It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,The holy time is quiet as a Nun, Breathless with adoration; the broad sun, Is sinking down in its tranquility; The gentleness of heaven broods o’er the Sea; Listen! the mighty Being is awake, And doth with his eternal motion make, A sound like thunder—everlastingly. Dear child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here, If thou appear untouched by solemn thought, Thy nature is not therefore less divine: Thou liest in Abraham’s bosom all the year; And worshipp’st at the Temple’s inner shrine,God being with thee when we know it not.
William Wordsworth, It Is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free
An essential element of the Northern Way worldview is that we dwell in the Divine. We live in the Divine at all times: in an unexpected moment of spiritual awakening, in our darkest hour of forlornness, and in the heavy dullness of a day’s passing.
Wordsworth uses in his poem the language of Abrahamic religion that had blanketed Europe in the previous millennium, but the poet’s sentiment is undeniably that of the more ancient Northern Way. God is not distant or separate. God is the ever present, all-pervading Soul. The Divine does not reside only in closed off indoor temples. The divine Soul is in “eternal motion” in the ash grove, atop the high mountain, among the flowers rippling over the heath, and in our hearts and every particle of our body.
The poet’s admonition is that we listen, that we pay attention. The “mighty Being” is awake and thunders eternally even in the “beauteous evening, calm and free.” We are never untouched by love. Nature and Nature’s God are no less wonderous because we do not sense the Divine Within in some given moment. We lie in mystery, power and wonder of the Divine Soul every day of our lives, even in the sleepy calmness of twilight. Absorb and direct this original power to create something beautiful and excellent in your relationships, your dreams and in your devotion to overcoming all that makes you weak, sickly and resentful.