With trembling oars I turned,
And through the silent water stole my way
Back to the covert of the willow-tree;
There in her mooring-place I left my bark,
And through the meadows homeward went, in grave
And serious mood. But after I had seen
That spectacle, for many days, my brain
Worked with a dim and undetermined sense
Of unknown modes of being; o'er my thoughts
There hung a darkness--call it solitude,
Or blank desertion. No familiar shapes
Remained, no pleasant images of trees,
Of sea, or sky, no colours of green fields;
But huge and mighty forms, that do not live
Like living men, moved slowly thro' the mind
By day, and were a trouble to my dreams.
In the controversy as to the origin of the worship of inanimate
objects, or of the powers of Nature, this passage might fairly be
cited as an example of the manner in which those objects, or those
powers, can impress the mind with that awe which is the foundation
of savage creeds, while yet they are not identified with any human
intelligence, such as the spirits of ancestors or the like, nor even
supposed to operate according to any human, analogy.
Up to this point Wordsworth's reminiscences may seem simply to
illustrate the conclusions which science reaches by other roads.
Pages:
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182