Wordsworth by William Wordsworth Page A

shone
    In splendor: what strength was, that would not bend
    But in magnanimous meekness. France, ’tis strange,
    Hath brought forth no such souls as we had then.
    Perpetual emptiness! unceasing change!
    No single Volume paramount, no code,
    No master spirit, no determined road;
    But equally a want of Books and Men!
TO TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE
    Toussaint, the most unhappy Man of Men!
    Whether the rural Milk-maid by her Cow
    Sing in thy hearing, or thou liest now
    Alone in some deep dungeon’s earless den,
    O miserable Chieftain! where and when
    Wilt thou find patience? Yet die not; do thou
    Wear rather in thy bonds a chearful brow:
    Though fallen Thyself, never to rise again,
    Live, and take comfort. Thou hast left behind
    Powers that will work for thee; air, earth, and skies;
    There’s not a breathing of the common wind
    That will forget thee; thou hast great allies;
    Thy friends are exultations, agonies,
    And love, and Man’s unconquerable mind.
THE RIVER DUDDON
    CONCLUSION
    I thought of Thee, my partner and my guide,
    As being past away. – Vain sympathies!
    For,
backward
, Duddon! as I cast my eyes,
    I see what was, and is, and will abide;
    Still glides the Stream, and shall for ever glide;
    The Form remains, the Function never dies;
    While
we
, the brave, the mighty, and the wise,
    We Men, who in our morn of youth defied
    The elements, must vanish; – be it so!
    Enough, if something from our hands have power
    To live, and act, and serve the future hour;
    And if, as tow’rd the silent tomb we go,
    Thro’ love, thro’ hope, and faith’s transcendent dower,
    We feel that we are greater than we know.

NARRATIVE AND DRAMATIC POEMS
ANIMAL TRANQUILLITY AND DECAY
        The little hedgerow birds,
    That peck along the road, regard him not.
    He travels on, and in his face, his step,
    His gait, is one expression: every limb,
    His look and bending figure, all bespeak
    A man who does not move with pain, but moves
    With thought. – He is insensibly subdued
    To settled quiet: he is one by whom
    All effort seems forgotten; one to whom
    Long patience hath such mild composure given,
    That patience now doth seem a thing of which
    He hath no need. He is by nature led
    To peace so perfect that the young behold
    With envy, what the Old Man hardly feels.
THE OLD CUMBERLAND BEGGAR
    The class of Beggars, to which the Old Man here described
    belongs, will probably soon be extinct. It consisted of poor,
    and, mostly, old and infirm persons, who confined
    themselves to a stated round in their neighbourhood, and had
    certain fixed days, on which, at different houses, they
    regularly received alms, sometimes in money, but mostly in
    provisions.
    I saw an aged Beggar in my walk;
    And he was seated, by the highway side,
    On a low structure of rude masonry
    Built at the foot of a huge hill, that they
    Who lead their horses down the steep rough road
    May thence remount at ease. The aged Man
    Had placed his staff across the broad smooth stone
    That overlays the pile; and, from a bag
    All white with flour, the dole of village dames,
    He drew his scraps and fragments, one by one;
    And scanned them with a fixed and serious look
    Of idle computation. In the sun,
    Upon the second step of that small pile,
    Surrounded by those wild unpeopled hills,
    He sat, and ate his food in solitude:
    And ever, scattered from his palsied hand,
    That, still attempting to prevent the waste,
    Was baffled still, the crumbs in little showers
    Fell on the ground; and the small mountain birds,
    Not venturing yet to peck their destined meal,
    Approached within the length of half his staff.
        Him from my childhood have I known; and then
    He was so old, he seems not older now;
    He travels on, a solitary Man,
    So helpless in appearance, that for him
    The sauntering Horseman throws not with a slack
    And careless hand his alms upon the ground,
    But stops, – that he may safely lodge the coin
    Within the old Man’s hat; nor quits him so,
    But still, when he has given his