Stephen Parrish's Transcription of MS JJ
[Zv] |
a mild creative breeze |
a vital breeze that passes gently on |
O’er things which it has made and soon becomes |
A tempest a redundant energy |
Creating not but as it may |
disturbing things created. – |
a storm not terrible but strong |
with lights and shades and with rushing power |
trances of thought |
And mountings of the mind compared to which |
The wind that drives along the autumnal leaf |
Is meekness. |
what there is |
Of subtler feeling of remembered joy |
Of soul & spirit in departed sound |
That can not be remembered. |
a plain of leaves |
Whose matted surface spreads for many [?Leagues] |
A level prospect such as shepherds view |
from some high promontory when the sea |
Flames, & the sun is setting. |
[Zr] |
was it for this |
That one, the fairest of all rivers, loved |
To blend his murmurs with my nurse’s song |
And from his alder shades and rocky falls |
And from his fords and shallows sent a voice |
To intertwine my dreams, for this didst thou |
O Derwent – travelling over the green plains |
Near my sweet birth-place didst thou beauteous stream |
Give ceaseless music to the night & day |
Which with its steady cadence tempering |
Our human waywardness compose[d] my thought |
To more than infant softness giving me |
Amid the fretful tenements of man |
A knowledge, a dim earnest of the calm |
That Nature breathes among her woodland h[?aunts] |
Was it for this & now I speak of things |
That have been & that are no gentle dreams |
Complacent fashioned fondly to adorn |
The time of unrememberable being |
Was it for this that I a four years child |
[Yv] |
Beneath thy scars & in thy silent pools |
Made one long bathing of a summers day |
Basked in the sun or plungd into thy stream |
Alternate all a summers day, or coursd |
Over thy sandy plains & dashd the flowers |
Of Yellow grundsel or when the hill tops |
The woods & all the distant mountains |
Were bronzed with a deep radiance stood alone |
A naked savage in the thunder shower |
[For this] in springtime when on southern banks |
The shining sun had from his knot of leaves |
Decoyed the primrose flower and when the vales |
And woods were warm was I a rover then |
In the high places, on the lonely peak |
Among the mountains & the winds. Though mean |
And though inGlorious were my views the end |
Was not ignoble. Oh when I have hung |
Above the ravens nest, have hung alone |
By half inch fissures in the slippery rock |
But ill sustained and almost as it seemed |
Suspended by the wind which blew amain |
Against the naked cragg ah then |
[Xv] |
While on the perilous edge I hung alone |
With what strange utterance did the loud dry wind |
Blow through my ears the sky seemd not a sky |
Of earth, and with what motion moved the clouds |
Ah not in vain ye beings of the hills |
And ye that walk the woods and open heaths |
By moon or starlight thus from my first day |
Of childhood did ye love to interweave |
The passions [ ] |
Not with the mean & vullgar works of man |
But with high objects with eternal things |
With life & nature, purifying thus |
The elements of feiling & of thought |
[Yr] |
And sanctifying by such disc[i]pline |
Both pain & fear untill we recognize |
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart. |
[Wr] |
Ah not in vain ye spirits of the springs |
And ye that have your voices in the clouds |
And ye that are familiars of the Lakes |
And standing pools, ah not for trivial ends |
Through snow & sunshine & the sparkling plains |
Of moonlight frost and through the stormy [?day] |
Did ye with such assiduous love pursue |
[Wv] |
Your favourite and your joy |
I may not think |
A vulgar hope was your’s when ye employd |
Such ministry when ye through many a year |
Thus by the agency of boyish sports |
Impressed upon the stream[s] the woods the hill[s] |
Impressed upon all form[s] the character |
Of danger & desire & thus did make |
The surface of the universal earth |
With meanings of delight of hope & fear |
Work like a sea. – |
For this when on the witherd mountain slope |
The frost and breath of frosty wind had nipped |
The last autumnal crocus did I love |
To range through half the night among the cliffs |
And the smooth hollows where the woodcocks ran |
Along the moonlight turf. In thought and wish |
That time my shoulder all with springes hung |
I was a fell destroyer |
Gentle power[s], |
Who give us happiness & call it peace |
[Xr] |
When running on from snare to snare I plied |
My anxious visitation hurrying on |
Still hurrying hurryin[g] onward, how my heart |
Panted: among the lonely eughtrees & the crags |
That looked upon me how my bosom beat |
With hope & fear. – Sometimes strong desire |
Resistless over came me & the bird |
Th[at] was the captive of another’s toils |
Became my prey, and then [ ] I heard |
Low breathings coming after me and sounds |
Of indistinguishable motion steps |
Almost as silent as the turf they trod. |
[Ur] |
Nor while, thou[gh] doubting yet not lost, I tread |
The mazes of this argument, and paint |
How Nature by collateral interest |
And by extrinsic passion peopled first |
My mind with beauteous objects may I well |
Forget what might demand a loftier song |
How oft the eternal spirit, he that has |
His life in unimaginable things |
And he who painting what he is in all |
The visible imagery of all the worlds |
Is yet apparent chiefly as the soul |
Of our first sympathies – Oh bounteous power |
In childhood, in rememberable days |
How often did thy love renew for me |
Those naked feelings which when thou wouldst form |
A living thing thou sendest like a breeze |
Into its infant being. Soul of things |
[Uv] |
How often did thy love renew for me |
Those hallowed & pure motions of the sense |
Which seem in their simplicity to own |
An intellectual charm: that calm delight |
Which if I err not surely must belong |
To those first born affinities which fit |
Our new existence to existing things |
And in our dawn of being constitute |
The bond of union betwixt life & joy. |
Yes, I remember when the changeful earth |
And twice five seasons on my mind had stamped |
The faces of the changeful year, even then, |
A child I held unconscious intercourse |
With the eternal beauty drinking in |
A pure organic pleasure from the lines |
Of curling mist or from the smooth expanse |
Of waters coloured by the cloudless moon |
[Vr] |
The sands of Westmoorland the creeks & bays |
Of Cumbria’s rocky limits they can tell |
How when the sea threw off his evening shade |
And to the shepherds hut beneath the craggs |
Did send sweet notice of the rising moon |
How I have stood to images like this |
A stranger li[n]king with the spectacle |
No body of associated forms |
And bearing with [me] no peculiar sense |
Of quietness or peace yet I have stood |
Even while my eye has moved oer three long leagues |
Of shining water, gathering as it seemed |
[ ] |
New pleasure like a bee among the flowers – |
Nor unsubservient even to noblest ends |
Are these primordial feeling[s] how serene |
How calm those seem amid the swell |
Of human passion even yet I feel |
Their tranquillizing power |
[Sr] |
There was a boy ye knew him well, ye rocks |
And islands of Winander & ye green |
Peninsulas of Esthwaite many a time |
[ ] When the stars began |
To move along the edges of the hills |
Rising or setting would he stand alone |
Beneath the trees or by the glimmering lakes |
And through his fingers woven in one close knot |
Blow mimic hootings to the silent owls |
And bid them answer him. And they would shout |
Across the watry vale & shout again |
Responsive to my call with tremulous sobs |
And long halloos & screams & echoes loud |
Redoubld & redoubld a wild scene |
Of mirth & jocund din. And when it chanced |
That pauses of deep silence mocked my skill |
Then, often, in that silence while I hung |
Listening a sudden shock of mild surprize |
Would carry far into my heart the voice |
Of mountain torrents: or the visible scene |
Would enter unawares into my mind |
With all its solemn imagery its rocks |
Its woods & that uncertain heaven rece[i]ved |
Into the bosom of the steady lake |
[Sv] |
I went alone into a shepherd’s boat |
A skiff which to a willow tree was tied |
With [ ] it[s] usual home |
The moon was up the lake was shining clear |
Among the hoary mountains: from the shore |
I push'd and struck the oars and struck again |
In cadence and my little boat moved on |
Just like a man who walks with stately step |
Though bent on speed: A rocky steep uprose |
Above the cavern of the willow-tree |
And as beseemed a man who proudly rowed |
With his best speed I fixd a steady view |
Upon the top of that same shaggy ridge |
The bound of the horizon for behind |
Was nothing but the stars & the gray sky |
She was an elfin pinnace, twenty times |
I dipp'd my oars into the silent lake |
And [as] I rose upon the stroke my boat |
Went heaving through the water like a swan |
It was an act of stealth |
And troubled pleasure not without the voice |
Of mountain echoes did my boat move on |
Leaving behind [her] still on either side |
Small circles glittering idly in the moon |
Until they melted all into one track |
[Tr] |
Of sparkling light. |
[Rv] |
When from behind that rocky steep, till then |
The bound of the horizon a huge cliff |
As if with voluntary power instinct |
Uprear'd its head I struck & struck again |
And growing still in stature the huge cliff |
Rose up between me and the stars & still |
With measured motion like a living thing |
Strode after me. With trembling hands I turnd |
And through the silent water stole my way |
Back to the willow tree, the mooring place |
Of my small bark. |
Unusual was the power |
Of that strange sight for many day[s] my brain |
Worked with a dim & undetermin'd sense |
Of unknown modes of being in my thought |
There was a darkness call it solitude |
Or strange desertion no familiar shapes |
Of hourly objects images of trees |
Of sea or sky no colours of green fields |
But huge & mighty forms that do not live |
Like living men moved slowly through my mind |
By day, and were the trouble of my dreams – |
[Rr] |
The soul of man is fashioned & built up |
Just like a strain of music I believe |
That there are spirits which when they would form |
A favoured being open out the clouds |
As at the touch of lightning seeking him |
With gentle visitation and with such |
Though rarely in my wanderings I have held |
Communion Others too there are who use |
Yet haply aiming at the self-same end |
Severer interventions ministry |
Of grosser kind & of their school was I |
[Pv] |
I would not strike a flower |
As many a man would strike his horse; at least |
If from the wantonness in which we play |
With things we love, or from a freak of power |
Or from involuntary act of hand |
Or foot unruly with excess of life |
It eer should chance that I ungently used |
A tuft of [ ] or snapped the stem |
Of foxglove bending oer his native rill |
I should be loth to pass along my road |
With unreproved indifference I would stop |
Self questi[o]ned, asking wherefore that was done |
For seeing little worthy or sublime |
In what we blazon with the names of power |
And action I was early taught to love |
[Qr] |
Those unassuming things, that occupy |
A Silent station in this beauteous world |
[Qv] |
Those beauteous colours of my early years |
Which make the starting-place of being fair |
And worthy of the goal to which [?she] tends |
Those hours that cannot die those lovely forms |
And sweet sensations which throw back our life |
And make our infancy a visible scene |
On which the sun is shining |