Which, if with truth it correspond, and sink
Or rise as venerable Nature leads,

The high and tender Muses shall accept
With gracious smile, deliberately pleased,
And listening Time reward with sacred praise.

Among the hills of Athol he was born;
Where,1 on a small hereditary farm,
An unproductive slip of rugged ground,

His Parents, with their numerous offspring, dwelt ; 2
A virtuous household, though exceeding poor!
Pure livers were they all, austere and grave,
And fearing God; * the very children taught
Stern self-respect, a reverence for God's word,
And an habitual piety, maintained

With strictness scarcely known on English ground.

From his sixth year, the Boy of whom I speak, In summer, tended cattle on the hills;

But, through the inclement and the perilous days.

1 1827. There,

2 1827.

His Father dwelt; and died in poverty;
While He, whose lowly fortune I retrace,
The youngest of three sons, was yet a babe,
A little One-unconscious of their loss.
But ere he had outgrown his infant days
His widowed Mother, for a second Mate,
Espoused the Teacher of the Village School;
Who on her offspring zealously bestowed
Needful instruction; not alone in arts
Which to his humble duties appertained,
But in the lore of right and wrong, the rule
Of human kindness, in the peaceful ways
Of honesty, and holiness severe.

1814.

1814.

115

120

* Compare Resolution and Independence, stanza xiv. (vol. ii. p. 319)— Such as grave Livers do in Scotland use,

Religious men, who give to God and man their dues.

ED.

Of long-continuing winter, he repaired,
Equipped with satchel, to a school, that stood
Sole building on a mountain's dreary edge,
Remote from view 2 of city spire, or sound

Of minster clock! From that bleak tenement
He, many an evening, to his distant home
In solitude returning, saw the hills

Grow larger in the darkness; all alone
Beheld the stars come out above his head,

1

And travelled through the wood, with no one near
To whom he might confess the things he saw.

So the foundations of his mind were laid.
In such communion, not from terror free,*
While yet a child, and long before his time,
Had he3 perceived the presence and the power
Of greatness; and deep feelings had impressed
So vividly great objects that they lay
Upon his mind like substances, whose presence
Perplexed the bodily sense. He had received 4

1 1827.

To his Step-father's School, that stood alone,

125

131

135

1814.

1814.

1814.

had impressed

Great objects on his mind, with portraiture

And colour so distinct, that on his mind
They lay like substances, and almost seemed
To haunt the bodily sense. He had received

1814.

* Compare Byron, Childe Harold, canto iv. stanza clxxxiv. ——

From a boy

I wantoned with thy breakers-they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror,-'twas a pleasing fear.

VOL. V

ED

D

1 A precious gift; for, as he grew in years,

With these impressions would he still compare

All his remembrances, thoughts, shapes, and forms;
And, being still unsatisfied with aught

Of dimmer character, he thence attained
An active power to fasten images

Upon his brain; and on their pictured lines
Intensely brooded, even till they acquired
The liveliness of dreams.*
* Nor did he fail,
While yet a child, with a child's eagerness
Incessantly to turn his ear and eye

On all things which the moving seasons brought
To feed such appetite-nor this alone
Appeased his yearning :-in the after-day
Of boyhood, many an hour in caves forlorn,
And 'mid the hollow depths of naked crags
He sate, and even in their fixed lineaments,
Or from the power of a peculiar eye,
Or by creative feeling overborne,
Or by predominance of thought oppressed,
Even in their fixed and steady lineaments
He traced an ebbing and a flowing mind,
Expression ever varying!

Thus informed,

He had small need of books; for many a tale

* Compare Ode, Intimations of Immortality, stanza ix. (vol. viii.)—

those obstinate questionings

Of sense and outward things, etc.

and The Prelude, book ii. 1. 350 (vol. iii. p. 164)

140

145

150

155

what I saw

ED.

Appeared like something in myself, a dream,
A prospect in the mind."

160

Traditionary, round the mountains hung,
And many a legend, peopling the dark woods,
Nourished Imagination in her growth,
And gave the Mind that apprehensive power
By which she is made quick to recognise
The moral properties and scope of things.
But eagerly he read, and read again,
Whate'er the minister's old shelf supplied;
The life and death of martyrs, who sustained,
With will inflexible, those fearful pangs
Triumphantly displayed in records left
Of persecution, and the Covenant-times

Whose echo rings through Scotland to this hour!
And there, by lucky hap, had been preserved

A straggling volume, torn and incomplete,

That left half-told* the preternatural tale,
Romance of giants, chronicle of fiends,
Profuse in garniture of wooden cuts

Strange and uncouth; dire faces, figures dire,
Sharp-kneed, sharp elbowed, and lean-ankled too,

With long and ghostly shanks-forms which once seen
Could never be forgotten!

In his heart,
Where Fear sate thus, a cherished visitant,
Was wanting yet the pure delight of love
By sound diffused, or by the breathing air,†
Or by the silent looks of happy things,

185

* Compare Milton, Il Penseroso, l. 109—

Or call up him that left half told
The story of Cambuscan bøld.

† Compare Lines Written in Early Spring (vol. i. p. 269)

And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

↑ Compare The Prelude, book ii. l. 411 (vol. iii. p. 166)—
Communing

With every form of creature, as it looked
Towards the Uncreated with a countenance
Of adoration, with an eye of love.

ED.

ED.

ED.

Or flowing from the universal face

Of earth and sky. But he had felt the power
Of Nature, and already was prepared,

By his intense conceptions, to receive
Deeply the lesson deep of love which he,
Whom Nature, by whatever means, has taught
To feel intensely, cannot but receive.

*

190

195

Such was the Boy—but for the growing Youth What soul was his, when, from the naked top Of some bold headland, he beheld the sun 1 Rise up, and bathe the world in light! He lookedOcean and earth, the solid frame of earth And ocean's liquid mass, in gladness lay Beneath him † :—Far and wide the clouds were touched, And in their silent faces could he read 2

Unutterable love.

Sound needed none,

201

205

1 1827.

From early childhood, even, as hath been said,
From his sixth year, he had been sent abroad
In summer to tend herds: such was his task
Thenceforward 'till the later day of youth.
O then what soul was his, when, on the tops
Of the high mountains, he beheld the sun

1814.

2 1845.

And ocean's liquid mass, beneath him lay

In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touch'd,
And in their silent faces did he read

could he read

1814.

1836.

* Compare book iv. ll. 111-14; also in Robert Browning's Old Pictures in Florence, stanza i.—

And washed by the morning water-gold,

Florence lay out on the mountain-side.

ED.

The sea is not visible from the hills of Athole, except from the summit of Ben y' Gloe, where it can be seen to the south-east in the clearest weather. Wordsworth did not care for local accuracy in this passage. It was quite unnecessary for his purpose. Compare his account of the morning walk near Hawkshead in The Prelude, and see the Appendix-note to book iv. 1. 338 (vol. iii. p. 389).—ED.