The explanation of this anomaly lies, as is well known, in something new and individual in the way in which Wordsworth regarded Nature; something more or less discernible in most of his works, and redeeming7 even some of the slightest of them from insignificance8, while conferring on the more serious and sustained pieces an importance of a different order from that which attaches to even the most brilliant productions of his contemporaries. To define with exactness, however, what was this new element imported by our poet into man’s view of Nature is far from easy, and requires some brief consideration of the attitude in this respect of his predecessors9.
There is so much in the external world which is terrible or unfriendly to man, that the first impression made on him by Nature as a whole, even in temperate10 climates, is usually that of awfulness; his admiration being reserved for the fragments of her which he has utilized11 for his own purposes, or adorned12 with his own handiwork. When Homer tells us of a place
Where even a god might gaze, and stand apart,
And feel a wondering rapture13 at the heart,
it is of no prospect14 of sea or mountain that he is speaking, but of a garden where everything is planted in rows, and there is a never-ending succession of pears and figs15. These gentler aspects of Nature will have their minor16 deities17 to represent them; but the men, of whatever race they be, whose minds are most absorbed in the problems of man’s position and destiny will tend for the most part to some sterner and more overwhelming conception of the sum of things. “Lord, what is man that Thou art mindful of him?” is the cry of Hebrew piety18 as well as of modern science; and the “majestas cognita rerum,”—the recognized majesty19 of the universe—teaches Lucretius only the indifference20 of gods and the misery21 of men.
But in a well-known passage, in which Lucretius is honoured as he deserves, we find nevertheless a different view hinted, with an impressiveness which it had hardly acquired till then. We find Virgil implying that scientific knowledge of Nature may not be the only way of arriving at the truth about her; that her loveliness is also a revelation, and that the soul which is in unison22 with her is justified23 by its own peace. This is the very substance of The Poet’s Epitaph also; of the poem in which Wordsworth at the beginning of his career describes himself as he continued till its close,—the poet who “murmurs near the running brooks26 a music sweeter than their own,”—who scorns the man of science “who would peep and botanize upon his mother’s grave.”
The outward shows of sky and earth,
Of hill and valley, he has viewed;
And impulses of deeper birth
Have come to him in solitude27.
In common things that round us lie
Some random28 truths he can impart,—
The harvest of a quiet eye
That broods and sleeps on his own heart.
But he is weak, both man and boy,
Hath been an idler in the land;
Contented29 if he might enjoy
The things which others understand.
Like much else in the literature of imperial Rome, the passage in the second Georgic to which I have referred is in its essence more modern than the Middle Ages. Mediaeval Christianity involved a divorce from the nature around us, as well as from the nature within. With the rise of the modern spirit delight in the external world returns; and from Chaucer downwards31 through the whole course of English poetry are scattered32 indications of a mood which draws from visible things an intuition of things not seen. When Wither33, in words which Wordsworth has fondly quoted, says of his muse,—
By the murmur24 of a spring,
Or the least bough’s rustelling;
By a daisy whose leaves spread,
Shut when Titan goes to bed;
Or a shady bush or tree,—
She could more infuse in me
Than all Nature’s beauties can
In some other wiser man,—
he felt already, as Wordsworth after him, that Nature is no mere34 collection of phenomena35, but infuses into her least approaches some sense of her mysterious whole.
Passages like this, however, must not he too closely pressed. The mystic element in English literature has run for the most part into other channels; and when, after Pope’s reign36 of artificiality and convention, attention was redirected to the phenomena of Nature by Collins, Beattie, Thomson, Crabbe, Cowper, Burns, and Scott, it was in a spirit of admiring observation rather than of an intimate worship. Sometimes, as for the most part in Thomson, we have mere picturesqueness,—a reproduction of Nature for the mere pleasure of reproducing her,—a kind of stock-taking of her habitual37 effects. Or sometimes, as in Burns, we have a glowing spirit which looks on Nature with a side glance, and uses her as an accessory to the expression of human love and woe38. Cowper sometimes contemplated39 her as a whole, but only as affording a proof of the wisdom and goodness of a personal Creator.
To express what is characteristic in Wordsworth we must recur40 to a more generalized conception of the relations between the natural and the spiritual worlds. We must say with Plato—the lawgiver of all subsequent idealists—that the unknown realities around us, which the philosopher apprehends41 by the contemplation of abstract truth, become in various ways obscurely perceptible to men under the influence of a “divine madness,”—of an enthusiasm which is in fact inspiration. And further, giving, as he so often does, a half-fanciful expression to a substance of deep meaning,—Plato distinguishes four kinds of this enthusiasm. There is the prophet’s glow of revelation; and the prevailing43 prayer which averts44 the wrath45 of heaven; and that philosophy which enters, so to say, unawares into the poet through his art, and into the lover through his love. Each of these stimuli46 may so exalt47 the inward faculties as to make a man ενθεο? κυι εκφρον,—“bereft of reason but filled with divinity,”—percipient of an intelligence other and larger than his own. To this list Wordsworth has made an important addition. He has shown by his example and writings that the contemplation of Nature may become a stimulus48 as inspiring as these; may enable us “to see into the life of things”—as far, perhaps, as beatific49 vision or prophetic rapture can attain50. Assertions so impalpable as these must justify51 themselves by subjective52 evidence. He who claims to give a message must satisfy us that he has himself received it; and, inasmuch as transcendent things are in themselves inexpressible, he must convey to us in hints and figures the conviction which we need. Prayer may bring the spiritual world near to us; but when the eyes of the kneeling Dominic seem to say “To son venuto a questo,” their look must persuade us that the life of worship has indeed attained53 the reward of vision. Art, too, may be inspired; but the artist, in whatever field he works, must have “such a mastery of his mystery” that the fabric54 of his imagination stands visible in its own light before our eyes,—
Seeing it is built
Of music; therefore never built at all,
And, therefore, built for ever.
Love may open heaven; but when the lover would invite us “thither, where are the eyes of Beatrice,” he must make us feel that his individual passion is indeed part and parcel of that love “which moves the sun and the other stars.”
And so also with Wordsworth. Unless the words which describe the intense and sympathetic gaze with which he contemplates55 Nature convince us of the reality of “the light which never was on sea or land,”—of the “Presence which disturbs him with the joy of elevated thoughts,”—of the authentic56 vision of those hours
When the light of sense
Goes out, but with a flash that has revealed
The invisible world;—
unless his tone awakes a responsive conviction in ourselves, there is no argument by which he can prove to us that he is offering a new insight to mankind. Yet, on the other hand, it need not be unreasonable57 to see in his message something more than a mere individual fancy. It seems, at least, to be closely correlated with those other messages of which we have spoken,—those other cases where some original element of our nature is capable of being regarded as an inlet of mystic truth. For in each of these complex aspects of religion we see, perhaps, the modification58 of a primeval instinct. There is a point of view from which Revelation seems to be but transfigured Sorcery, and Love transfigured Appetite, and Philosophy man’s ordered Wonder, and Prayer his softening59 Fear. And similarly in the natural religion of Wordsworth we may discern the modified outcome of other human impulses hardly less universal—of those instincts which led our forefathers60 to people earth and air with deities, or to vivify the whole universe with a single soul. In this view the achievement of Wordsworth was of a kind which most of the moral leaders of the race have in some way or other performed. It was that he turned a theology back again into a religion: that he revived in a higher and purer form those primitive61 elements of reverence62 for Nature’s powers which had diffused63 themselves into speculation64, or crystallized into mythology65; that for a system of beliefs about Nature, which paganism had allowed to become grotesque,— of rites66 which had become unmeaning,—he substituted an admiration for Nature so constant, an understanding of her so subtle, a sympathy so profound, that they became a veritable worship. Such worship, I repeat, is not what we commonly imply either by paganism or by pantheism. For in pagan countries, though the gods may have originally represented natural forces, yet the conception of them soon becomes anthropomorphic, and they are reverenced68 as transcendent men; and, on the other hand, pantheism is generally characterized by an indifference to things in the concrete, to Nature in detail; so that the Whole, or Universe, with which the Stoics69 (for instance) sought to be in harmony, was approached not by contemplating70 external objects, but rather by ignoring them.
Yet here I would be understood to speak only in the most general manner. So congruous in all ages are the aspirations71 and the hopes of men that it would be rash indeed to attempt to assign the moment when any spiritual truth rises for the first time on human consciousness. But thus much, I think, may be fairly said, that the maxims72 of Wordsworth’s form of natural religion were uttered before Wordsworth only in the sense in which the maxims of Christianity were uttered before Christ. To compare small things with great—or rather, to compare great things with things vastly greater—the essential spirit of the Lines near Tintern Abbey was for practical purposes as new to mankind as the essential spirit of the Sermon on the Mount. Not the isolated73 expression of moral ideas, but their fusion74 into a whole in one memorable75 personality, is that which connects them for ever with a single name. Therefore it is that Wordsworth is venerated76; because to so many men—indifferent, it may be, to literary or poetical77 effects, as such—he has shown by the subtle intensity79 of his own emotion how the contemplation of Nature can be made a revealing agency, like Love or Prayer,—an opening, if indeed there be any opening, into the transcendent world.
The prophet with such a message as this will, of course, appeal for the most part to the experience of exceptional moments—those moments when “we see into the life of things;” when the face of Nature sends to us “gleams like the flashing of a shield;”—hours such as those of the Solitary80, who, gazing on the lovely distant scene,
Would gaze till it became
Far lovelier, and his heart could not sustain
The beauty, still more beauteous.
But the idealist, of whatever school, is seldom content to base his appeal to us upon these scattered intuitions alone. There is a whole epoch81 of our existence whose memories, differing, indeed, immensely in vividness and importance in the minds of different men, are yet sufficiently82 common to all men to form a favourite basis for philosophical83 argument. “The child is father of the man;” and through the recollection and observation of early childhood we may hope to trace our ancestry—in heaven above or on the earth beneath— in its most significant manifestation84.
It is to the workings of the mind of the child that the philosopher appeals who wishes to prove that knowledge is recollection, and that our recognition of geometrical truths—so prompt as to appear instinctive—depends on our having been actually familiar with them in an earlier world. The Christian30 mystic invokes85 with equal confidence his own memories of a state which seemed as yet to know no sin:—
Happy those early days, when I
Shined in my angel infancy86!
Before I understood this place
Appointed for my second race,
Or taught my soul to fancy aught
But a white, celestial87 thought;
When yet I had not walked above
A mile or two from my first Love,
And looking back at that short space
Could see a glimpse of His bright face;
When on some gilded88 cloud or flower
My gazing soul would dwell an hour,
And in those weaker glories spy
Some shadows of eternity89;
Before I taught my tongue to wound
My conscience with a sinful sound,
Or had the black art to dispense90
A several sin to every sense,
But felt through all this fleshly dress
Bright shoots of everlastingness91.
And Wordsworth, whose recollections were exceptionally vivid, and whose introspection was exceptionally penetrating92, has drawn93 from his own childish memories philosophical lessons which are hard to disentangle in a logical statement, but which will roughly admit of being classed under two heads. For firstly, he has shown an unusual delicacy94 of analysis in eliciting95 the “firstborn affinities96 that fit our new existence to existing things;”—in tracing the first impact of impressions which are destined97 to give the mind its earliest ply2, or even, in unreflecting natures, to determine the permanent modes of thought. And, secondly98, from the halo of pure and vivid emotions with which our childish years are surrounded, and the close connexion of this emotion with external nature, which it glorifies99 and transforms, he infers that the soul has enjoyed elsewhere an existence superior to that of earth, but an existence of which external nature retains for a time the power of reminding her.
The first of these lines of thought may be illustrated101 by a passage in the Prelude102, in which the boy’s mind is represented as passing through precisely103 the train of emotion which we may imagine to be at the root of the theology of many barbarous peoples. He is rowing at night alone on Esthwaite Lake, his eyes fixed104 upon a ridge105 of crags, above which nothing is visible:—
I dipped my oars106 into the silent lake,
And as I rose upon the stroke my boat
Went heaving through the water like a swan;—
When, from behind that craggy steep till then
The horizon’s bound, a huge peak, black and huge,
As if with voluntary power instinct
Upreared its head. I struck and struck again;
And, growing still in stature107, the grim shape
Towered up between me and the stars, and still,
For so it seemed, with purpose of its own,
And measured motion like a living thing,
Strode after me. With trembling oars I turned,
And through the silent water stole my way
Back to the covert108 of the willow-tree;
There in her mooring-place I left my bark,
And through the meadows homeward went, in grave
And serious mood. But after I had seen
That spectacle, for many days, my brain
Worked with a dim and undetermined sense
Of unknown modes of being; o’er my thoughts
There hung a darkness—call it solitude,
Or blank desertion. No familiar shapes
Remained, no pleasant images of trees,
Of sea, or sky, no colours of green fields;
But huge and mighty109 forms, that do not live
Like living men, moved slowly thro’ the mind
By day, and were a trouble to my dreams.
In the controversy110 as to the origin of the worship of inanimate objects, or of the powers of Nature, this passage might fairly be cited as an example of the manner in which those objects, or those powers, can impress the mind with that awe which is the foundation of savage111 creeds112, while yet they are not identified with any human intelligence, such as the spirits of ancestors or the like, nor even supposed to operate according to any human, analogy.
Up to this point Wordsworth’s reminiscences may seem simply to illustrate100 the conclusions which science reaches by other roads. But he is not content with merely recording114 and analyzing115 his childish impressions; he implies, or even asserts, that these “fancies from afar are brought”—that the child’s view of the world reveals to him truths which the man with difficulty retains or recovers. This is not the usual teaching of science, yet it would be hard to assert that it is absolutely impossible. The child’s instincts may well be supposed to partake in larger measure of the general instincts of the race, in smaller measure of the special instincts of his own country and century, than is the case with the man. Now the feelings and beliefs of each successive century will probably be, on the whole, superior to those of any previous century. But this is not universally true; the teaching of each generation does not thus sum up the results of the whole past. And thus the child, to whom in a certain sense the past of humanity is present,—who is living through the whole life of the race in little, before he lives the life of his century in large,—may possibly dimly apprehend42 something more of truth in certain directions than is visible to the adults around him.
But, thus qualified116, the intuitions of infancy might seem scarcely worth insisting on. And Wordsworth, as is well known, has followed Plato in advancing for the child a much bolder claim. The child’s soul, in this view, has existed before it entered the body—has existed in a world superior to ours, but connected, by the immanence of the same pervading117 Spirit, with the material universe before our eyes. The child begins by feeling this material world strange to him. But he sees in it, as it were, what he has been accustomed to see; he discerns in it its kinship with the spiritual world which he dimly remembers; it is to him “an unsubstantial fairy place”—a scene at once brighter and more unreal than it will appear in his eyes when he has become acclimatized to earth. And even when this freshness of insight has passed away, it occasionally happens that sights or sounds of unusual beauty or carrying deep associations—a rainbow, a cuckoo’s cry, a sunset of extraordinary splendour—will renew for a while this sense of vision and nearness to the spiritual world—a sense which never loses its reality, though with advancing years its presence grows briefer and more rare.
Such, then, in prosaic118 statement is the most characteristic message of Wordsworth. And it is to be noted119 that though Wordsworth at times presents it as a coherent theory, yet it is not necessarily of the nature of a theory, nor need be accepted or rejected as a whole; but is rather an inlet of illumining emotion in which different minds can share in the measure of their capacities or their need. There are some to whom childhood brought no strange vision of brightness, but who can feel their communion with the Divinity in Nature growing with the growth of their souls. There are others who might be unwilling120 to acknowledge any spiritual or transcendent source for the elevating joy which the contemplation of Nature can give, but who feel nevertheless that to that joy Wordsworth has been their most effective guide. A striking illustration of this fact may be drawn, from the passage in which John Stuart Mill, a philosopher of a very different school, has recorded the influence exercised over him by Wordsworth’s poems; read in a season of dejection, when there seemed to be no real and substantive121 joy in life, nothing but the excitement of the struggle with the hardships and injustices122 of human fates.
“What made Wordsworth’s poems a medicine for my state of
mind,” he says in his Autobiography123, “was that they expressed,
not mere outward beauty, but states of feeling, and of thought
coloured by feeling, under the excitement of beauty. They
seemed to be the very culture of the feelings which I was in
quest of. In them I seemed to draw from a source of inward
joy, of sympathetic and imaginative pleasure, which could be
shared in by all human beings, which had no connexion
with struggle or imperfection, but would be made richer by
every improvement in the physical or social condition of
mankind. From them I seemed to learn what would be the
perennial124 sources of happiness, when all the greater evils of
life shall have been removed. And I felt myself at once better
and happier as I came under their influence.”
Words like these, proceeding125 from a mind so different from the poet’s own, form perhaps as satisfactory a testimony126 to the value of his work as any writer can obtain. For they imply that Wordsworth has succeeded in giving his own impress to emotions which may become common to all; that he has produced a body of thought which is felt to be both distinctive127 and coherent, while yet it enlarges the reader’s capacities instead of making demands upon his credence128. Whether there be theories, they shall pass; whether there be systems, they shall fail; the true epoch-maker in the history of the human soul is the man who educes129 from this bewildering universe a new and elevating joy.
I have alluded130 above to some of the passages, most of them familiar enough, in which Wordsworth’s sense of the mystic relation between the world without us and the world within—the correspondence between the seen and the unseen—is expressed in its most general terms. But it is evident that such a conviction as this, if it contain any truth, cannot be barren of consequences on any level of thought. The communion with Nature which is capable of being at times sublimed131 to an incommunicable ecstasy132 must be capable also of explaining Nature to us so far as she can be explained; there must be axiomata media of natural religion; there must be something in the nature of poetic78 truths, standing67 midway between mystic intuition and delicate observation.
How rich Wordsworth is in these poetic truths—how illumining is the gaze which he turns on the commonest phenomena—how subtly and variously he shows us the soul’s innate133 perceptions or inherited memories as it were cooperating with Nature and “half creating” the voice with which she speaks—all this can be learnt by attentive134 study alone. Only a few scattered samples can be given here; and I will begin with one on whose significance the poet has himself dwelt. This is the poem called The Leech–Gatherer, afterwards more formally named Resolution and Independence.
“I will explain to you,” says Wordsworth, “in prose, my feelings in writing that poem, I describe myself as having been exalted135 to the highest pitch of delight by the joyousness136 and beauty of Nature; and then as depressed137, even in the midst of those beautiful objects, to the lowest dejection and despair. A young poet in the midst of the happiness of Nature is described as overwhelmed by the thoughts of the miserable138 reverses which have befallen the happiest of all men, viz. poets. I think of this till I am so deeply impressed with it, that I consider the manner in which I am rescued from my dejection and despair almost as an interposition of Providence139. A person reading the poem with feelings like mine will have been awed140 and controlled, expecting something spiritual or supernatural. What is brought forward? A lonely place, ‘a pond, by which an old man was, far from all house or home:’ not stood, nor sat, but was—the figure presented in the most naked simplicity141 possible. The feeling of spirituality or supernaturalness is again referred to as being strong in my mind in this passage. How came he here? thought I, or what can he be doing? I then describe him, whether ill or well is not for me to judge with perfect confidence; but this I can confidently affirm, that though I believe God has given me a strong imagination, I cannot conceive a figure more impressive than that of an old man like this, the survivor142 of a wife and ten children, travelling alone among the mountains and all lonely places, carrying with him his own fortitude143, and the necessities which an unjust state of society has laid upon him. You speak of his speech as tedious. Everything is tedious when one does not read with the feelings of the author. The Thorn is tedious to hundreds; and so is The Idiot Boy to hundreds. It is in the character of the old man to tell his story, which an impatient reader must feel tedious. But, good heavens! Such a figure, in such a place; a pious144, self-respecting, miserably145 infirm and pleased old man, telling such a tale!”
The naive146 earnestness of this passage suggests to us how constantly recurrent in Wordsworth’s mind were the two trains of ideas which form the substance of the poem; the interaction, namely, (if so it may be termed,) of the moods of Nature with the moods of the human mind; and the dignity and interest of man as man, depicted147 with no complex background of social or political life, but set amid the primary affections and sorrows, and the wild aspects of the external world.
Among the pictures which Wordsworth has left us of the influence of Nature on human character, Peter Bell may be taken as marking one end, and the poems on Lucy the other end of the scale. Peter Bell lives in the face of Nature untouched alike by her terror and her charm; Lucy’s whole being is moulded by Nature’s self; she is responsive to sun and shadow, to silence and to sound, and melts almost into an impersonation of a Cumbrian valley’s peace. Between these two extremes how many are the possible shades of feeling! In Ruth, for instance, the point impressed upon us is that Nature’s influence is only salutary so long as she is herself, so to say, in keeping with man; that when her operations reach that degree of habitual energy and splendour at which our love for her passes into fascination148 and our admiration into bewilderment, then the fierce and irregular stimulus consorts149 no longer with the growth of a temperate virtue150.
The wind, the tempest roaring high,
The tumult151 of a tropic sky,
Might well be dangerous food
For him, a youth to whom was given
So much of earth, so much of heaven,
And such impetuous blood.
And a contrasting touch recalls the healing power of those gentle and familiar presences which came to Ruth in her stormy madness with visitations of momentary152 calm.
Yet sometimes milder hours she knew,
Nor wanted sun, nor rain, nor dew,
Nor pastimes of the May;
They all were with her in her cell;
And a wild brook25 with cheerful knell153
Did o’er the pebbles154 play.
I will give one other instance of this subtle method of dealing155 with the contrasts in Nature. It is from the poem entitled “Lines left upon a Seat in a Yew–Tree which stands near the Lake of Esthwaite, on a desolate156 part of the Shore, commanding a beautiful Prospect.” This seat was once the haunt of a lonely, a disappointed, an embittered157 man.
Stranger! These gloomy boughs158
Had charms for him: and here he loved to sit,
His only visitants a straggling sheep,
The stone-chat, or the glancing sand-piper;
And on these barren rocks, with fern and heath
And juniper and thistle sprinkled o’er,
Fixing his downcast eye, he many an hour
A morbid159 pleasure nourished, tracing here
An emblem160 of his own unfruitful life:
And, lifting up his head, he then would gaze
On the more distant scene,—how lovely ’tis
Thou seest,—and he would gaze till it became
Far lovelier, and his heart could not sustain
The beauty, still more beauteous! Nor, that time,
When Nature had subdued161 him to herself,
Would he forget those beings, to whose minds,
Warm from the labours of benevolence162,
The world, and human life, appeared a scene
Of kindred loveliness; then he would sigh
With mournful joy, to think that others felt
What he must never feel; and so, lost Man!
On visionary views would fancy feed
Till his eyes streamed with tears.
This is one of the passages which the lover of Wordsworth, quotes, perhaps, with some apprehension163; not knowing how far it carries into the hearts of others its affecting power; how vividly164 it calls up before them that mood of desolate loneliness when the whole vision of human love and joy hangs like a mirage165 in the air, and only when it seems irrecoverably distant seems also intolerably dear. But, however this particular passage may impress the reader, it is not hard to illustrate by abundant references the potent166 originality167 of Wordsworth’s outlook on the external world.
There was indeed no aspect of Nature, however often depicted, in which his seeing eye could not discern some unnoted quality; there was no mood to which nature gave birth in the mind of man from which his meditation168 could not disengage some element which threw light on our inner being. How often has the approach of evening been described! And how mysterious is its solemnizing power! Yet it was reserved for Wordsworth in his sonnet169 “Hail, Twilight170, sovereign of one peaceful hour,” to draw out a characteristic of that grey waning171 light which half explains to us its sombre and pervading charm. “Day’s mutable distinctions” pass away; all in the landscape that suggests our own age or our own handiwork is gone; we look on the sight seen by our remote ancestors, and the visible present is generalized into an immeasureable past.
The sonnet on the Duddon beginning “What aspect bore the Man who roved or fled First of his tribe to this dark dell,” carries back the mind along the same track, with the added thought of Nature’s permanent gentleness amid the “hideous usages” of primeval man,— through all which the stream’s voice was innocent, and its flow benign172. “A weight of awe not easy to be borne” fell on the poet, also, as he looked on the earliest memorials which these remote ancestors have left us. The Sonnet on a Stone Circle which opens with these words is conceived in a strain of emotion never more needed than now,— when Abury itself owes its preservation173 to the munificence174 of a private individual,—when stone-circle or round-tower, camp or dolmen, are destroyed to save a few shillings, and occupation-roads are mended with the immemorial altars of an unknown God. “Speak, Giant-mother! Tell it to the Morn!”—how strongly does the heart reecho the solemn invocation which calls on those abiding175 witnesses to speak once of what they knew long ago!
The mention of these ancient worships may lead us to ask in what manner Wordsworth was affected176 “by the Nature-deities of Greece and Rome”—impersonations which have preserved through so many ages so strange a charm. And space must be found here for the characteristic sonnet in which the baseness and materialism177 of modern life drives him back on whatsoever178 of illumination and reality lay in that young ideal.
The world is too much with us; late and soon
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid179 boon180!
The Sea that bares her bosom181 to the moon;
The Winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything we are out of tune182;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed113 outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea:
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
Wordsworth’s own imagination idealized Nature in a different way. The sonnet “Brook! Whose society the poet seeks” places him among the men whose Nature-deities have not yet become anthropomorphic— men to whom “unknown modes of being” may seem more lovely as well as more awful than the life we know. He would not give to his idealized brook “human cheeks, channels for tears,—no Naiad shouldst thou be,”—
It seems the Eternal Soul is clothed in thee
With purer robes than those of flesh and blood,
And hath bestowed183 on thee a better good;
Unwearied joy, and life without its cares.
And in the Sonnet on Calais Beach the sea is regarded in the same way, with a sympathy (if I may so say) which needs no help from an imaginary impersonation, but strikes back to a sense of kinship which seems antecedent to the origin of man.
It is a beauteous Evening, calm and free;
The holy time is quiet as a Nun184
Breathless with adoration185; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquillity186;
The gentleness of heaven is on the Sea:
Listen! The mighty Being is awake,
And doth with his eternal motion make
A sound like thunder—everlastingly.
A comparison, made by Wordsworth himself, of his own method of observing Nature with Scott’s expresses in less mystical language something of what I am endeavouring to say.
“He expatiated187 much to me one day,” says Mr. Aubrey de
Vere, “as we walked among the hills above Grasmere, on the
mode in which Nature had been described by one of the most
justly popular of England’s modern poets—one for whom he
preserved a high and affectionate respect. ‘He took pains,’
Wordsworth said; ‘he went out with his pencil and note-book,
and jotted188 down whatever struck him most—a river rippling189
over the sands, a ruined tower on a rock above it, a promontory190,
and a mountain-ash waving its red berries. He went home and
wove the whole together into a poetical description.’ After a
pause, Wordsworth resumed, with a flashing eye and impassioned
voice: ‘But Nature does not permit an inventory191 to be
made of her charms! He should have left his pencil and notebook
at home, fixed his eye as he walked with a reverent192 attention
on all that surrounded him, and taken all into a heart that
could understand and enjoy. Then, after several days had
passed by, he should have interrogated193 his memory as to the
scene. He would have discovered that while much of what he
had admired was preserved to him, much was also most wisely
obliterated194; that which remained—the picture surviving in his
mind—would have presented the ideal and essential truth of the
scene, and done so in a large part by discarding much which,
though in itself striking, was not characteristic. In every scene
many of the most brilliant details are but accidental; a true eye
for Nature does not note them, or at least does not dwell on
them.’”
How many a phrase of Wordsworth’s rises in the mind in illustration of this power! Phrases which embody195 in a single picture, or a single image,—it may be the vivid wildness of the flowery coppice, of—
Flaunting196 summer, when he throws
His soul into the briar-rose,—
or the melancholy197 stillness of the declining year,—
Where floats
O’er twilight fields the autumnal gossamer198;
or—as in the words which to the sensitive Charles Lamb seemed too terrible for art—the irresponsive blankness of the universe—
The broad open eye of the solitary sky—
beneath which mortal hearts must make what merriment they may.
Or take those typical stanzas199 in Peter Bell, which so long were accounted among Wordsworth’s leading absurdities200.
In vain through, every changeful year
Did Nature lead him as before;
A primrose201 by the river’s brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more.
In vain, through water, earth, and air,
The soul of happy sound was spread,
When Peter, on some April morn,
Beneath the broom or budding thorn.
Made the warm earth his lazy bed.
At noon, when by the forest’s edge
He lay beneath the branches high,
The soft blue sky did never melt
Into his heart,—he never felt
The witchery of the soft blue sky!
On a fair prospect some have looked
And felt, as I have heard them say,
As if the moving time had been
A thing as steadfast202 as the scene
On which they gazed themselves away.
In all these passages, it will be observed, the emotion is educed203 from Nature rather than added to her; she is treated as a mystic text to be deciphered, rather than as a stimulus to roving imagination. This latter mood, indeed, Wordsworth feels occasionally, as in the sonnet where the woodland sights become to him “like a dream of the whole world;” but it is checked by the recurring204 sense that “it is our business to idealize the real, and not to realize the ideal.” Absorbed in admiration of fantastic clouds of sunset, he feels for a moment ashamed to think that they are unrememberable—
They are of the sky,
And from our earthly memory fade away.
But soon he disclaims205 this regret, and reasserts the paramount206 interest of the things that we can grasp and love.
Grove207, isle208, with every shape of sky-built dome209,
Though clad In colours beautiful and pure,
Find in the heart of man no natural home;
The immortal210 Mind craves211 objects that endure:
These cleave212 to it; from these it cannot roam,
Nor they from it: their fellowship is secure.
From this temper of Wordsworth’s mind, it follows that there will be many moods in which we shall not retain him as our companion. Moods which are rebellious213, which beat at the bars of fate; moods of passion reckless in its vehemence214, and assuming the primacy of all other emotions through the intensity of its delight or pain; moods of mere imaginative phantasy, when we would fain shape from the well-worn materials of our thought some fabric at once beautiful and new; from all such phases of our inward being Wordsworth stands aloof215. His poem on the nightingale and the stockdove illustrates216 with half-conscious allegory the contrast between himself and certain other poets.
O Nightingale! Thou surely art
A creature of a fiery217 heart:—
These notes of thine—they pierce and pierce;
Tumultuous harmony and fierce!
Thou sing’st as if the God of wine
Had helped thee to a Valentine;
A song in mockery and despite
Of shades, and dews, and silent Night;
And steady bliss218, and all the loves
Now sleeping in their peaceful groves219.
I heard a Stock-dove sing or say
His homely220 tale, this very day;
His voice was buried among trees,
Yet to be come at by the breeze:
He did not cease; but cooed—and cooed,
And somewhat pensively221 he wooed.
He sang of love with quiet blending,
Slow to begin, and never ending;
Of serious faith and inward glee;
That was the Song—the Song for me!
“His voice was buried among trees,” says Wordsworth; “a metaphor222 expressing the love of seclusion223 by which this bird is marked; and characterizing its note as not partaking of the shrill224 and the piercing, and therefore more easily deadened by the intervening shade; yet a note so peculiar225, and withal so pleasing, that the breeze, gifted with that love of the sound which the poet feels, penetrates226 the shade in which it is entombed, and conveys it to the ear of the listener.”
Wordsworth’s poetry on the emotional side (as distinguished227 from its mystical or its patriotic228 aspects) could hardly be more exactly described than in the above sentence. For while there are few poems of his which could be read to a mixed audience with the certainty of producing an immediate229 impression; yet on the other hand all the best ones gain in an unusual degree by repeated study; and this Is especially the case with those in which, some touch of tenderness is enshrined in a scene of beauty, which it seems to interpret while it is itself exalted by it. Such a poem is Stepping Westward230, where the sense of sudden fellowship, and the quaint231 greeting beneath the glowing sky, seem to link man’s momentary wanderings with the cosmic spectacles of heaven. Such are the lines where all the wild romance of Highland232 scenery, the forlornness of the solitary vales, pours itself through the lips of the maiden233 singing at her work, “as if her song could have no ending,”—
Alone she cuts and binds234 the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! For the Vale profound
Is overflowing236 with the sound.
Such—and with how subtle a difference!—is the Fragment in which a “Spirit of noonday” wears on his face the silent joy of Nature in her own recesses237, undisturbed by beast, or bird, or man,—
Nor ever was a cloudless sky
So steady or so fair.
And such are the poems—We are Seven, The Pet Lamb, 6
6 The Pet Lamb is probably the only poem of Wordsworth’s which can be charged with having done moral injury, and that to a single individual alone. “Barbara Lewthwaite,” says Wordsworth, in 1843, “was not, in fact, the child whom I had seen and overheard as engaged in the poem. I chose the name for reasons implied in the above,” (i.e. an account of her remarkable238 beauty), “and will here add a caution against the use of names of living persons. Within a few months after the publication of this poem I was much, surprised, and more hurt, to find it in a child’s school-book, which, having been compiled by Lindley Murray, had come into use at Grasmere School, where Barbara was a pupil. And, alas239, I had the mortification240 of hearing that she was very vain of being thus distinguished; and in after-life she used to say that she remembered the incident, and what I said to her upon the occasion.”]
Louisa, The Two April Mornings—in which the beauty of rustic241 children melts, as it were, into Nature herself, and the—
Blooming girl whose hair was wet
With points of morning dew
becomes the impersonation of the season’s early joy. We may apply, indeed, to all these girls Wordsworth’s description of leverets playing on a lawn, and call them—
Separate creatures in their several gifts
Abounding242, but so fashioned that in all
That Nature prompts them to display, their looks,
Their starts of motion and their fits of rest,
An undistinguishable style appears
And character of gladness, as if Spring
Lodged243 in their innocent bosoms244, and the spirit
Of the rejoicing Morning were their own.
My limits forbid me to dwell longer on these points. The passages which I have been citing have been for the most part selected as illustrating245 the novelty and subtlety246 of Wordsworth’s view of Nature. But it will now be sufficiently clear how continually a strain of human interest is interwoven with the delight derived247 from impersonal248 things.
Long have I loved what I behold249,
The night that calms, the day that cheers:
The common growth of mother earth
Suffices me—her tears, her mirth,
Her humblest mirth and tears.
The poet of the Waggoner—who, himself a habitual water-drinker, has so glowingly described the glorification250 which the prospect of nature receives in a half-intoxicated brain—may justly claim that he can enter into all genuine pleasures, even of an order which he declines for himself. With anything that is false or artificial he cannot sympathize, nor with such faults as baseness, cruelty, rancour; which seem contrary to human nature itself; but in dealing with faults of mere weakness he is far less strait-laced than many less virtuous251 men.
He had, in fact, a reverence for human beings as such which enabled him to face even their frailties252 without alienation253; and there was something in his own happy exemption254 from such falls which touched him into regarding men less fortunate rather with pity than disdain255.
Because the unstained, the clear, the crystalline,
Have ever in them something of benign.
His comment on Barns’s Tam o’ Shanter will perhaps surprise some readers who are accustomed to think of him only in his didactic attitude.
“It is the privilege of poetic genius, he says, to catch, under certain restrictions256 of which perhaps at the time of its being exerted it is but dimly conscious, a spirit of pleasure wherever it can be found, in the walks of nature, and in the business of men. The poet, trusting to primary instincts, luxuriates among the felicities of love and wine, and is enraptured257 while he describes the fairer aspects of war, nor does he shrink from the company of the passion of love though immoderate—from convivial258 pleasures though intemperate—nor from the presence of war, though savage, and recognized as the handmaid of desolation. Frequently and admirably has Burns given way to these impulses of nature, both with references to himself and in describing the condition of others. Who, but some impenetrable dunce or narrow-minded puritan in works of art, ever read without delight the picture which he has drawn of the convivial exaltation of the rustic adventurer Tam o’ Shanter? The poet fears not to tell the reader in the outset that his hero was a desperate and sottish drunkard, whose excesses were as frequent as his opportunities. This reprobate259 sits down to his cups while the storm is roaring, and heaven and earth are in confusion; the night is driven on by song and tumultuous noise, laughter and jest thicken as the beverage260 improves upon the palate—conjugal fidelity261 archly bends to the service of general benevolence—selfishness is not absent, but wearing the mask of social cordiality; and while these various elements of humanity are blended into one proud and happy composition of elated spirits, the anger of the tempest without doors only heightens and sets off the enjoyment262 within. I pity him who cannot perceive that in all this, though there was no moral purpose, there is a moral effect.”
Kings may be blest, but Tarn263 was glorious,
O’er a’ the ills of life victorious264.
“What a lesson do these words convey of charitable indulgence for the vicious habits of the principal actor in the scene, and of those who resemble him! Men who to the rigidly265 virtuous are objects almost of loathing266, and whom therefore they cannot serve! The poet, penetrating the unsightly and disgusting surfaces of things, has unveiled with exquisite267 skill the finer ties of imagination and feeling, that often bind235 these beings to practices productive of so much unhappiness to themselves, and to those whom it is their duty to cherish; and, as far as he puts the reader into possession of this intelligent sympathy, he qualifies him for exercising a salutary influence over the minds of those who are thus deplorably enslaved.”
The reverence for man as man, the sympathy for him in his primary relations and his essential being, of which these comments on Tam o’ Shanter form so remarkable an example, is a habit of thought too ingrained in all Wordsworth’s works to call for specific illustration. The figures of Michael, of Matthew, of the Brothers, of the hero of the Excursion, and even of the Idiot Boy, suggest themselves at once in this connexion. But it should be noted in each case how free is the poet’s view from any idealization of the poorer classes as such, from the ascription of imaginary merits to an unknown populace which forms the staple268 of so much revolutionary eloquence269. These poems, while they form the most convincing rebuke270 to the exclusive pride of the rich and great, are also a stern and strenuous271 incentive272 to the obscure and lowly. They are pictures of the poor man’s life as it is,—pictures as free as Crabbe’s from the illusion of sentiment,—but in which the delight of mere observation (which in Crabbe predominates) is subordinated to an intense sympathy with all such capacities of nobleness and tenderness as are called out by the stress and pressure of penury273 or woe. They form for the folk of northern England (as the works of Burns and Scott for the Scottish folk) a gallery of figures that are modelled, as it were, both from without and from within; by one with experience so personal as to keep every sentence vividly accurate, and yet with an insight which could draw from that simple life lessons to itself unknown. We may almost venture to generalize our statement further, and to assert that no writer since Shakespeare has left us so true a picture of the British nation. In Milton, indeed, we have the characteristic English spirit at a whiter glow; but it is the spirit of the scholar only, or of the ruler, not of the peasant, the woman, or the child, Wordsworth gives us that spirit as it is diffused among shepherds and husbandmen,—as it exists in obscurity and at peace. And they who know what makes the strength of nations need wish nothing better than that the temper which he saw and honoured among the Cumbrian dales should be the temper of all England, now and for ever.
Our discussion of Wordsworth’s form of Natural Religion has led us back by no forced transition to the simple life which he described and shared. I return to the story of his later years,—if that be called a story which derives274 no interest from incident or passion, and dwells only on the slow broodings of a meditative275 soul.
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1
exponents
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| n.倡导者( exponent的名词复数 )；说明者；指数；能手 | |
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ply
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| v.(搬运工等)等候顾客，弯曲 | |
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graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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faculties
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| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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redeeming
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| 补偿的，弥补的 | |
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insignificance
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| n.不重要；无价值；无意义 | |
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predecessors
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| n.前任( predecessor的名词复数 )；前辈；（被取代的）原有事物；前身 | |
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temperate
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| adj.温和的，温带的，自我克制的，不过分的 | |
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utilized
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| v.利用，使用( utilize的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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adorned
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| [计]被修饰的 | |
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rapture
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| n.狂喜；全神贯注；着迷；v.使狂喜 | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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figs
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| figures 数字，图形，外形 | |
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minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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17
deities
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| n.神，女神( deity的名词复数 )；神祗；神灵；神明 | |
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piety
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| n.虔诚，虔敬 | |
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majesty
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| n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权 | |
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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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unison
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| n.步调一致，行动一致 | |
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justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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brook
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| n.小河，溪；v.忍受，容让 | |
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brooks
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| n.小溪( brook的名词复数 ) | |
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solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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random
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| adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动 | |
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contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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downwards
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| adj./adv.向下的（地），下行的（地） | |
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32
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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wither
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| vt.使凋谢，使衰退，(用眼神气势等)使畏缩；vi.枯萎，衰退，消亡 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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reign
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| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
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habitual
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| adj.习惯性的；通常的，惯常的 | |
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woe
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| n.悲哀，苦痛，不幸，困难；int.用来表达悲伤或惊慌 | |
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contemplated
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| adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
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recur
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| vi.复发，重现，再发生 | |
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apprehends
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| 逮捕，拘押( apprehend的第三人称单数 )； 理解 | |
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apprehend
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| vt.理解，领悟，逮捕，拘捕，忧虑 | |
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prevailing
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| adj.盛行的；占优势的；主要的 | |
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averts
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| 防止，避免( avert的第三人称单数 )； 转移 | |
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45
wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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stimuli
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| n.刺激（物） | |
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exalt
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| v.赞扬，歌颂，晋升，提升 | |
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stimulus
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| n.刺激，刺激物，促进因素，引起兴奋的事物 | |
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49
beatific
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| adj.快乐的，有福的 | |
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attain
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| vt.达到，获得，完成 | |
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justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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52
subjective
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| a.主观(上)的，个人的 | |
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attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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fabric
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| n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织 | |
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contemplates
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| 深思，细想，仔细考虑( contemplate的第三人称单数 )； 注视，凝视； 考虑接受（发生某事的可能性）； 深思熟虑，沉思，苦思冥想 | |
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authentic
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| a.真的，真正的；可靠的，可信的，有根据的 | |
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unreasonable
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| adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的 | |
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modification
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| n.修改，改进，缓和，减轻 | |
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softening
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| 变软，软化 | |
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forefathers
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| n.祖先，先人；祖先，祖宗( forefather的名词复数 )；列祖列宗；前人 | |
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primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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reverence
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| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
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diffused
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| 散布的，普及的，扩散的 | |
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speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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mythology
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| n.神话，神话学，神话集 | |
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rites
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| 仪式，典礼( rite的名词复数 ) | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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reverenced
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| v.尊敬，崇敬( reverence的过去式和过去分词 )；敬礼 | |
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stoics
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| 禁欲主义者，恬淡寡欲的人，不以苦乐为意的人( stoic的名词复数 ) | |
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contemplating
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| 深思，细想，仔细考虑( contemplate的现在分词 )； 注视，凝视； 考虑接受（发生某事的可能性）； 深思熟虑，沉思，苦思冥想 | |
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aspirations
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| 强烈的愿望( aspiration的名词复数 )； 志向； 发送气音； 发 h 音 | |
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maxims
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| n.格言，座右铭( maxim的名词复数 ) | |
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isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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74
fusion
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| n.溶化；熔解；熔化状态，熔和；熔接 | |
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75
memorable
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| adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的 | |
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76
venerated
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| 敬重（某人或某事物），崇敬( venerate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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77
poetical
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| adj.似诗人的；诗一般的；韵文的；富有诗意的 | |
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78
poetic
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| adj.富有诗意的，有诗人气质的，善于抒情的 | |
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79
intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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80
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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81
epoch
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| n.(新)时代；历元 | |
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82
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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83
philosophical
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| adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的 | |
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84
manifestation
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| n.表现形式；表明；现象 | |
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85
invokes
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| v.援引( invoke的第三人称单数 )；行使（权利等）；祈求救助；恳求 | |
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86
infancy
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| n.婴儿期；幼年期；初期 | |
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87
celestial
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| adj.天体的；天上的 | |
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88
gilded
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| a.镀金的，富有的 | |
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89
eternity
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| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
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90
dispense
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| vt.分配，分发；配(药)，发(药)；实施 | |
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91
everlastingness
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92
penetrating
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| adj.（声音）响亮的，尖锐的adj.（气味）刺激的adj.（思想）敏锐的，有洞察力的 | |
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93
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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94
delicacy
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| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
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95
eliciting
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| n. 诱发, 引出 动词elicit的现在分词形式 | |
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96
affinities
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| n.密切关系( affinity的名词复数 )；亲近；（生性）喜爱；类同 | |
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97
destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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98
secondly
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| adv.第二，其次 | |
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99
glorifies
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| 赞美( glorify的第三人称单数 )； 颂扬； 美化； 使光荣 | |
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100
illustrate
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| v.举例说明，阐明；图解，加插图 | |
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101
illustrated
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| adj. 有插图的，列举的 动词illustrate的过去式和过去分词 | |
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102
prelude
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| n.序言，前兆，序曲 | |
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103
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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104
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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105
ridge
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| n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭 | |
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106
oars
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| n.桨，橹( oar的名词复数 )；划手v.划（行）( oar的第三人称单数 ) | |
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107
stature
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| n.（高度）水平，（高度）境界，身高，身材 | |
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108
covert
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| adj.隐藏的；暗地里的 | |
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109
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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110
controversy
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| n.争论，辩论，争吵 | |
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111
savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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112
creeds
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| （尤指宗教）信条，教条( creed的名词复数 ) | |
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113
creed
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| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
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114
recording
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| n.录音，记录 | |
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115
analyzing
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| v.分析；分析( analyze的现在分词 )；分解；解释；对…进行心理分析n.分析 | |
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116
qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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117
pervading
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| v.遍及，弥漫( pervade的现在分词 ) | |
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118
prosaic
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| adj.单调的，无趣的 | |
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119
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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120
unwilling
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| adj.不情愿的 | |
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121
substantive
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| adj.表示实在的；本质的、实质性的；独立的；n.实词，实名词；独立存在的实体 | |
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122
injustices
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| 不公平( injustice的名词复数 )； 非正义； 待…不公正； 冤枉 | |
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123
autobiography
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| n.自传 | |
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124
perennial
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| adj.终年的；长久的 | |
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125
proceeding
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| n.行动，进行，(pl.)会议录，学报 | |
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126
testimony
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| n.证词；见证，证明 | |
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127
distinctive
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| adj.特别的，有特色的，与众不同的 | |
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128
credence
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| n.信用，祭器台，供桌，凭证 | |
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129
educes
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| v.引出( educe的第三人称单数 )；唤起或开发出（潜能）；推断（出）；从数据中演绎（出） | |
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130
alluded
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| 提及，暗指( allude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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131
sublimed
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| 伟大的( sublime的过去式和过去分词 )； 令人赞叹的； 极端的； 不顾后果的 | |
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132
ecstasy
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| n.狂喜，心醉神怡，入迷 | |
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133
innate
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| adj.天生的，固有的，天赋的 | |
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134
attentive
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| adj.注意的，专心的；关心(别人)的，殷勤的 | |
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135
exalted
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| adj.(地位等)高的，崇高的；尊贵的，高尚的 | |
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136
joyousness
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| 快乐，使人喜悦 | |
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137
depressed
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|
| adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的 | |
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138
miserable
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|
| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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139
providence
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| n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝 | |
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140
awed
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| adj.充满敬畏的，表示敬畏的v.使敬畏，使惊惧( awe的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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141
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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142
survivor
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| n.生存者，残存者，幸存者 | |
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143
fortitude
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| n.坚忍不拔；刚毅 | |
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144
pious
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| adj.虔诚的；道貌岸然的 | |
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145
miserably
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| adv.痛苦地；悲惨地；糟糕地；极度地 | |
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146
naive
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| adj.幼稚的，轻信的；天真的 | |
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147
depicted
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| 描绘，描画( depict的过去式和过去分词 )； 描述 | |
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148
fascination
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| n.令人着迷的事物，魅力，迷恋 | |
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149
consorts
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| n.配偶( consort的名词复数 )；（演奏古典音乐的）一组乐师；一组古典乐器；一起v.结伴( consort的第三人称单数 )；交往；相称；调和 | |
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150
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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151
tumult
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| n.喧哗；激动，混乱；吵闹 | |
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152
momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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153
knell
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| n.丧钟声；v.敲丧钟 | |
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154
pebbles
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| [复数]鹅卵石； 沙砾； 卵石，小圆石( pebble的名词复数 ) | |
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155
dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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156
desolate
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| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
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157
embittered
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| v.使怨恨，激怒( embitter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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158
boughs
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| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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159
morbid
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| adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的 | |
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160
emblem
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| n.象征，标志；徽章 | |
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161
subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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162
benevolence
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| n.慈悲，捐助 | |
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163
apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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164
vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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165
mirage
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| n.海市蜃楼，幻景 | |
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166
potent
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| adj.强有力的，有权势的；有效力的 | |
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167
originality
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| n.创造力，独创性；新颖 | |
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168
meditation
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| n.熟虑，（尤指宗教的）默想，沉思，（pl.）冥想录 | |
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169
sonnet
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| n.十四行诗 | |
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170
twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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171
waning
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| adj.（月亮）渐亏的，逐渐减弱或变小的n.月亏v.衰落( wane的现在分词 )；（月）亏；变小；变暗淡 | |
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172
benign
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| adj.善良的，慈祥的；良性的，无危险的 | |
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173
preservation
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| n.保护，维护，保存，保留，保持 | |
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174
munificence
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| n.宽宏大量，慷慨给与 | |
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175
abiding
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| adj.永久的，持久的，不变的 | |
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176
affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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177
materialism
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| n.［哲］唯物主义，唯物论；物质至上 | |
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178
whatsoever
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| adv.（用于否定句中以加强语气）任何；pron.无论什么 | |
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179
sordid
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| adj.肮脏的，不干净的，卑鄙的，暗淡的 | |
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180
boon
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| n.恩赐，恩物，恩惠 | |
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181
bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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182
tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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183
bestowed
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| 赠给，授予( bestow的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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184
nun
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| n.修女，尼姑 | |
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185
adoration
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| n.爱慕，崇拜 | |
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186
tranquillity
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| n. 平静, 安静 | |
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187
expatiated
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| v.详述，细说( expatiate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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188
jotted
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| v.匆忙记下( jot的过去式和过去分词 )；草草记下，匆匆记下 | |
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189
rippling
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| 起涟漪的，潺潺流水般声音的 | |
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190
promontory
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| n.海角；岬 | |
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191
inventory
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| n.详细目录，存货清单 | |
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192
reverent
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| adj.恭敬的，虔诚的 | |
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193
interrogated
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| v.询问( interrogate的过去式和过去分词 )；审问；（在计算机或其他机器上）查询 | |
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194
obliterated
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| v.除去( obliterate的过去式和过去分词 )；涂去；擦掉；彻底破坏或毁灭 | |
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195
embody
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| vt.具体表达，使具体化；包含，收录 | |
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196
flaunting
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| adj.招摇的，扬扬得意的，夸耀的v.炫耀，夸耀( flaunt的现在分词 )；有什么能耐就施展出来 | |
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197
melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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198
gossamer
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| n.薄纱，游丝 | |
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199
stanzas
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| 节，段( stanza的名词复数 ) | |
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200
absurdities
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| n.极端无理性( absurdity的名词复数 )；荒谬；谬论；荒谬的行为 | |
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201
primrose
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| n.樱草，最佳部分， | |
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202
steadfast
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| adj.固定的，不变的，不动摇的；忠实的；坚贞不移的 | |
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203
educed
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| v.引出( educe的过去式和过去分词 )；唤起或开发出（潜能）；推断（出）；从数据中演绎（出） | |
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204
recurring
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| adj.往复的，再次发生的 | |
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205
disclaims
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| v.否认( disclaim的第三人称单数 ) | |
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206
paramount
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| a.最重要的，最高权力的 | |
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207
grove
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| n.林子，小树林，园林 | |
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208
isle
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| n.小岛，岛 | |
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209
dome
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| n.圆屋顶，拱顶 | |
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210
immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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211
craves
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| 渴望，热望( crave的第三人称单数 )； 恳求，请求 | |
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212
cleave
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| v．(clave；cleaved)粘着，粘住；坚持；依恋 | |
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213
rebellious
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| adj.造反的，反抗的，难控制的 | |
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214
vehemence
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| n.热切；激烈；愤怒 | |
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215
aloof
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| adj.远离的；冷淡的，漠不关心的 | |
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216
illustrates
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| 给…加插图( illustrate的第三人称单数 )； 说明； 表明； （用示例、图画等）说明 | |
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217
fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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218
bliss
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| n.狂喜，福佑，天赐的福 | |
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219
groves
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| 树丛，小树林( grove的名词复数 ) | |
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220
homely
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| adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的 | |
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221
pensively
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| adv.沉思地，焦虑地 | |
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222
metaphor
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| n.隐喻，暗喻 | |
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223
seclusion
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| n.隐遁，隔离 | |
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224
shrill
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| adj.尖声的；刺耳的；v尖叫 | |
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225
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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226
penetrates
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| v.穿过( penetrate的第三人称单数 )；刺入；了解；渗透 | |
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227
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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228
patriotic
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| adj.爱国的，有爱国心的 | |
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229
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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230
westward
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| n.西方，西部；adj.西方的，向西的；adv.向西 | |
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231
quaint
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| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
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232
highland
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| n.(pl.)高地，山地 | |
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233
maiden
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| n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的 | |
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234
binds
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| v.约束( bind的第三人称单数 )；装订；捆绑；（用长布条）缠绕 | |
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235
bind
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| vt.捆，包扎；装订；约束；使凝固；vi.变硬 | |
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236
overflowing
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| n. 溢出物,溢流 adj. 充沛的，充满的 动词overflow的现在分词形式 | |
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237
recesses
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| n.壁凹( recess的名词复数 )；（工作或业务活动的）中止或暂停期间；学校的课间休息；某物内部的凹形空间v.把某物放在墙壁的凹处( recess的第三人称单数 )；将（墙）做成凹形，在（墙）上做壁龛；休息，休会，休庭 | |
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238
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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239
alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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240
mortification
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| n.耻辱，屈辱 | |
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241
rustic
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| adj.乡村的，有乡村特色的；n.乡下人，乡巴佬 | |
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242
abounding
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| adj.丰富的，大量的v.大量存在，充满，富于( abound的现在分词 ) | |
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243
lodged
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| v.存放( lodge的过去式和过去分词 )；暂住；埋入；（权利、权威等）归属 | |
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244
bosoms
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| 胸部( bosom的名词复数 )； 胸怀； 女衣胸部（或胸襟）； 和爱护自己的人在一起的情形 | |
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245
illustrating
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| 给…加插图( illustrate的现在分词 )； 说明； 表明； （用示例、图画等）说明 | |
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246
subtlety
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| n.微妙，敏锐，精巧；微妙之处，细微的区别 | |
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247
derived
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| vi.起源；由来；衍生；导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
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248
impersonal
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| adj.无个人感情的，与个人无关的，非人称的 | |
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249
behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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250
glorification
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| n.赞颂 | |
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251
virtuous
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| adj.有品德的，善良的，贞洁的，有效力的 | |
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252
frailties
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| n.脆弱( frailty的名词复数 )；虚弱；（性格或行为上的）弱点；缺点 | |
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253
alienation
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| n.疏远；离间；异化 | |
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254
exemption
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| n.豁免，免税额，免除 | |
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255
disdain
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| n.鄙视，轻视；v.轻视，鄙视，不屑 | |
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256
restrictions
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| 约束( restriction的名词复数 )； 管制； 制约因素； 带限制性的条件（或规则） | |
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257
enraptured
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| v.使狂喜( enrapture的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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258
convivial
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| adj.狂欢的，欢乐的 | |
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259
reprobate
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| n.无赖汉；堕落的人 | |
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260
beverage
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| n.(水，酒等之外的)饮料 | |
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261
fidelity
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| n.忠诚，忠实；精确 | |
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262
enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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263
tarn
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| n.山中的小湖或小潭 | |
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264
victorious
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| adj.胜利的，得胜的 | |
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265
rigidly
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| adv.刻板地，僵化地 | |
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266
loathing
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| n.厌恶，憎恨v.憎恨，厌恶( loathe的现在分词)；极不喜欢 | |
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267
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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268
staple
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| n.主要产物，常用品，主要要素，原料，订书钉，钩环；adj.主要的，重要的；vt.分类 | |
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269
eloquence
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| n.雄辩；口才，修辞 | |
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270
rebuke
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| v.指责，非难，斥责 [反]praise | |
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271
strenuous
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| adj.奋发的，使劲的；紧张的；热烈的，狂热的 | |
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272
incentive
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| n.刺激；动力；鼓励；诱因；动机 | |
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273
penury
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| n.贫穷，拮据 | |
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274
derives
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| v.得到( derive的第三人称单数 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
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275
meditative
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| adj.沉思的，冥想的 | |
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