Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.
Francis Turner Palgrave 1824–97William Wordsworth
PalgravFTG
And features by keen mountain air
Moulded to solemn ruggedness,
The man we came to see sat there:
Not apt for speech, nor quickly stirr’d
Unless when heart to heart replied;
A bearing equally remov’d
From vain display or sullen pride.
Known to the hillsides: on his head
Some five-and-seventy winters gone
Their crown of perfect white had shed:—
As snow-tipp’d summits toward the sun
In calm of lonely radiance press,
Touch’d by the broadening light of death
With a serener pensiveness.
O brighter crown of well-spent years!
The bard, the patriot, and the sage,
The heart that never bow’d to fears!
That was an age of soaring souls;
Yet none with a more liberal scope
Survey’d the sphere of human things;
None with such manliness of hope.
As musically sang as he;
To Nature as devoutly knelt,
Or toil’d to serve humanity:
But none with those ethereal notes,
That star-like sweep of self-control;
The insight into worlds unseen,
The lucid sanity of soul.
The autumn poison of the air,
The soul with its own self at strife,
He saw and felt, but could not share:
With eye made clear by pureness, pierced
The life of Man and Nature through;
And read the heart of common things,
Till new seem’d old, and old was new.
Bound in the bonds that all men share,—
Confess the failings as we must,
The lion’s mark is always there!
Nor any song so pure, so great
Since his, who closed the sightless eyes,
Our Homer of the war in Heaven,
To wake in his own Paradise.
O glories, in their budding sere!
O flaunting roll of Fame unfurl’d!
Here was the king—the hero here!
It was a strength and joy for life
In that great presence once to be;
That on the boy he gently smil’d,
That those white hands were laid on me.