I encountered the crowd returning from amusements, The Bournemouth Pavilion, or the marvellous gardens, The Palace of Solace, the Empyrean Cinema: and saw William Wordsworth was once, tawdrily conspicuous, Obviously emulating the old man of the mountain- moor, Traipsing along the outskirts of the noisy crowd. Remarkable I reflected that after all it is him. The layers of time falling continually on Grasmere Churchyard, The accumulation of year and year like calendar, The acute superstition that Wordsworth is after all dead, Should have succeeded in keeping him quiet and cold. I resent the resurrection when I feel the updraft of fear. But approaching me with a watch in his hand, he said: 'I fear you are early; I expected a man; I see That already your private rebellion has been quelled. Where are the violent gestures of the individualist? I observe the absence of the erratic, the strange; Where is the tulip, the rose, or the bird in hand?' I had the heart to relate the loss of my charms, The paradise pets I kept in my pocket, the bird, The tulip trumpet, the penis water pistol; I hand the heart to have mourned them, but no word. 'I have done little reading,' I murmured, 'I have Most of the time been trying to find an equation.' He glanced over my shoulder at the evening promenade. The passing people, like Saint Vitus, averted their eyes: I saw his eyes like a bent pin searching for eyes To grip and catch. 'It is a species', he said, 'I feel I can hardly cope with -- it is ghosts, Trailing, like snails, an excrement of blood. 'I passed my hand like a postman's into them; The information I dropped in at once dropped out.' 'No,' I answered, 'they received your bouquet of daffodils, They speak of your feeling for Nature even now,' He glanced at his watch. I admired a face. The town clock chimed like a cat in a well. 'Since the private rebellion, the personal turn, Leads down to the river with the dead cat and dead dog, Since the single act of protest like a foggy film Looks like women bathing, the Irish Lakes, or Saint Vitus, Susceptible of innumerable interpretations, I can only advise a suicide or a resolution.' 'I can resolve,' I answered, 'if you can absolve. Relieve me of my absurd and abysmal past.' 'I cannot relieve or absolve -- the only absolution Is final resolution to fix on the facts. I mean more and less than Birth and Death; I also mean The mechanical paraphernalia in between. 'Not you and not him, not me, but all of them. It is the conspiracy of five hundred million To keep alive and kick. This is the resolution, To keep us alive and kicking with strength or joy. The past's absolution is the present's resolution. The equation is the interdependence of parts.' | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TALES OF A WAYSIDE INN: THE FIRST DAY: ROBERT OF SICILY by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW MOON OF LOVELINESS by MUHAMMAD AL-MU'TAMID II THE PRAYSE OF LADY PECUNIA by RICHARD BARNFIELD ON HEARING AN AEOLIAN HARP by PETER BAYLEY JR. THE FLAG by GEORGE HENRY BOKER PRIVATE DEVOTION by PHOEBE HINSDALE BROWN THE WANDERER: 2. IN FRANCE: PROGRESS by EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON |