Part 20 (1/2)

Terrible weather for the last two months, but this is horrible! Thunder and lightning, floods of rain, and volleys of hail, with such frantic winds. December 1806.

[This note was written when S. T. C. was staying with Wordsworth at the Hall Farm, Coleorton.]

[Sidenote: MOONLIGHT GLEAMS AND Ma.s.sY GLORIES]

In the first [entrance to the wood] the spots of moonlight of the wildest outlines, not unfrequently approaching so near to the shape of man and the domestic animals most attached to him as to be easily confused with them by fancy and mistaken by terror, moved and started as the wind stirred the branches, so that it almost seemed like a flight of recent spirits, sylphs and sylphids dancing and capering in a world of shadows. Once, when our path was over-canopied by the meeting boughs, as I halloed to those a stone-throw behind me, a sudden flash of light dashed down, as it were, upon the path close before me, with such rapid and indescribable effect that my life seemed s.n.a.t.c.hed away from me--not by terror but by the whole attention being suddenly and unexpectedly seized hold of--if one could conceive a violent blow given by an unseen hand, yet without pain or local sense of injury, of the weight falling here or there, it might a.s.sist in conceiving the feeling. This I found was occasioned by some very large bird, who, scared by my noise, had suddenly flown upward, and by the spring of his feet or body had driven down the branch on which he was aperch.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote B: When instead of the general feeling of the lifeblood in its equable individual motion, and the consequent wholeness of the one feeling of the skin, we feel as if a heap of ants were running over us--_the one_ corrupting into _ten thousand_--so in _araneosis_, instead of the one view of the air, or blue sky, a thousand specks, etc., dance before the eye. The metaphor is as just as, of a metaphor, anyone has a right to claim, but it is clumsily expressed.]

[Footnote C: I have the same anxiety for my friend now in England as for myself, that is to be, or may be, two months hence.]

[Footnote D: ”A prison so constructed that the inspector can see each of the prisoners at all times without being seen by them.”]

CHAPTER V

_September 1806--December 1807_

Alas! for some abiding-place of love, O'er which my spirit, like the mother dove, Might brood with warming wings!

S. T. C.

[Sidenote: DREAMS AND SHADOWS]

I had a confused shadow rather than an image in my recollection, like that from a thin cloud, as if the idea were descending, though still in some measureless height.

As when the taper's white cone of flame is seen double, till the eye moving brings them into one s.p.a.ce and then they become one--so did the idea in my imagination coadunate with your present form soon after I first gazed upon you.

And in life's noisiest hour There whispers still the ceaseless love of thee, The heart's self-solace and soliloquy.

You mould my hopes, you fas.h.i.+on me within, And to the leading love-throb in my heart Through all my being, all my pulses beat.

You lie in all my many thoughts like light, Like the fair light of dawn, or summer light, On rippling stream, or cloud-reflecting lake-- And looking to the Heaven that beams above you, How do I bless the lot that made me love you!

[Sidenote: KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING]

In all processes of the understanding the shortest way will be discovered the last and this, perhaps, while it const.i.tutes the great advantage of having a teacher to put us on the shortest road at the first, yet sometimes occasions a difficulty in the comprehension, inasmuch as the longest way is more near to the existing state of the mind, nearer to what if left to myself, on starting the thought, I should have thought next. The shortest way gives me the _knowledge_ best, but the longest makes me more _knowing_.

[Sidenote: PARTISANS AND RENEGADES]