Gents Mag 1850 part 2 p.464
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Gentleman's Magazine 1850 part 2 p.464
The congregating temper that pervades Our unripe years, not wasted, should be taught To minister to works of high attempt - Works which the enthusiast would perform with love. Youth should be awed, religiously possessed With a conviction of the power that waits On knowledge, when sincerely sought and prized For its own sake, on glory and on praise If but by labour won, and fit to endure The passing day; should learn to put aside Her trappings here, should strip them off abashed Before antiquity and stedfast truth And strong book-minded-ness; and over all A healthy sound simplicity should reign, A seemly plainness, name it what you will, Republican or pious. "The long vacation" restored Wordsworth to haunts more congenial to his temper that either the gaieties or solemnities of Cambrdige. But we must pass over the fourth chapter entirely, and merely extract from the fifth a dream of the poet's which for its clear and sublime vision is surpassed, in our opinion, by nine of his later creations, and has few rivals in the entire cycle of verse, Christian or heathen. We have said already that Wordsworth fervently admired the sublimer mathematics. The poet and geometrician are in fact correlates of one another: both reign over a realm of order: both are independent of the fleeting forms and fashions of social existence, and divide, as it were, between them the world of human power. The dream is this: the poet had been reading "Don Quixote" by the sea side, and while his brain was still impressed with the delicate tracery of Cervantain fancy, he wandered, as if by an unconscious antagonism of thought, into speculations upon pure geometry; at length "his senses yielded to the sultry air," and he passed into a dream. I saw before me stretched a boundless plain Of sandy wilderness, all black and void, And, as I looked around, distress and fear Came creeping over me, when at my side - Close at my side - an uncouth shape appeared Upon a dromedary, mounted high. He seemed an Arab of the Bedouin tribes: A lance he bore, and underneath one arm A stone, and in the opposite hand a shell Of a surpassing brightness. At the sight Much I rejoiced, not doubting but a guide Was present, one who with unerring skill Would through the deseert lead me; and while yet I looked and looked, self-questioned what this freight Which this new comer carried through the waste Could mean, the Arab told me that the stone (To give it in the language of the dream) Was "Euclid's Elements;" and "This," said he, "Is something of more worth;" and at the word Stretched forth the shell, so beautiful in shape, In colour so resplendent, with command That I should hold it to my ear. I did so, And heard that instant in an unknown tongue, Which yet I understood, articulate sounds, A loud prophetic blast of harmony: An ode, in passion uttered, which foretold Destruction to the children of the earth By deluge, now at hand. No sooner ceased The song, than the Arab with calm look declared That all would come to pass of which the voice Had given forewarning, and that he himself |
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