Has not the soul, the being of your life,
Received a shock of awful consciousness,
In some calm season, when these lofty rocks
At night's approach bring down the unclouded sky,
To rest upon their circumambient walls;

A temple framing of dimensions vast,

And yet not too enormous for the sound
Of human anthems, — choral song, or burst
Sublime of instrumental harmony,

To glorify the Eternal! What if these
Did never break the stillness that prevails
Here, if the solemn nightingale be mute,
And the soft wood-lark here did never chant
Her vespers,
Nature fails not to provide
Impulse and utterance. The whispering air
Sends inspiration from the shadowy heights,
And blind recesses of the caverned rocks;
The little rills and waters numberless,
Inaudible by daylight, blend their notes
With the loud streams: and often at the hour
When issue forth the first pale stars, is heard,
Within the circuit of this fabric huge,

One voice

the solitary raven, flying

Athwart the concave of the dark blue dome,
Unseen, perchance above all power of sight-
An iron knell! with echoes from afar

Faint - and still fainter

as the cry, with which
The wanderer accompanies her flight
Through the calm region, fades upon the ear,
Diminishing by distance, till it seemed

To expire; yet from the abyss is caught again,
And yet again recovered!" - Excursion, b. iv.

But in all Wordsworth's recognitions of the influences of nature, the world of materiality is kept in due subordination to the immortal power in the heart, and the truth steadfastly upheld, that the soul has an existence independent of the frail tenure of sense. The sublime apostrophe to the Deity, in the fourth book of the Excursion, proclaims that though the universe be perishable, there may be an undying communion between God and the soul of man:

"Thou, dread source

Prime, self-existing cause and end of all
That in the scale of being fill their place;
Above our human region, or below,

Set and sustained; - thou, who didst

wrap

the cloud

Of infancy around us, that thyself,
Therein with our simplicity a while

Might'st hold, on earth, communion undisturbed;
Who from the anarchy of dreaming sleep,
Or from its death-like void, with punctual care,
And touch as gentle as the morning light,
Restor'st us, daily, to the powers of sense,
And reason's steadfast rule-thou, thou alone
Art everlasting, and the blessed spirits,
Which thou includest, as the sea her waves:
For adoration thou endur'st; endure
For consciousness the motions of thy will;
For apprehension those transcendent truths
Of the pure intellect, that stand as laws
(Submission constituting strength and power)
Even to thy Being's infinite majesty!
This universe shall pass away · a work
Glorious! because the shadow of thy might
A step, or link, for intercourse with thee.
Ah! if the time must come, in which my feet
No more shall stray where meditation leads,
By flowing stream, through wood, or craggy wild,
Loved haunts like these; the unimprisoned mind
May yet have scope to range among her own,
Her thoughts, her images, her high desires.
If the dear faculty of sight should fail,
Still, it may be allowed me to remember
What visionary powers of eye and soul

In youth were mine; when, stationed on the top
Of some huge hill
expectant I beheld
The sun rise up, from distant climes returned
Darkness to chase, and sleep; and bring the day
His bounteous gift! or saw him toward the deep
Sink, with a retinue of flaming clouds
Attended; then, my spirit was entranced
With joy exalted to beatitude;

The measure of my soul was filled with bliss,
And holiest love; as earth, sea, air, with light,
With pomp, with glory, with magnificence !"

But not only is the independence of the mind thus asserted. In the beautiful churchyard narratives, its power is portrayed, when impaired in its faculties of sight and hearing. The account of the cheerful deaf man is conceived in such a deep sympathy that the poet seems speaking from the very heart of the unfortunate:

"The bird of dawn

Did never rouse this Cottager from sleep

With startling summons; not for his delight
The vernal cuckoo shouted; not for him

Murmured the laboring bee. When stormy winds
Were working the broad bosom of the lake
Into a thousand thousand sparkling waves,
Rocking the trees, or driving cloud on cloud
Along the sharp edge of yon lofty crags,
The agitated scene before his eye

Was silent as a picture.

There is something exquisitely soothing in the passages which go on to show happiness discovering other avenues to the heart, and at last, even over the deaf man's grave a beauty is cast by one of those matchless touches, which grace the muse of Wordsworth :

"Yon tall pine tree, whose composing sound
Was wasted on the good man's living ear,
Hath now its own peculiar sanctity;
And at the touch of every wandering breeze
Murmurs, not idly, o'er his peaceful grave."
Excursion, b. vii.

The description of the blind man, "enlightened" by his other senses, and by the spiritual illumination within, is moralized in even a higher strain, rising into an imagination of the Christian's victory over the grave, and closing with one of Wordsworth's favorite tributes to the congenial mind of Milton :

"proof abounds

Upon the earth, that faculties which seem
Extinguished, do not, therefore, cease to be.
And to the mind among her powers of sense
This transfer is permitted,-not alone
That the bereft their recompense may win;
But for remoter purposes of love
And charity; nor last nor least for this,
That to the imagination may be given
A type and shadow of an awful truth;
How, likewise, under sufferance divine,
Darkness is banished from the realms of death,
By man's imperishable spirit, quelled.
Unto the men who see not as we see
Futurity was thought, in ancient times,
To be laid open, and they prophesied.

And know we not that from the blind have flowed
The highest, holiest raptures of the lyre;
And wisdom married to immortal verse?".

Excursion, b. vii.

We have been anxious to prove that Wordsworth's contemplations of nature involve no dependence of the mind upon accidents of the outward world, and so to vindicate his poetic faith from suspicion of any pantheistic tendencies to an absolute nature-worship, disparaging man's immortal endowment, and excluding a distinct recognition of the Supreme Being. The danger of the heart, in this respect, has not been overlooked by him:

"Trembling, I look upon the secret springs

Of that licentious craving in the mind
To act the God among external things,
To bind, on apt suggestion, or unbind;
And marvel not that antique Faith inclined
To crowd the world with metamorphosis,
Vouchsafed in pity or in wrath assigned;
Such insolent temptations wouldst thou miss,

Avoid these sights; nor brood o'er Fable's dark abyss!"

Processions.

The kindly influences of nature are shown by Wordsworth, not only in scenes of extraordinary splendor and sublimity, inspiring lofty raptures, but, as he exults:

"Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."

From that favorite of the elder poets- the Daisy-he draws instruction copiously:

"A hundred times, by rock or bower,

Ere thus I have lain couched an hour,
Have I derived from thy sweet power
Some apprehensions;

Some steady love; some brief delight;
Some memory that had taken flight;
Some chime of fancy wrong or right;
Or stray invention.

If stately passions in me burn,

And one chance look to Thee should turn,

I drink out of an humbler urn

A lowlier pleasure;

The homely sympathy that heeds

The common life, our nature breeds ;

A wisdom fitted to the needs

Of hearts at leisure."

More than this, to nature is ascribed a power of softening the feelings hardened by a reckless sensuality-of reclaiming from vicious habit the heart of such a being as "Peter Bell." By such agency

"is Peter taught to feel
That man's heart is a holy thing;
And nature, through a world of death,
Breathes into him a second breath,

More searching than the breath of spring."

It is Wordsworth's aim to show not only the influences of nature on our moral being, but the reciprocal action of our feelings, by the agency of imagination, on the outward world, which the senses are said to "half perceive and half create." The mere personification of any of the forms of nature is but a rude poetic process, but the higher purpose is to endow them with attributes of sentient and intellectual being, and by such interchange, to create a moral sympathy between the heart of man and all that meets his senses. It is one of the principles of Wordsworth's poetry to develop this harmony of the sensuous and the spiritual, by giving not only life to breathless nature, but impulses and feelings kindred to those in the human breast. It is the philosophical moral of the poem of " Hart-leap Well," that the face of nature puts on an expression correspondent with any impressive incident she has witnessed. It is there beautifully illustrated, but we must content ourselves with an instance in a fragment of the lines" written during an evening walk, after a stormy day, on the expected death of Mr. Fox:"

"Loud is the Vale! the Voice is up

With which she speaks when storms are gone,

A mighty unison of streams!

Of all her Voices, One!

Loud is the Vale; - this inland Depth

In peace is roaring like the Sea;

Yon star upon the mountain-top
Is listening quietly."

The poet's communion with nature is not confined to its inanimate forms-it is comprehensive of sympathies with the beings below the scale of humanity. An eloquent exhortation to the cultivation of an affectionate knowledge of the inferior kinds, as members of "the mighty commonwealth of things, — up from the creeping plant to sovereign Man," is one of the sublime