Saturday, October 30, 2021

Those phantoms of conceit, That had been floating loose about so long

I am not, in general, a big fan of the Romantics.  For all their emotional sturm und drang, their prolixity, there are occasional beautiful gleams amongst the hills of verbiage.  This is from The Prelude by William Wordsworth.  

Oh, there is blessing in this gentle breeze,
That blows from the green fields and from the clouds
And from the sky; it beats against my cheek,
And seems half conscious of the joy it gives.
O welcome messenger! O welcome friend!

And then there is this, so great a description of a life and mind filled to the overflowing.

I spare to speak, my friend, of what ensued— 
The admiration and the love, the life
In common things, the endless store of things 
Rare, or at least so seeming, every day
Found all about me in one neighbourhood, 
The self-congratulations, the complete 
Composure, and the happiness entire.
But speedily a longing in me rose
To brace myself to some determined aim, 
Reading or thinking, either to lay up 
New stores, or rescue from decay the old 
By timely interference. I had hopes
Still higher, that with a frame of outward life 
I might endue, might fix in a visible home, 
Some portion of those phantoms of conceit, 
That had been floating loose about so long, 
And to such beings temperately deal forth 
The many feelings that oppressed my heart. 
But I have been discouraged: gleams of light 
Flash often from the east, then disappear, 
And mock me with a sky that ripens not
Into a steady morning. If my mind, 
Remembering the sweet promise of the past, 
Would gladly grapple with some noble theme, 
Vain is her wish—where’er she turns she finds 
Impediments from day to day renewed. 
 

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