﻿avoedsworth's mixd 



41 



moment to the landscape from which they spring. They are, so to 

 speak, re-absorbed ; or else they Avander across the speaking face of 

 nature not Avholly distinguishable from it. Certainly, it is a de- 

 lightful and Avhimsical piece of imagination that makes Words- 

 Avorth trace his human-heartedness (in the eighth book, called 

 * Retrospect — hoxe of Nature Leading to Love of Man') to his early 

 enthusiasm for the character and life of shepherds. 



'And shepherds were the men that pleased me first.' 



He proceeds to tell how, as a rambling school-boy, he met a shep- 

 herd in the fog, looking twice his real size, 'his sheep like Green- 

 land bears;' and hoAV, 'as he stepped beyond the boundary line of 

 some hill-shadow, his form hath flashed upon me glorified by the 

 deep radiance of the setting sun.' This is perhaps the height of 

 romanticism. And thus, WordsAA'orth concludes, Avas man 



Ennobled outwardly before my sight, 

 And thus my heart wns early introduced 

 To an unconscious love and reA^erence 

 Of human nature ; hence the human form 

 To me became an index of delight. 

 Of grace and honor, power and worthiness. 



The merest roadside traA-eler or passer-by rarely lives in his poems 

 in a poetical Avay Avithout some touch of fancy Avhich makes him 

 slightly unsubstantial, as the characters in a dream are unsubstan- 

 tial. And here is a secret of his art. His thought, in absorbing 

 objects, in rendering them part of itself, so acted that, in his oavu 

 AA^ords, 



Bodily eyes 

 Were utterly forgotten, and what I saw 

 Appeared like something in myself, a dream, 

 A prospect in the mind. 



This eighth book is WordsAvorth 's own analysis of his round of 

 experience and thought. From the time Avhen the animal actiAdties 

 of boyhood and all their triAdal, though vivid, pleasures began to 

 droop, and nature 'prized for her OAAm sake' became his joy — in 

 this period until he Avas tAventy-tAvo — man Avas subordinate to 

 nature. 'A passion, she, a rapture often, and immediate love CA^er 

 at hand ; he, only a delight occasional, an accidental grace, his hour 

 being not yet come. ' Nevertheless, it is his passion for nature Avhich, 

 through nature's endoAA'ing man Avith sublimity, leads him to a 

 larger humanitarianism. So that ultimately — that is at twenty- 

 tAvo, Ave suppose — Avhen for him man stood in the midst of the 



