Oxford Lectures on Poetry Part 8

4.

After quoting the lines from _A Poet's Epitaph_, and Arnold's lines on Wordsworth, I asked how the man described in them ever came to write the _Ode_ on Immortality, or _Yew-trees_, or why he should say,

For I must tread on shadowy ground, must sink Deep--and, aloft ascending, breathe in worlds To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil.

The aspect of Wordsworth's poetry which answers this question forms my last subject.

We may recall this aspect in more than one way. First, not a little of Wordsworth's poetry either approaches or actually enters the province of the sublime. His strongest natural inclination tended there. He himself speaks of his temperament as 'stern,' and tells us that

to the very going out of youth [He] too exclusively esteemed _that_ love, And sought _that_ beauty, which, as Milton says, Hath terror in it.

This disposition is easily traced in the imaginative impressions of his childhood as he describes them in the _Prelude_. His fixed habit of looking

with feelings of fraternal love Upon the una.s.suming things that hold A silent station in this beauteous world,

was only formed, it would seem, under his sister's influence, after his recovery from the crisis that followed the ruin of his towering hopes in the French Revolution. It was a part of his endeavour to find something of the distant ideal in life's familiar face. And though this att.i.tude of sympathy and humility did become habitual, the first bent towards grandeur, austerity, sublimity, retained its force. It is evident in the political poems, and in all those pictures of life which depict the unconquerable power of affection, pa.s.sion, resolution, patience, or faith. It inspires much of his greatest poetry of Nature. It emerges occasionally with a strange and thrilling effect in the serene, gracious, but sometimes stagnant atmosphere of the later poems,--for the last time, perhaps, in that magnificent stanza of the _Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg_ (1835),

Like clouds that rake the mountain-summits, Or waves that own no curbing hand, How fast has brother followed brother From sunshine to the sunless land!

Wordsworth is indisputably the most sublime of our poets since Milton.

We may put the matter, secondly, thus. However much Wordsworth was the poet of small and humble things, and the poet who saw his ideal realised, not in Utopia, but here and now before his eyes, he was, quite as much, what some would call a mystic. He saw everything in the light of 'the visionary power.' He was, for himself,

The transitory being that beheld This Vision.

He apprehended all things, natural or human, as the expression of something which, while manifested in them, immeasurably transcends them.

And nothing can be more intensely Wordsworthian than the poems and pa.s.sages most marked by this visionary power and most directly issuing from this apprehension. The bearing of these statements on Wordsworth's inclination to sublimity will be obvious at a glance.

Now we may prefer the Wordsworth of the daffodils to the Wordsworth of the yew-trees, and we may even believe the poet's mysticism to be moonshine; but it is certain that to neglect or throw into the shade this aspect of his poetry is neither to take Wordsworth as he really was nor to judge his poetry truly, since this aspect appears in much of it that we cannot deny to be first-rate. Yet there is, I think, and has been for some time, a tendency to this mistake. It is exemplified in Arnold's Introduction and has been increased by it, and it is visible in some degree even in Pater's essay. Arnold wished to make Wordsworth more popular; and so he was tempted to represent Wordsworth's poetry as much more simple and unambitious than it really was, and as much more easily apprehended than it ever can be. He was also annoyed by attempts to formulate a systematic Wordsworthian philosophy; partly, doubtless, because he knew that, however great the philosophical value of a poet's ideas may be, it cannot by itself determine the value of his poetry; but partly also because, having himself but little turn for philosophy, he was disposed to regard it as illusory; and further because, even in the poetic sphere, he was somewhat deficient in that kind of imagination which is allied to metaphysical thought. This is one reason of his curious failure to appreciate Sh.e.l.ley, and of the evident irritation which Sh.e.l.ley produced in him. And it is also one reason why, both in his _Memorial Verses_ and in the introduction to his selection from Wordsworth, he either ignores or depreciates that aspect of the poetry with which we are just now concerned. It is not true, we must bluntly say, that the cause of the greatness of this poetry 'is simple and may be told quite simply.' It is true, and it is admirably said, that this poetry 'is great because of the extraordinary power with which Wordsworth feels the joy offered to us in nature, the joy offered to us in the simple primary affections and duties.' But this is only half the truth.

Pater's essay is not thus one-sided. It is, to my mind, an extremely fine piece of criticism. Yet the tendency to which I am objecting does appear in it. Pater says, for example, that Wordsworth is the poet of nature, 'and of nature, after all, in her modesty. The English Lake country has, of course, its grandeurs. But the peculiar function of Wordsworth's genius, as carrying in it a power to open out the soul of apparently little and familiar things, would have found its true test had he become the poet of Surrey, say! and the prophet of its life.'

This last sentence is, in one sense, doubtless true. The 'function'

referred to could have been exercised in Surrey, and was exercised in Dorset and Somerset, as well as in the Lake country. And this function was a 'peculiar function of Wordsworth's genius.' But that it was _the_ peculiar function of his genius, or more peculiar than that other function which forms our present subject, I venture to deny; and for the full exercise of this latter function, it is hardly hazardous to a.s.sert, Wordsworth's childhood in a mountain district, and his subsequent residence there, were indispensable. This will be doubted for a moment, I believe, only by those readers (and they are not a few) who ignore the _Prelude_ and the _Excursion_. But the _Prelude_ and the _Excursion_, though there are dull pages in both, contain much of Wordsworth's best and most characteristic poetry. And even in a selection like Arnold's, which, perhaps wisely, makes hardly any use of them, many famous poems will be found which deal with nature but not with nature 'in her modesty.'

My main object was to insist that the 'mystic,' 'visionary,' 'sublime,'

aspect of Wordsworth's poetry must not be slighted. I wish to add a few remarks on it, but to consider it fully would carry us far beyond our bounds; and, even if I attempted the task, I should not formulate its results in a body of doctrines. Such a formulation is useful, and I see no objection to it in principle, as one method of exploring Wordsworth's mind with a view to the better apprehension of his poetry. But the method has its dangers, and it is another matter to put forward the results as philosophically adequate, or to take the position that 'Wordsworth was first and foremost a philosophical thinker, a man whose intention and purpose it was to think out for himself, faithfully and seriously, the questions concerning man and nature and human life' (Dean Church). If this were true, he should have given himself to philosophy and not to poetry; and there is no reason to think that he would have been eminently successful. n.o.body ever was so who was not forced by a special natural power and an imperious impulsion into the business of 'thinking out,' and who did not develope this power by years of arduous discipline. Wordsworth does not show it in any marked degree; and, though he reflected deeply and acutely, he was without philosophical training. His poetry is immensely interesting as an imaginative expression of the same mind which, in his day, produced in Germany great philosophies. His poetic experience, his intuitions, his single thoughts, even his large views, correspond in a striking way, sometimes in a startling way, with ideas methodically developed by Kant, Sch.e.l.ling, Hegel, Schopenhauer. They remain admirable material for philosophy; and a philosophy which found itself driven to treat them as moonshine would probably be a very poor affair. But they are like the experience and the utterances of men of religious genius: great truths are enshrined in them, but generally the shrine would have to be broken to liberate these truths in a form which would satisfy the desire to understand. To claim for them the power to satisfy that desire is an error, and it tempts those in whom that desire is predominant to treat them as mere beautiful illusions.

Setting aside, then, any questions as to the ultimate import of the 'mystic' strain in Wordsworth's poetry, I intend only to call attention to certain traits in the kind of poetic experience which exhibits it most plainly. And we may observe at once that in this there is always traceable a certain hostility to 'sense.' I do not mean that hostility which is present in _all_ poetic experience, and of which Wordsworth was very distinctly aware. The regular action of the senses on their customary material produces, in his view, a 'tyranny' over the soul. It helps to construct that every-day picture of the world, of sensible objects and events 'in disconnection dead and spiritless,' which we take for reality. In relation to this reality we become pa.s.sive slaves;[16]

it lies on us with a weight 'heavy as frost and deep almost as life.' It is the origin alike of our torpor and our superficiality. _All_ poetic experience frees us from it to some extent, or breaks into it, and so may be called hostile to sense. But this experience is, broadly speaking, of two different kinds. The perception of the daffodils as dancing in glee, and in sympathy with other gleeful beings, shows us a living, joyous, loving world, and so a 'spiritual' world, not a merely 'sensible' one. But the hostility to sense is here no more than a hostility to _mere_ sense: this 'spiritual' world is itself the sensible world more fully apprehended: the daffodils do not change or lose their colour in disclosing their glee. On the other hand, in the kind of experience which forms our present subject, there is always some feeling of definite contrast with the limited sensible world. The arresting feature or object is felt in some way _against_ this background, or even as in some way a denial of it. Sometimes it is a visionary unearthly light resting on a scene or on some strange figure. Sometimes it is the feeling that the scene or figure belongs to the world of dream.

Sometimes it is an intimation of boundlessness, contradicting or abolishing the fixed limits of our habitual view. Sometimes it is the obscure sense of 'unknown modes of being,' unlike the familiar modes.

This kind of experience, further, comes often with a distinct shock, which may bewilder, confuse or trouble the mind. And, lastly, it is especially, though not invariably, a.s.sociated with mountains, and again with solitude. Some of these bald statements I will go on to ill.u.s.trate, only remarking that the boundary between these modes of imagination is, naturally, less marked and more wavering in Wordsworth's poetry than in my brief a.n.a.lysis.

We may begin with a poem standing near this boundary, the famous verses _To the Cuckoo_, 'O blithe new-comer.' It stands near the boundary because, like the poem on the Daffodils, it is entirely happy. But it stands unmistakably on the further side of the boundary, and is, in truth, more nearly allied to the _Ode_ on Immortality than to the poem on the Daffodils. The sense of sight is baffled, and its tyranny broken.

Only a cry is heard, which makes the listener look a thousand ways, so shifting is the direction from which it reaches him. It seems to come from a mere 'voice,' 'an invisible thing,' 'a mystery.' It brings him 'a tale of visionary hours,'--hours of childhood, when he sought this invisible thing in vain, and the earth appeared to his bewildered but liberated fancy 'an unsubstantial fairy place.' And still, when he hears it, the great globe itself, we may say, fades like an unsubstantial pageant; or, to quote from the Immortality _Ode_, the 'shades of the prison house' melt into air. These words are much more solemn than the Cuckoo poem; but the experience is of the same type, and 'the visionary gleam' of the ode, like the 'wandering voice' of the poem, is the expression through sense of something beyond sense.

Take another pa.s.sage referring to childhood. It is from the _Prelude_, ii. Here there is something more than perplexity. There is apprehension, and we are approaching the sublime:

One summer evening (led by her[17]) I found A little boat tied to a willow tree Within a rocky cave, its usual home.

Straight I unloosed her chain, and stepping in Pushed from the sh.o.r.e. It was an act of stealth And troubled pleasure, nor without the voice Of mountain-echoes did my boat move on; Leaving behind her still, on either side, Small circles glittering idly in the moon, Until they melted all into one track Of sparkling light. But now, like one who rows, Proud of his skill, to reach a chosen point With an unswerving line, I fixed my view Upon the summit of a craggy ridge, The horizon's utmost boundary; far above Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky.

She was an elfin pinnace; l.u.s.tily I dipped my oars 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 stature 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 covert 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 mighty forms, that do not live Like living men, moved slowly through the mind By day, and were a trouble to my dreams.

The best commentary on a poem is generally to be found in the poet's other works. And those last dozen lines furnish the best commentary on that famous pa.s.sage in the _Ode_, where the poet, looking back to his childhood, gives thanks for it,--not however for its careless delight and liberty,

But for those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings; Blank misgivings of a Creature Moving about in worlds not realised, High instincts before which our mortal Nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised.

Whether, or how, these experiences afford 'intimations of immortality'

is not in question here; but it will never do to dismiss them so airily as Arnold did. Without them Wordsworth is not Wordsworth.

The most striking recollections of his childhood have not in all cases this manifest affinity to the _Ode_, but wherever the visionary feeling appears in them (and it appears in many), this affinity is still traceable. There is, for instance, in _Prelude_, xii., the description of the crag, from which, on a wild dark day, the boy watched eagerly the two highways below for the ponies that were coming to take him home for the holidays. It is too long to quote, but every reader of it will remember

the wind and sleety rain, And all the business of the elements, The single sheep, and the one blasted tree, And the bleak music from that old stone wall, The noise of wood and water, and the mist That on the line of each of those two roads Advanced in such indisputable shapes.

Everything here is natural, but everything is apocalyptic. And we happen to know why. Wordsworth is describing the scene in the light of memory.

In that eagerly expected holiday his father died; and the scene, as he recalled it, was charged with the sense of contrast between the narrow world of common pleasures and blind and easy hopes, and the vast unseen world which encloses it in beneficent yet dark and inexorable arms. The visionary feeling has here a peculiar tone; but always, openly or covertly, it is the intimation of something illimitable, over-arching or breaking into the customary 'reality.' Its character varies; and so sometimes at its touch the soul, suddenly conscious of its own infinity, melts in rapture into that infinite being; while at other times the 'mortal nature' stands dumb, incapable of thought, or shrinking from some presence

Not un-informed with Phantasy, and looks That threaten the profane.

This feeling is so essential to many of Wordsworth's most characteristic poems that it may almost be called their soul; and failure to understand them frequently arises from obtuseness to it. It appears in a mild and tender form, but quite openly, in the lines _To a Highland Girl_, where the child, and the rocks and trees and lake and road by her home, seem to the poet

Like something fashioned in a dream.

It gives to _The Solitary Reaper_ its note of remoteness and wonder; and even the slight shock of bewilderment due to it is felt in the opening line of the most famous stanza:

Will no one tell me what she sings?

Its etherial music accompanies every vision of the White Doe, and sounds faintly to us from far away through all the tale of failure and anguish.

Without it such shorter narratives as _Hartleap Well_ and _Resolution and Independence_ would lose the imaginative atmosphere which adds mystery and grandeur to the apparently simple 'moral.'

In _Hartleap Well_ it is conveyed at first by slight touches of contrast. Sir Walter, in his long pursuit of the Hart, has mounted his third horse.

Joy sparkled in the prancing courser's eyes; The horse and horseman are a happy pair; But, though Sir Walter like a falcon flies, There is a doleful silence in the air.

A rout this morning left Sir Walter's hall, That as they galloped made the echoes roar; But horse and man are vanished, one and all; Such race, I think, was never seen before.

At last even the dogs are left behind, stretched one by one among the mountain fern.

Where is the throng, the tumult of the race?

The bugles that so joyfully were blown?

--This chase it looks not like an earthly chase; Sir Walter and the Hart are left alone.

Thus the poem begins. At the end we have the old shepherd's description of the utter desolation of the spot where the waters of the little spring had trembled with the last deep groan of the dying stag, and where the Knight, to commemorate his exploit, had built a basin for the spring, three pillars to mark the last three leaps of his victim, and a pleasure-house, surrounded by trees and trailing plants, for the summer joy of himself and his paramour. But now 'the pleasure-house is dust,'

and the trees are grey, 'with neither arms nor head':

Now, here is neither gra.s.s nor pleasant shade; The sun on drearier hollow never shone; So will it be, as I have often said, Till trees, and stones, and fountain all are gone.

It is only this feeling of the presence of mysterious inviolable Powers, behind the momentary powers of hard pleasure and empty pride, that justifies the solemnity of the stanza: