SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE OF THE BIRD OF PARADISE
Published 1842
[This subject has been treated of in another note. I will here only, by way of comment, direct attention to the fact, that pictures of animals and other productions of Nature, as seen in conservatories, menageries, and museums, etc., would do little for the national mind, nay, they would be rather injurious to it, if the imagination were excluded by the presence of the object, more or less out of a state of Nature. If it were not that we learn to talk and think of the lion and the eagle, the palm-tree, and even the cedar, from the impassioned introduction of them so frequently into Holy Scripture, and by great poets, and divines who wrote as poets, the spiritual part of our nature, and therefore the higher part of it, would derive no benefit from such intercourse with such subjects.—I.F.]
One of the “Poems of the Imagination.”—Ed.
The gentlest Poet, with free thoughts endowed,
And a true master of the glowing strain,
Might scan the narrow province with disdain
That to the Painter’s skill is here allowed.
This, this the Bird of Paradise! disclaim 5
The daring thought, forget the name;
This the Sun’s Bird, whom Glendoveers might own
As no unworthy Partner in their flight
Through seas of ether, where the ruffling sway
Of nether air’s rude billows is unknown; 10
Whom Sylphs, if e’er for casual pastime they
Through India’s spicy regions wing their way,
Might bow to as their Lord. What character,
O sovereign Nature! I appeal to thee,
Of all thy feathered progeny 15
Is so unearthly, and what shape so fair?
So richly decked in variegated down,
Green, sable, shining yellow, shadowy brown,
Tints softly with each other blended,
Hues doubtfully begun and ended; 20
Or intershooting, and to sight
Lost and recovered, as the rays of light
Glance on the conscious plumes touched here and there?
Full surely, when with such proud gifts of life
Began the pencil’s strife, 25
O’erweening Art was caught as in a snare.
A sense of seemingly presumptuous wrong
Gave the first impulse to the Poet’s song;
But, of his scorn repenting soon, he drew
A juster judgment from a calmer view; 30
And, with a spirit freed from discontent,
Thankfully took an effort that was meant
Not with God’s bounty, Nature’s love, to vie,
Or made with hope to please that inward eye
Which ever strives in vain itself to satisfy, 35
But to recal the truth by some faint trace
Of power ethereal and celestial grace,
That in the living Creature find on earth a place.
TO THE CLOUDS[241]
Published 1842
[These verses were suggested while I was walking on the foot-road between Rydal Mount and Grasmere. The clouds were driving over the top of Nab-Scar across the vale: they set my thoughts a-going, and the rest followed almost immediately.—I.F.]
First published (1842) in “Poems chiefly of Early and Late Years,” afterwards included in the “Poems of the Imagination.”—Ed.
Army of Clouds! ye wingèd Host in troops
Ascending from behind the motionless brow
Of that tall rock,[242] as from a hidden world,
O whither with[243] such eagerness of speed?
What seek ye, or what shun ye? of the gale[244] 5
Companions, fear ye to be left behind,
Or racing o’er[245] your blue ethereal field
Contend ye with each other? of the sea
Children, thus post ye over vale and height[246]
To sink upon your mother’s lap—and rest?[247] 10
Or were ye rightlier hailed, when first mine eyes
Beheld in your impetuous march the likeness
Of a wide army pressing on to meet
Or overtake some unknown enemy?—
But your smooth motions suit a peaceful aim; 15
And Fancy, not less aptly pleased, compares
Your squadrons to an endless flight of birds
Aerial, upon due migration bound
To milder climes; or rather do ye urge
In caravan your hasty pilgrimage 20
To pause at last on more aspiring heights
Than these,[248] and utter your devotion there
With thunderous voice? Or are ye jubilant,
And would ye, tracking your proud lord the Sun,
Be present at his setting; or the pomp 25
Of Persian mornings would ye fill, and stand
Poising your splendours high above the heads
Of worshippers kneeling to their up-risen God?
Whence, whence, ye Clouds! this eagerness of speed?
Speak, silent creatures.—They are gone, are fled, 30
Buried together in yon gloomy mass
That loads the middle heaven; and clear and bright
And vacant doth the region which they thronged
Appear; a calm descent of sky conducting
Down to the unapproachable abyss, 35
Down to that hidden gulf from which they rose
To vanish—fleet as days and months and years,
Fleet as the generations of mankind,
Power, glory, empire, as the world itself,
The lingering world, when time hath ceased to be. 40
But the winds roar, shaking the rooted trees,
And see! a bright precursor to a train
Perchance as numerous, overpeers the rock
That sullenly refuses to partake
Of the wild impulse. From a fount of life 45
Invisible, the long procession moves
Luminous or gloomy, welcome to the vale
Which they are entering, welcome to mine eye
That sees them, to my soul that owns in them,
And in the bosom of the firmament 50
O’er which they move, wherein they are contained,
A type of her capacious self and all
Her restless progeny.
A humble walk
Here is my body doomed to tread, this path,
A little hoary line and faintly traced,[249] 55
Work, shall we call it, of the shepherd’s foot
Or of his flock?—joint vestige of them both.
I pace it unrepining, for my thoughts
Admit no bondage and my words have wings.
Where is the Orphean lyre, or Druid harp, 60
To accompany the verse? The mountain blast
Shall be our hand of music; he shall sweep
The rocks, and quivering trees, and billowy lake,
And search the fibres of the caves, and they
Shall answer, for our song is of the Clouds 65
And the wind loves them; and the gentle gales—
Which by their aid re-clothe the naked lawn
With annual verdure, and revive the woods,
And moisten the parched lips of thirsty flowers—
Love them; and every idle breeze of air 70
Bends to the favourite burthen. Moon and stars
Keep their most solemn vigils when the Clouds
Watch also, shifting peaceably their place
Like bands of ministering Spirits, or when they lie,
As if some Protean art the change had wrought, 75
In listless quiet o’er the ethereal deep
Scattered, a Cyclades[250] of various shapes
And all degrees of beauty. O ye Lightnings!
Ye are their perilous offspring;[251] and the Sun—
Source inexhaustible of life and joy, 80
And type of man’s far-darting reason, therefore
In old time worshipped as the god of verse,[252]
A blazing intellectual deity—
Loves his own glory in their looks, and showers
Upon that unsubstantial brotherhood 85
Visions with all but beatific light
Enriched—too transient were they not renewed
From age to age, and did not, while we gaze
In silent rapture, credulous desire
Nourish the hope that memory lacks not power 90
To keep the treasure unimpaired. Vain thought!
Yet why repine, created as we are
For joy and rest, albeit to find them only
Lodged in the bosom of eternal things?
[241] The title in the edition of 1842 was Address to the Clouds.—Ed.
[242] See the Fenwick note and compare Dorothy Wordsworth’s Grasmere Journal, 31st January 1802.—Ed.
[243] 1842.
… in …
MS.
[244] 1842.
… wind
MS.
[245] 1842.
… on …
MS.
[246] 1842.
… over dale and mountain height
MS.
[247] 1842.
… mother’s joyous lap?
MS.
[248] 1842.
Or come ye as I hailed you first, a Flight
Aerial, on a due migration bound,
Embodied travellers not blindly led
To milder climes; or rather do ye urge
Your Caravan, your hasty pilgrimage
With hope to pause at last upon the top
Of some remoter mountains more beloved
Than these, …
MS.
[249] Compare, in the “Poems on the Naming of Places” (1805), the lines beginning, “When, to the attractions of the busy world,” l. 48—
A hoary pathway traced between the trees.
Ed.
[250] The fifty-three small islands in the Ægean surrounding Delos, as with a circle (κύκλος)—hence the name.—Ed.
[251] Compare Coleridge’s Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni—
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ed.
[252] Sol = Phoebus = Apollo.—Ed.