Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep, I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng, No more shall grief of mine the season wrong The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep To me alone there came a thought of grief:Ī timely utterance gave that thought relief, Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song, That there hath past away a glory from the earth. Look round her when the heavens are bare, The things which I have seen I now can see no more. There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, Who has not felt the same aspirations as regards the world of his own mind? Having to wield some of its elements when I was impelled to write this poem on the “Immortality of the Soul,” I took hold of the notion of pre- existence as having sufficient foundation in humanity for authorising me to make for my purpose the best use of it I could as a poet. Archimedes said that he could move the world if he had a point whereon to rest his machine. Accordingly, a pre-existent state has entered into the popular creeds of many nations and, among all persons acquainted with classic literature, is known as an ingredient in Platonic philosophy. But let us bear in mind that, though the idea is not advanced in revelation, there is nothing there to contradict it, and the fall of Man presents an analogy in its favour. It is far too shadowy a notion to be recommended to faith, as more than an element in our instincts of immortality. To that dream-like vividness and splendour which invest objects of sight in childhood, every one, I believe, if he would look back, could bear testimony, and I need not dwell upon it here: but having in the poem regarded it as presumptive evidence of a prior state of existence, I think it right to protest against a conclusion, which has given pain to some good and pious persons, that I meant to inculcate such a belief. In later periods of life I have deplored, as we have all reason to do, a subjugation of an opposite character, and have rejoiced over the remembrances, as is expressed in the lines– At that time I was afraid of such processes. Many times while going to school have I grasped at a wall or tree to recall myself from this abyss of idealism to the reality. With a feeling congenial to this, I was often unable to think of external things as having external existence, and I communed with all that I saw as something not apart from, but inherent in, my own immaterial nature. I used to brood over the stories of Enoch and Elijah, and almost to persuade myself that, whatever might become of others, I should be translated, in something of the same way, to heaven. I have said elsewhere–īut it was not so much from feelings of animal vivacity that ‘my’ difficulty came as from a sense of the indomitableness of the Spirit within me. Nothing was more difficult for me in childhood than to admit the notion of death as a state applicable to my own being. To the attentive and competent reader the whole sufficiently explains itself but there may be no harm in adverting here to particular feelings or ‘experiences’ of my own mind on which the structure of the poem partly rests.
Two years at least passed between the writing of the four first stanzas and the remaining part. This was composed during my residence at Town-end, Grasmere.
Frank Hall, Minister Emeritus – Dear Friends
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