More Pages from a Journal Part 11

In the post-office at Kilve hangs an old trombone, a memento of the time when the village orchestra a.s.sisted in the service at the church. How well I remember those artists and their jealousies!

The clarionet or 'clarnet,' as he called himself, caused much ill- feeling because he drowned the others, and the double-ba.s.s strove ineffectually to avenge himself. The churchyard yew is one of the largest I ever beheld--twenty feet in girth by measurement, four feet from the ground. A gay morning: heavy, white ma.s.ses of clouds sailing over the hills; light most brilliant when the sun came out.

How singularly beautiful is a definitely outlined white cloud when it is cut by the ridge of a hill!

Across the hills in a south-westerly storm of wind and rain to Bicknoller. A walk not to be forgotten: overcast sky, dark moors; clouds sweeping over them and obscuring them. I should not have found my way if I had not lost it when I went to Bicknoller before.

I then put three stones at the point where I afterwards discovered I had gone astray. These three stones saved me to-day.

Whitsunday morning: sat at the open window between five and six: the hills opposite lay in the light of the eastern sun. Bicknoller church and the little old village were beneath me. Perfect quietude, save for the bells of Stogumber church ringing a peal two miles away. Earth has nothing to give compared with this peace.

The air was so still that delicious mingled scents floated up from the garden and fields below. It was one of those days on which every sense is satisfied, and no mortal imperfection appears. Took the Excursion out of doors after breakfast, and read The Ruined Cottage.

Much of the religion by which Wordsworth lives is very indefinite.

Look at the close of this poem:-

'I well remember that those very plumes, Those weeds, and the high spear-gra.s.s on that wall By mist and silent rain-drops silver'd o'er, As once I pa.s.s'd, did to my heart convey So still an image of tranquillity, So calm and still, and look'd so beautiful Amid the uneasy thoughts which fill'd my mind, That what we feel of sorrow and despair From ruin and from change, and all the grief The pa.s.sing shows of Being leave behind, Appear'd an idle dream, that could not live Where meditation was. I turn'd away, And walk'd along my road in happiness.'

Because this religion is indefinite it is not therefore the less supporting.

Why, by the way, did Wordsworth expunge from Michael these wonderful lines?

'In his thoughts there were obscurities, Wonder, and admiration, things that wrought Not less than a religion in his heart.'

Something like them had been said before, but they ought to have been retained.

The changes in the sky in this Quantock country are as sudden and strange as in c.u.mberland. During a walk from Cleeve Abbey to Bicknoller it rained in torrents till within half a mile of the end of my journey. All at once it ceased, and the uniform sheet of rain-cloud broke into loose ragged ma.s.ses swirling in different directions and variously lighted, the sun almost s.h.i.+ning through some of the clefts between them. Cleeve Abbey, lying in the trough of a green valley through which runs a stream, the cloister garth and the Abbot's seat at the end of it, are most impressive. Under the turf lie the dead monks. A place like this begets half- unconscious dreaming which issues in nothing and is not wholesome.

It would be better employment to learn something about the history of the abbey and about its architecture.

DETACHED QUANTOCK NOTES.

Ye Woods! that listen to the night-birds' singing, Midway the smooth and perilous slope reclined, Save where your own imperious branches swinging, Have made a solemn music of the wind.'

These lines from France were written by Coleridge when he was a little over twenty-five years old. In the combination of two gifts, music and meaning, he is hardly surpa.s.sable at his best by any poet.

Not an atom of meaning is sacrificed to gain a melody: in fact the melody adds to the meaning.

Here is another example showing how the poetic form with Coleridge is not a hindrance to expression, but aids it.

Gentle woman, for thy voice remeasures Whatever tones and melancholy pleasures The things of Nature utter; birds or trees, Or moan of ocean-gale in weedy caves, Or where the stiff gra.s.s 'mid the heath-plant waves, Murmur and music thin of sudden breeze.'

His similitudes are not mere external comparisons; the objects compared become MODES of unity. 'A brisk gale and the foam that peopled the ALIVE [italics C.'s] sea, most interestingly combined with the number of white seagulls, that, repeatedly, it seemed as if the foam-spit had taken life and wing, and had flown up.'

The intimations which are but whispered, the Presences which are but half-disclosed, are those which we should intently obey. The coa.r.s.ely obvious has its own strength.

'She went forth alone Urged by the indwelling angel-guide, that oft, With dim inexplicable sympathies Disquieting the heart, shapes out Man's course To the predoomed adventure.'

Destiny of Nations.

Wordworth's habit of spending so much time in the open air and with the humble people around him gives to what he says the value of experience, distinguishable totally from the ideas of the literary man, which may be brilliant, but do not agree with the sun, moon and stars, and turn out to be nothing when we ask is the thing really SO.

Wordsworth's verses have been in the sun and wind. It is a test of good sane writing that we can read it out of doors.

If Wordsworth's love of clouds and mountains ended there it would be no better than the luxury of a refined taste. But it does not end there. It affects the whole of his relations.h.i.+ps with men and women, and is therefore most practical.

In Wordsworth what we expect does not come, but in its place the unexpected. In the twelfth book of the Prelude he tells us:

There are in our existence spots of time, That with distinct pre-eminence retain A renovating virtue, whence, depressed By false opinion and contentious thought, Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight In trivial occupations, and the round Of ordinary intercourse, our minds Are nourished and invisibly repaired; A virtue, by which pleasure is enhanced, That penetrates, enables us to mount, When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen.

This efficacious spirit chiefly lurks Among those pa.s.sages of life that give Profoundest knowledge to what point, and how, The mind is lord and master--outward sense The obedient servant of her will.'

He then gives us one of these 'pa.s.sages,' and what is it? A day when as a child he saw

'A naked pool that lay beneath the hills, The beacon on the summit, and, more near, A girl, who bore a pitcher on her head, And seemed with difficult steps to force her way Against the blowing wind.'

It was, as he says, an 'ordinary sight,' but

'Colours and words that are unknown to man'

would have failed him

'To paint the visionary dreariness'

which invested what he saw.

Years afterwards, when he revisited the spot, the 'loved one at his side,' there fell on it

'A spirit of pleasure and youth's golden gleam; And think ye not with radiance more sublime For these remembrances, and for the power They had left behind? So feeling comes in aid Of feeling, and diversity of strength Attends us, if but once we have been strong.'