The French Revolution as it appeared to Enthusiasts

.   Oh! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!    For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood    Upon our side, we who were strong in love!    Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,    But to be young was very heaven!—Oh! times,    In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways    Of custom, law, and statute, took at once    The attraction of a country in romance!    When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights,   When most intent on making of herself   A prime Enchantress—to assist the work   Which then was going forward in her name!   Not favoured spots alone, but the whole earth,   The beauty wore of promise, that which sets   (As at some moment might not be unfelt   Among the bowers of paradise itself )   The budding rose above the rose full blown.   What temper at the prospect did not wake   To happiness unthought of?

The inert   Were roused, and lively natures rapt away!   They who had fed their childhood upon dreams,   The playfellows of fancy, who had made   All powers of swiftness, subtilty, and strength   Their ministers,—who in lordly wise had stirred   Among the grandest objects of the sense,   And dealt with whatsoever they found there   As if they had within some lurking right   To wield it;—they, too, who, of gentle mood,   Had watched all gentle motions, and to these   Had fitted their own thoughts, schemers more wild,   And in the region of their peaceful selves;—   Now was it that both found, the meek and lofty   Did both find, helpers to their heart's desire,   And stuff at hand, plastic as they could wish;   Wcre called upon to exercise their skill,   Not in Utopia, subterranean fields,   Or some secreted island,

Heaven knows where!   But in the very world, which is the world   Of all of us,—the place where in the end   We find our happiness, or not at all!

Form:

Composition Date:18041.

Composed as part of The Prelude in 1804\; eventually in The Prelude,

XI, 105-44.37.

E.g.,

Bacon's New Atlantis.