"A white celestial thought,"
says Vaughan: "Heaven lies about us in our infancy," says Wordsworth. "A
mile or two off, I could see his face," says Vaughan: "Trailing clouds of
glory do we come," says Wordsworth. "On some gilded cloud or flower, my
gazing soul would dwell an hour," says Vaughan: "The hour of splendour in
the grass, of glory in the flower," says Wordsworth.
Wordsworth's poem is the profounder in its philosophy, as well as far the
grander and lovelier in its poetry; but in the moral relation, Vaughan's
poem is the more definite of the two, and gives us in its close, poor as
that is compared with the rest of it, just what we feel is wanting in
Wordsworth's--the hope of return to the bliss of childhood. We may be
comforted for what we lose by what we gain; but that is not a recompense
large enough to be divine: we want both. Vaughan will be a child again.
For the movements of man's life are in spirals: we go back whence we
came, ever returning on our former traces, only upon a higher level, on
the next upward coil of the spiral, so that it is a going back and a
going forward ever and both at once. Life is, as it were, a constant
repentance, or thinking of it again: the childhood of the kingdom takes
the place of the childhood of the brain, but comprises all that was
lovely in the former delight.
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