Wordsworth

Sunset is on the dial: and I know
My hands are feeble and my head is white
With many snows, and in my dim old eyes
Light plays the miser with a frugal care,
And soon the curtain drops. But still I know,
The soul in sceptred majesty of will
Leaves not the Royal dais.
The ancient winds
Still chant around me all the solemn themes
I Iearn'd when young; and in the hollow flower
I hear the murmur left there by the bee;
And jubilant rivers laugh and clap their hands
Amid the leaning hills that nurse them there;
And far away I see the mountains lift
Their silent tops to heaven, like thoughts
Too vast for speech; and over all, the sun
Stands by his flaming altar, and beholds,
As he beheld through many centuries gone,
The holocausts of light roll up to Heaven;
And when the evening calls her starry flock,
I know that Mazzaroth will sit and sing
Within his azure house; and I shall hear
The inmost melody of every star,
And know the meaning of the mystic sea:
And in the deep delight their presence gives
I shall be calm, and nevermore complain
That still the play — a venerable play,
World-wide — of this humanity goes on,
Still dark the plot, the issues unperceived.
So, with all things thus filling every sense,
The soul in sceptred majesty of will,
Sits on her royal dais.
Then why should I
My office yield, and let the general hymn
Unheeded harmonize the jangling space!
By action only doth Creation hold
Her charter — and, that gone, the worlds are dead:
Nor is't in souls which would the noblest find,
To rest contentedly upon old wreaths.
I will not rest and unmelodious die;
But with my full wreath round these thin, white hairs,
And rhythmic lips, and vision kindling up,
March through the silent halls, and bravely pass
Right on into the land that lies beyond,
Where he, my brother-bard, whose spirit seem'd
A mystical bright moon, whose influence wrought
The dull earth's ocean of dim sleep to life
And spectral motion — that majestic bard,
Who went before, choiring his lofty hymn,
Watches my coming on the Aiden hills.
But what the burden of that latest song
Will be, as yet I know not — nor the rhythm
That shall go beating with her silver feet
The sounding aisles of thought: but this I hope —
A listening world will hear that latest lay,
And seat it near the fireside of its heart
Forevermore, and by the embers' light
Look fondly on its face, as men of old
Look'd on the faces of the angel guests
Who tarried sometimes in their pastoral homes —
As this last hymn, befitting well the time
And circumstance, shall wear a holiest smile,
And show the might, the loveliness of song,
For Poetry is enthroned by his own right.
I hear his cadences in every breeze;
I see his presence fill the dark-blue lake,
Like an old melody; and I know
He is a living and immortal power.
No matter where he lifts his natural voice,
All men shall crown him as a gentle god
Who, wandering through his heritage of earth,
Makes pleasant music in the lowly huts
Where poor men ply their rugged toil; who smiles
Within the mellow sunbeams, when they pain;
The swelling upland, where October sits,
Holding her hands to catch the dropping fruit;
Who stands upon the hazy mountain-top,
Beautiful as the light; who, solemn, chants
Full many a rune in every sunless hall
Down in the deep, deep sea, and sways all things,
The angel of the world; who soars at will
Into the ample air, and walks the storm;
Or waves his wand upon the solemn stars,
Orion and the Pleiades, and rules
Their people by a gentle law; or stands
Imperial in the large red sun, and charms
The sky until its glorious passion finds
A language in the thunder and the cloud,
And in the rainbow, chorusing all hues,
And in the splendour of the broad, bright moon
That builds her Venice in a sea of air.
Most haply I shall sing some simple words,
Rich with the wealth experience gives to Time —
An antique tale of beauty and of tears:
Or I may wander in my thought afar
Where men have built their homes in forests vast,
And see the Atlantic rest his weary feet
And lift his large blue eyes on other stars:
Or hear the sire of many waters hoarse
: Coleridge.
With counting centuries, and rolling through
The dim magnificence of stately woods,
Whose huge trunks sentinel a thousand leagues
His deep libation to the waiting sea;
Then would I join the choral preludes swelling
Between the wondrous acts of that great play
Which Time is prompting in another sphere:
Or I may wander in my thought after
To ruins gray of columns overthrown,
And then lift up a song of tender grief
Amid the glorious temples crumbling there —
The beautiful records of a world which was,
Majestic types of what a world must be:
Or I may turn to themes that have no touch
Of sorrow in them, piloted by Joy,
And raise the burial-stone from shrouded years,
And hear the laugh of youth clear ringing out,
Or feel once more a sweet religious awe,
Such as I felt when floated holy chimes
In boyhood's ear, and such as stern men feel
When, passing by cathedral doors, they hear
A dim-remembered psalm roll softly out
And fill their eyes with tears, they know not why:
Then shall I sing of children blooming o'er
The desolate wide heath of life, like flowers
Which daring men had stolen from paradise,
When near its gate the wearied cherub slept
And dream'd of heaven. Or to some pastoral vale
Shall pass my trembling feet? There shall I pour
To Nature, loved in all her many moods,
A chant sublimely earnest. I shall tell
To all the tribes with what a stately step
She walks the silent wilderness of air,
Which always puts its starry foliage on
At her serene approach, or in her lap
Scatters its harvest-wealth of golden suns:
And many a brook shall murmur in my verse;
And many an ocean join his cloudy bass;
And many a mountain tower aloft, whereon
The black storm crouches, with his deep-red eyes
Glaring upon the valleys stretch'd below:
And many a green wood rock the small, bright birds
To musical sleep beneath the large, full moon;
And many a star shall lift on high her cup
Of luminous cold chrysolite — set hi gold
Chased subtily over by angelic art —
To catch the odorous dews which seraphs drink
In their wide wanderings; and many a sun
Shall press the pale lips of the timorous morn
Couch'd in the bridal east: and over all
Will brood the visible presence of the One
To whom my life has been a solemn chant.
Then let the sunset fall and flush Life's dial!
No matter how the years may smite my frame,
And cast a piteous blank upon my eyes
That seek in vain the old accustomed stars
Which skies hold over blue Winandermere;
Be sure that T, a crowned bard, will sing
Until within the murmuring bark of verse
My spirit bears majestically away,
Charming to golden hues the gulf of death —
Well knowing that upon my honour'd grave,
Beside the widow'd lakes that wail for me,
Haply the dust of four great worlds will fall
And mingle — thither brought by pilgrims' feet.