WORDSWORTH’S GREEN SPECTACLES
“On the 28th of April I went to Rydal Mount, to pay
my respects to Mr. Wordsworth. His daughters called
in their father, a plain, elderly, white-haired man, and
disfigured by green goggles.” Emerson. “English Traits.”
I
The Spectacles looked old and
out of date;
One lens was yellow and the
other blue.
So what the critics said
perhaps was true:
The young Romantic withered,
and was great
But in the first ideals that
he embraced--
Quite sallow in the works of
his decline.
And then I wondered how this
life of mine
Might seem to those who
judged it in a state
Divorced from what the Spirit
in me knew:
So I removed my spectacles a
while,
Replacing them with
Wordsworth’s, and did view
One Nature focused in a flux
of Green,
Combining Youth and Age in
every scene.
I laughed, and stayed the
critics with a smile.
II
From one old civil servant to
another,
This calling card I leave
upon your door.
Your home a tax collector can
afford;
And mine, a lowly clerk’s
house, is its brother--
Though not as elegant: I have
no other
In which to raise your ashes
back to life,
To read alone or out loud to
my wife.
I claim equality as Nature’s
lover,
And climb the stairs your
study to review;
See Windermere across the
misty hills;
Your garden of four acres;
rocky mews;
The terraces you graded on
the slopes;
And Dora’s Field, where you
had placed your hopes,
Though now without her golden
daffodils.
III
The Dove sat “brooding on the
vast abyss,”
And in its beak an olive
branch held out
Two hundred years at Town’s
End, on the route
They took that winter’s eve
when candles hissed
The frigid darkness into
shapes against
The corners of the rooms.
Here, words were born
That Coleridge praised and
Byron held in scorn;
Here etched in time were
common incidents.
The window through which
Walter Scott escaped
To breakfast at the Swan Inn,
sick of gruel;
The children's’ bedroom,
papered with the news:
Epiphanies domestic; counter
weights
To Fancy’s and Imagination’s
climb
Toward prophetic heights of
the Sublime.
IV
The Mind beholds the world
that it receives
From out its store of karma
from past lives.
Transfigured in this mirror,
all things strive
To reconcile themselves with
present deeds,
Projecting inward Nature
outwardly.
Imagination frees the
struggling Mind,
Which mastering its erring
senses five,
Pervades the world with Love,
and is redeemed.
The Poet read his Bible in
this light,
So far as to conceive Man’s
fall from Grace
To be his alienation from
that Might
Transcending Self and raising
Time and Space
In one Apocalypse, through
Nature traced
In tasting, touching,
smelling, sound and sight.
V
Now what can be the name of
“Nature’s God”
But that creative power which
conforms
The outer and the inner to
its norm,
Transfusing them together in
one Word
That comprehends the
universe, adored
In all its moral beauty?
Headstrong churls
Should not be handed such a
priceless pearl;
For them, the stern
Archangel’s flaming sword
Must guard the gates of Eden
that stand sealed
Within each man until he
knows the Law
To be that very Nature which,
revealed
In lichen’s grip and
scholar’s gravitas,
Surrounds him like miasma or
a dawn:
The world his own Imagination
yields.
VI
‘Tis Man creates the God who
is his Love,
Pervading every creature with
it till
Its Providence envelops
barren hills
And flooded valleys, clouds
that drift above,
The crawling serpent and the
brooding dove,
The lioness devouring her
prey,
The warrior whose vengeful
fury splays
His neighbor’s skull with axe
of sharpened stone.
No God exists if not through
Love that cares
For every being as its only
child,
O’erflowing from the will of
One who dares
To contemplate his enemies as
friends,
Indifferent to no one; who
intends
No more to live by hate and
fear beguiled.
VII
Whatever happened to the
Poet’s claim,
In the prospectus of his epic
work,
That he would pass beyond the
veil and look
Where neither chaos nor
Jehovah’s name
Deterred from its ascent the
Mind untamed?
That Wanderer whose pious
Christian views
Compelled the inspiration of
the Muse--
What vision had he into such
an aim?
The Worthy Ones who walk the
now and here,
See only in their seeing what
is seen,
And in their hearing only
what they hear;
And so with taste and touch
and smell, perceived
Through virtue of cognition.
Verily,
All they who truly wander
know this Sphere.
VIII
I carried my own burden up
the steep
And well worn Coffin Trail, forward
in time,
Away from Grasmere’s
churchyard; turned aside
Once, to avoid a decomposing
sheep
That lay the shadow of Nab
Scar beneath.
All dogs attacking livestock,
a sign warned,
Would be shot down. Too early
by some weeks
For Christmas carols, I spied
Rydal Cave,
Then sat upon a stone slab
where pallbearers
Would rest their load before
they reached the grave.
And lo! Within me the
resplendent Mere
Arose: a precious gem that I
shall frame
In memory as long as Light
remains.
IX
No matter what Optometrist
prescribes
What Spectacles for eyes that
strain to see,
The world that each man
brings to sight with these
Depends upon the Nature of
his Mind.
And so your Wordsworth cannot
be like mine,
But I must read in him the
worth of Words
That from my Inner Ear my
Thoughts have heard,
As Ocean’s murmurs through a
conch shell wind.
Each man amends his Opus
constantly,
For good or ill: Why blame
him when he molds
That vessel in a form that
will dispense
The Wisdom he has echoed from
the Sea,
In terms that his own life
and times present?
The Laureate’s true crown is this same goal.
X
The throbbing of my head was
from the strain
Those artificial lenses gave
my sight.
I had to take them off, to
get the right
Perspective on the insight I
have gained.
For even though one’s vision
be quite tame
Compared to what great Genius
has wrought,
No substitute is there for
what is brought
From one’s own wisdom, even
though in pain.
No spectacles can ever be
contrived
That they may not be taken
off and cleansed,
Or put back in their cases
‘till the time
One’s Spirit seeks them to
reveal its ends.
I take or leave my Master,
and so prove
The Nature of his noble
solitude.
