42 WORDSWORTH'S SENSE OF SOUND. And wicked exultation when good men For this uneasy heart of ours, I find An illustration of the spiritual, the mystical charm of Wordsworth's poems is seen in the wonderful information and power of his Sense of Hearing; in this he excels all other poets; not in Shakspeare himself are the allusions to every variety and combination of Sound so varied and intensified. It is worthy of notice that it is by Sound rather than by sight that we become acquainted with the spiritual world; sound is the most spiritual conductor; language is not so mere a symbol as vision, and the impressions derived from sight: all our abstractions are derived by us through sound; the spirit sealed from sound is closed up to more utter desolation than the spirit sealed from sight; the blind have many brethren gifted beyond any of their race, the deaf have few, * Prelude. COMBINATION OF POETIC SOUND. 43 perhaps none. The impression of sound too, is more powerful and permanent than sight; thunder is more terrific than lightning;-is any thing added to the beauty and the majesty of the roaring waterfall by the rainbow arching over it? Eargate seems to be a more important avenue of communication than Eyegate. "Where the Ear never hearkens the Eye never sees.' " And if space admitted it would be a most curious and profitable matter for speculation how far, for the major portion of our ideas we are indebted to the one or the other; certainly if light brings us into most intimate > acquaintance with the scenery of nature, yet sound to higher natures is suggestive of more profound emotion; it is only by such natures that the majesty of "expressive silence" is perceived; what human breast has not again and again been shaken by all the varied thrillings and sensations produced by sound; for if we will reflect upon it, all sound is electrical—is spiritual; language however meagre, is sound made material and intelligible. Wordsworth in his ode to sound has summoned all the voices of nature to his inspiration, Sighs, Shrieks, and Hosannas, "Voices and shadows, and images of voice," "the Nun's faint Throb of holy fear," "The sailor's Prayer breathed from a darkening sea. The cottage widow's Lullaby;" the Shout of the Cuckoo from the hill; the Toll or Striking of the old church Bell, or minster Clock; the • Schiller. 44 SPIRITUALITY OF SOUND. Words, earth to earth, and the Rattle of the clay on the coffin lid; the Hum of bees; the Voice of birds; the glad Uproar of children at play; the Bark of the watch dog, or the fox; the Tinkling of the sheep Bell; the Song of the nightingale in the deep covert of the grove, or of merry milk-maids in the meadows; Eloquence; the voice of the Storm among the pines, or Thunder among the mountains; the Wail of the Organ in the old abbey, "When the tubed engine feels the inspiring blast And has begun its clouds of sound to cast Forth towards Empyreal Heaven, As if the fretted roof were riven." All these and a thousand other notes than these are intimations of power to us; our spirits are stringed instruments, and these varied winds sweep over the chords and call forth the music within us; in this conception lies the power of sound, and that it is ever symbolic, we are guided to the origin of music "When civic renovation Dawns on a kingdom, and for needful haste Of promises shrill, wild, and sweet." The power of music on the Wild Beast of the Wilderness is finely painted, "The pipe of Pan to Shepherds, Couch'd in the shadow of Mæalian pines SPIRITUALITY OF SOUND. Was passing sweet; the eye-balls of the Leopards This way and that, with wild flowers crowned." 45 And in the following lines descriptive of Skating, we catch the glimpse of the sparkling steel, and the swiftly flying forms, not by any description of the physique of the scene, but by the Creaking of the Ice, and the dropping of the icicle from the tree, or the plunge of the snow-drift into the abyss below, startling the clear winter echoes, we have already aroused, while "The precipices rang aloud; The leafless trees and every icy crag Tinkled like iron; while the distant hills Into the tumult sent an alien sound Of melancholy, not unnoticed." But the references to sound and its influnce are scattered with such affluence thro' the volumes of the poet, that the citations can only be by way of illustration. Sound is made almost the soul of all things. "By one pervading spirit Of tones and numbers all things are controlled." The heavens are filled with everlasting harmony,-" the ocean is a mighty harmonist," the skylark is a "Happy, happy liver, With a soul as strong as a mountain river, 46 SPIRITUALITY OF SOUND. How exquisite that delineation of one of his heroines : "Beauty born of murmuring sound Did pass into her face." How grotesque the picture of the boy who "Press'd closely palm to palm, and to his mouth Uplifted, he, as thro' an instrument, Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls, That they might answer him." All these intimations guide to an organic sensibility so refined that it seems to have quivered and trembled at every tone breath'd forth from nature's harp, and they unlock much of that apparent mystic hidden meaning of which it has been the fashion to speak in connection with the poet; sounds and scenes were to him unquestionably symbols, and had their moral significancies and meanings, the "wandering utterances" are questioned if earth has no scheme of moral music ? and the meaning behind every sound, consoling the poet is that "Though earth be dust And vanish, though the heavens dissolve ;-our stay Thus we shall see clearly that the characteristic of Wordsworth's poetry which most prominently distinguishes it from all other writings, is the earnest and profound sympathy with nature as nature, running throughout. Let the reader attentively note the following quotations in sweetness, in exquisite tenderness those |