He then gives us one of these ‘passages,’ and what is it? A day when as a child he saw
‘A naked pool that lay beneath the hills, The beacon on the summit, and, more near, A girl, who bore a pitcher on her head, And seemed with difficult steps to force her way Against the blowing wind.’
It was, as he says, an ‘ordinary sight,’ but
‘Colours and words that are unknown to man’
Years afterwards, when he revisited the spot, the ‘loved one at his side,’ there fell on it
‘A spirit of pleasure and youth’s golden gleam; And think ye not with radiance more sublime For these remembrances, and for the power They had left behind? So feeling comes in aid Of feeling, and diversity of strength Attends us, if but once we have been strong.’
This was the experience, then, of ‘distinct pre-eminence’ in whose recollection his mind was ‘nourished and invisibly repaired.’ It is in such a moment that the soul’s strength is shown; when common objects evoke what he calls the imagination, the reality, of which they are a suggestion. Although he expands here and elsewhere he does not elaborate. He stops where the fact ends and shuns abstractions.
‘So taught, so trained, we boldly face All accidents of time and place; Whatever props may fail, Trust in that sovereign law can spread New glory o’er the mountain’s head, Fresh beauty through the vale.’
This is from _The Wishing-Gate Destroyed_, a late poem, not published till 1842, when Wordsworth was seventy-two years old. It is his Nicene and Apostles’ Creed and Thirty-Nine Articles. Trust, with no credentials but its own existence, and yet they are indisputable.
‘Is it that Man is soon deprest? A thoughtless Thing! who, once unblest, Does little on his memory rest, Or on his reason.’
An example of Wordsworth’s wisdom disclosing itself in his simplest pieces. For one sad conclusion to which the reason leads us, the uncontrolled, baseless procedure in the brain which we call thinking, but is really day-dreaming, leads us to a score. Reason on the whole is sanative.
‘Blest Statesman He, whose Mind’s unselfish will Leaves him at ease among grand thoughts: whose eye Sees that, apart from magnanimity, Wisdom exists not, nor the humbler skill Of Prudence, disentangling good and ill With patient care.’