Much of The
Excursion cannot be called poetry at all. Yet, as one of
Wordsworth's great admirers has said: "In deserts of preaching
we find delightful oases of poetry."* There is little action in
The Excursion, and much of it is merely dull descriptions and
conversations. So I would not advise you to read it for a long
time to come. But to try rather to understand some of
Wordworth's shorter poems, although at times their names may seem
less inviting.
*Morley.
One of the most beautiful of all his poems Wordsworth calls by
the cumbrous name of Intimations of Immorality from recollections
of Early Childhood. This is his way of saying that when we are
small we are nearer the wonder-world than when we grow up, and
that when we first open our eyes on this world they have not
quite forgotten the wonderful sights they saw in that eternity
whence we came, for the soul has no beginning, therefore no
ending. I will give you here one verse of this poem:--
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily further from the east
Must travel , still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
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