This is the very substance of _The
Poet's Epitaph_ also; of the poem in which Wordsworth at the
beginning of his career describes himself as he continued till its
close,--the poet who "murmurs near the running brooks a music
sweeter than their own,"--who scorns the man of science "who would
peep and botanize upon his mother's grave."
The outward shows of sky and earth,
Of hill and valley, he has viewed;
And impulses of deeper birth
Have come to him in solitude.
In common things that round us lie
Some random truths he can impart,--
The harvest of a quiet eye
That broods and sleeps on his own heart.
But he is weak, both man and boy,
Hath been an idler in the land;
Contented if he might enjoy
The things which others understand.
Like much else in the literature of imperial Rome, the passage in
the second _Georgic_ to which I have referred is in its essence more
modern than the Middle Ages. Mediaeval Christianity involved a
divorce from the nature around us, as well as from the nature within.
With the rise of the modern spirit delight in the external world
returns; and from Chaucer downwards through the whole course of
English poetry are scattered indications of a mood which draws from
visible things an intuition of things not seen.
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