Poetry. Wordsworth
The fundamentalists and evangelicals with whom I was raised, would have little truck with the Romantics. Wordsworth’s “Intimations of immortality” was a particular bete noir.
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:
“Trailing clouds of glory” indeed! But what about original sin! Harrumph.
But I grew to love at least one of Wordsworth’s poems, the one I had to learn by heart in High School. Here it is.
Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
Romantic indeed, but none the worse for that. Many cities have their own sweet beauty.
In Infants’ School we sang:
“The world looks very beautiful,
And full of joy to me.
The sun shines out in glory
On everything I see.
I know I will be happy
While in the world I stay.
For I will follow Jesus
All the way”.
My home City of Bristol is quite hilly, and from our back bedroom there was a wonderful panoramic view of the City, from Dundry in the south to Purdown in the north. Centre view was the physics laboratory for Bristol University in a building named “The Royal Fort”.
(It was on the site of a fort which Prince Rupert had built during the English Civil War, of which only the gatehouse remains today.)
The Royal Fort had a metallic roof. One day, when I was five or six, I took in the view and that roof glistened in the morning sun. I knew it. I got it.
“The world looks very beautiful,
And full of joy to me.
The sun shines out in glory
On everything I see”
Even on a physics lab!
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:
“Trailing clouds of glory” indeed! But what about original sin! Harrumph.
But I grew to love at least one of Wordsworth’s poems, the one I had to learn by heart in High School. Here it is.
Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
Romantic indeed, but none the worse for that. Many cities have their own sweet beauty.
In Infants’ School we sang:
“The world looks very beautiful,
And full of joy to me.
The sun shines out in glory
On everything I see.
I know I will be happy
While in the world I stay.
For I will follow Jesus
All the way”.
My home City of Bristol is quite hilly, and from our back bedroom there was a wonderful panoramic view of the City, from Dundry in the south to Purdown in the north. Centre view was the physics laboratory for Bristol University in a building named “The Royal Fort”.
(It was on the site of a fort which Prince Rupert had built during the English Civil War, of which only the gatehouse remains today.)
The Royal Fort had a metallic roof. One day, when I was five or six, I took in the view and that roof glistened in the morning sun. I knew it. I got it.
“The world looks very beautiful,
And full of joy to me.
The sun shines out in glory
On everything I see”
Even on a physics lab!
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