either of its elaborated versions, it is the most worthwhile long poem of the 19th
century (Byron’s Don Juan being the most entertaining). Wordsworth records his
mental and psychic growth with dogged integrity. Those who do not find the growth
of this poet’s mind as absorbing as he did should traverse the books dealing with
Cambridge,London, mountain-climbing and France to reach the great passage of
Book XII beginning ‘There are in our existence spots of time’, with its memory of
traumatic experiences endured. Wordsworth’s faith in humanity is less impressive
than the honesty with which he faces loss and his inability to explain it all.
Oh! mystery of Man, from what a depth
Proceed thy honours! I am lost, but see
In simple childhood something of the base
On which thy greatness stands; but this I feel,
That from thyself it comes, that thou must give,
Else neve r canst receive. The days gone by
Return upon me almost from the dawn
Of life: the hiding-places of Man’s power
Open; I would approach them, but they close.
I see by glimpses now; when age comes on
May scarcely see at all, and I would give,
While yet we may, as far as words can give,
Substance and hope to what I feel, enshrining,
Such is my hope, the spirit of the past
For future restoration: –He then adds baldly ‘Yet another of these memorials’, and recalls waiting to return
home from Hawkshead School for Christmas 1783. He climbs a hill to see by which
road the horses are coming for him and his brothers to ride home; but ‘ere we had
been ten days / Sojourners in my Father’s House, he died’. He returns to his
memory of the wait.
And afterwards, the wind and sleety rain
And all the business of the elements,
The single Sheep, and the one blasted tree,
And the bleak music of that old stone wall,THE ROMANTIC POETS 233William Wordsworth by Henry Inman, 1844.