Friday Poetry - February 8

 

I like these thoughts from Wordsworth.

 

In such communion, not from terror free,

    

While yet a child, and long before his time,

          Had he 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

          A precious gift; for, as he grew in years,                 140

          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                        150

          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        160        

   He traced an ebbing and a flowing mind,

          Expression ever varying!

The Excursion - The Wanderer - Book first - around 1814