This is the 32nd of of 42 posts about the poems which carried me along the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route in Aug-Sep 2016. On this, the 32nd day, I walked 32km from Villafranca to Alto de Poio.
The first time I read this poem through, I was squatting on the curb in a dusty car park which also serves as Villafranca's intercity bus station. I wasn't even sure that she was coming. But sure enough, when the Alsa bus arrived at 9am, she appeared.
We spent the whole day walking, up and up the Valcarce river valley. In the early afternoon, I submerged myself in the river, hearing only my heart beat within the freezing water.
Reaching O'Cebreiro in the late afternoon, we found it full (again). But this time, the next hostel was also full. Don't tell anyone, but we then took a taxi 5km to the next town, where a bar had free beds. It also had two extremely large, extremely affectionate dogs.
That night, we drank a lot of red wine. While my companion conversed with the bar owner about politics, I read and re-read the Wordsworth poem, before excitedly writing myself life advice like:
"Trust, trust, trust – even when it is insanity and feels
like well-worn mistake.
Trust, trust, trust.
Let go, and do not let go.
And love, love, love, love
(like this big loving dog)
Keep your voice, breathe your voice.
Speak truth, truth, truth"
Back to Wordsworth. Spoken aloud, its rhythms and rhymes weave and wind... they are a summoning spell. Its meaning is to be grasped, but also embodied and lived.
Here is an excerpt (the full poem is below):
Here is an excerpt (the full poem is below):
"The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest— 140
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise; 145
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realized, 150
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may, 155
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake, 160
To perish never:
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy! 165
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither, 170
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore."
Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood - William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and
every common sight,
To me did
seem
Apparell'd in
celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
5
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn
wheresoe'er I may,
By night
or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
The rainbow comes and goes,
10
And lovely is
the rose;
The moon doth
with delight
Look round her
when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a
starry night
Are beautiful
and fair; 15
The sunshine is a
glorious birth;
But yet I know,
where'er I go,
That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth.
Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the
young lambs bound 20
As to the
tabor's sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am
strong:
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
25
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the
earth is gay;
Land and
sea 30
Give themselves up
to jollity,
And with the
heart of May
Doth every beast
keep holiday;—
Thou Child
of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy
35
Shepherd-boy!
Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other
make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at
your festival, 40
My head hath its
coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.
O evil day! if
I were sullen
While Earth
herself is adorning,
This sweet
May-morning, 45
And the
children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand
valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers;
while the sun shines warm,
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm:— 50
I hear, I
hear, with joy I hear!
—But there's a
tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have look'd upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at
my feet 55
Doth the
same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
60
Hath had
elsewhere its setting,
And cometh
from afar:
Not in entire
forgetfulness,
And not in
utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 65
From God, who
is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the
growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, 70
He sees it in
his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still
is Nature's priest,
And by the
vision splendid
Is on his way
attended; 75
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a mother's mind, 80
And no
unworthy aim,
The homely nurse
doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories
he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.
85
Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!
90
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learnèd art;
A wedding or a
festival,
A mourning or a
funeral; 95
And this hath
now his heart,
And unto this he
frames his song:
Then will he
fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will
not be long 100
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new
joy and pride
The little actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his 'humorous stage'
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age, 105
That Life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his
whole vocation
Were endless
imitation.
Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul's
immensity; 110
Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,—
Mighty
prophet! Seer blest! 115
On whom those
truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a master o'er a slave, 120
A presence which is not to be put by;
To whom the
grave
Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight
Of day or the
warm light,
A place of thought where we in waiting lie; 125
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? 130
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
O joy! that in
our embers
Is something
that doth live, 135
That nature
yet remembers
What was so
fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest— 140
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—
Not for these
I raise
The song of
thanks and praise; 145
But for those
obstinate questionings
Of sense and
outward things,
Fallings from us,
vanishings;
Blank misgivings
of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realized, 150
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those
first affections,
Those shadowy
recollections,
Which, be they
what they may, 155
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish,
and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake, 160
To perish
never:
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man
nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy! 165
Hence in a season
of calm weather
Though inland
far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought
us hither,
Can in a moment
travel thither, 170
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the
young lambs bound
As to the
tabor's sound! 175
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and
ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the
gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright 180
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can
bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve
not, rather find
Strength in what
remains behind; 185
In the primal
sympathy
Which having
been must ever be;
In the soothing
thoughts that spring
Out of human
suffering;
In the faith
that looks through death,
190
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquish'd one delight 195
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely
yet; 200
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live, 205
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.
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