292 LANDSCAPE 



the spirit which constitutes both thought and the objects of 



thought. To God he cries : 



Thou, Thou alone 



Art everlasting, and the blessed spirits 

 That Thou includest as the sea her waves ! 



Yet God, for him, does not include souls only, as the ocean 

 includes the billows on its surface. God also includes 

 nature, and thus the poet can call nature 



The nurse, 



The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul 

 Of all my moral being. 



It is thus, too, that Lucy drew her beauty, grace, and 

 goodness ' by silent sympathy ' from woods, and clouds, and 

 stars, and rivulets, and murmuring sounds. Nature being 

 the robe of life woven perpetually by God, becomes at once 

 the oracle and the audience of humanity. Man takes the 

 meadows, woods, and mountains, and ' all that we behold 

 from this green earth,' into his confidence, feeling that they 

 are kindred to himself. In nature, as in the mind of man, 

 there dwells one spirit, from whom we gather strength, and 

 who sustains our aspiration. This is the meaning of that 

 apparent paradox : 



One impulse from a vernal wood 



May teach you more of man, 

 Of moral evil and of good, 



Than all the sages can. 



But, quitting this region of high speculation, let us see 

 how Wordsworth's mysticism gave tone to his descriptions 

 of landscape. I will select the poem on the Simplon Pass, 

 than which nothing nobler in blank verse has been written 

 during this century. 



Brook and road 



Were fellow-travellers in this gloomy Pass, 

 And with them did we journey several hours 

 At a. slow step. The immeasurable height 

 Of woods decaying, never to be decayed, 

 The stationary blasts of waterfalls, 



