emphatic and outspoken in approval of the work. Southey, on being told how Jeffrey was boasting that he had "CRUSHED The Excursion," uttered the famous saying, "He crush The Excursion! Tell him he might as well fancy that he could crush Skiddaw." Lamb, also, wrote, "It is the noblest conversational poem I ever_read, – -a day in Heaven." Again he speaks of it as follows: "The poet of The Excursion walks through common forests as through some Dodona or enchanted wood; and every casual bird that flits upon the boughs, like that miraculous one in Tasso, but in language more piercing than any articulate sounds, reveals to him far lovelier lays." To the original edition the author prefixed the following grand passage, from the first book of The Recluse," 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 mix'd;
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 th' 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 pray'd, more gaining than he ask'd, the Bard,
In holiest mood. 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 th' empyreal thrones,
I pass them unalarm'd. Not Chaos, not
The darkest pit of lowest Erebus,

Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scoop'd 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 th' 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
To noble raptures; while my voice proclaims
How éxquisitely th' individual Mind

1 Milton is the "Bard" referred to. The quotation is from Paradise Lost, vil. 31:

"Still govern thou my song,

Urania, and fit audience find, though few."

(And the progressive powers perhaps no less Of the whole species) to th' external World Is fitted; and how éxquisitely, too,

Theme this but little heard of among men,
Th' external World is fitted to the Mind;
And the creation (by no lower name

Can it be call'd) which they with blended might
Accomplish:this is our high argument.-
Such grateful haunts foregoing, if I oft
Must turn elsewhere, to travel near the tribes
And fellowships of men, and see ill sights
Of madding passions mutually inflamed;
Must hear Humanity in fields and groves
Pipe solitary anguish; or must hang
Brooding above the fierce confederate storm
Of sorrow, barricado'd evermore

Within the walls of cities, may these sounds
Have their authentic comment; that, even these
Hearing, I be not downcast or forlorn!-
Descend, prophetic Spirit! that inspir'st
The human Soul of universal Earth,

2

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

This Vision; when and where and how he lived;-
Be not this labour useless. If such theme

May sort with highest objects, then, dread Power!
Whose gracious favour is the primal source
Of all illumination, may my Life

Express the image of a better time,
More wise desires, and simpler manners;

nurse

My Heart in genuine freedom: - all pure thoughts

Be with me; so shall Thy unfailing love

Guide, and support, and cheer me to the end!

2 So in Shakespeare's 107th sonnet:

"Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul

Of the wide world dreaming on things to come," &c.

BOOK FIRST.

THE WANDERER."

"TWAS 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, show'd 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;
To him most pleasant who on 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

Where the wren warbles, while the dreaming man,
Half conscious of the soothing melody,
With sidelong eye looks out upon the scene,
By power of that impending covert thrown
To finer distance. Mine was at that hour
Far other lot, yet with good hope that soon
Under a shade as grateful I should find

Rest, and be welcomed there to livelier joy.

3 My lamented friend Southey used to say that, had he been a Papist, the course of life which in all probability would have been his was that of a Benedictine Monk, in a convent furnished, as many once were, and some still are, with an inexhaustible library. Books, as appears from many passages in his writings, and was evident to those who had opportunities of observing his daily life, were in fact his passion; and wandering, I can with truth affirm, was mine: but this propensity in me was happily counteracted by inability from want of fortune to fulfil my wishes. But, had I been born in a class which would have deprived me of what is called a liberal education, it is not unlikely that, being strong in body, I should have taken to a way of life such as that in which my "Wanderer" passed the greater part of his days. At all events, I am here called upon freely to acknowledge that the character I have represented in his person is chiefly an idea of what I fancied my own character might have be come in his circumstances. Nevertheless much of what he says and does had an external existence, that fell under my own youthful and subsequent observation. An individual named Patrick, by birth and education a Scotchman, followed this humble occupation for many years, and afterwards settled in the town of Kendal. He married a kinsman of my wife's, and her sister Sarah spent part of her childhood under this good man's eye. My own imagination I was happy to find clothed in re ality, and fresh ones suggested, by what she reported of this man's tenderness of heart, his strong and pure imagination, and his solid attainments in literature, chiefly religious, whether in prose or verse. At Hawkshead, also, while I was a schoolboy, there occasionally resided a packman, (the name then generally given to this calling,) with whom I had frequent conversations upon what had befallen him, and what he had observed during his wandering life; and, as was natural, we took much to each other: and upon the subject of Pedlarism in general, as then follower, and its favourableness to an intimate knowledge of human concerns, not merely among the humbler classes of society, I need say nothing here in addition to what is to be found in The Excursion. - Author's Notes, 1843.

4 Downs, in French dunes, are, properly, sand-banks. But in some parts of En. gland the word appears to be used for certain risings or swellings of earth, probably from their resemblance to sand-banks.