Delphi Complete Works of William Wordsworth

by William Wordsworth

  43. Influence of Natural Objects, &c. [XVI.]

  Written in Germany, 1799.

  44. The Longest Day. [XVII.]

  1817. Suggested by the sight of my daughter (Dora) playing in front of Rydal Mount, and composed in a great measure the same afternoon. I have often wished to pair this poem upon the ‘longest’ with one upon the ‘shortest’ day, and regret even now that it has not been done.

  45. The Norman Boy. [XVIII.]

  The subject of this poem was sent me by Mrs. Ogle, to whom I was personally unknown, with a hope on her part that I might be induced to relate the incident in verse. And I do not regret that I took the trouble; for not improbably the fact is illustrative of the boy’s early piety, and may concur, with my other little pieces on children, to produce profitable reflection among my youthful readers. This is said, however, with an absolute conviction that children will derive most benefit from books which are not unworthy the perusal of persons of any age. I protest with my whole heart against those productions, so abundant in the present day, in which the doings of children are dwelt upon as if they were incapable of being interested in anything else. On this subject I have dwelt at length in the Poem on the growth of my own mind. [‘Prelude.’]

  III. POEMS FOUNDED ON THE AFFECTIONS.

  46. The Brothers. [I.]

  1800. This poem was composed in a grove at the north-eastern end of Grasmere Lake, which grove was in a great measure destroyed by turning the high-road along the side of the water. The few trees that are left were spared at my intercession. The poem arose out of the fact mentioned to me, at Ennerdale, that a shepherd had fallen asleep upon the top of the rock called the ‘pillar,’ and perished as here described, his staff being left midway on the rock.

  47. Great Gavel. (Foot-note.)

  ‘From the Great Gavel down by Leeza’s banks’ (l. 324).

  The Great Gavel, so called, I imagine, from its resemblance to the gable end of a house, is one of the highest of the Cumberland mountains. The Leeza is a river which flows into the Lake of Ennerdale.

  48. Artegal and Elidure. [II.]

  Rydal Mount. This was written in the year 1815, as a token of affectionate respect for the memory of Milton. ‘I have determined,’ says he, in his preface to his History of England, ‘to bestow the telling over even of these reputed tales, be it for nothing else but in favour of our English Poets and Rhetoricians, who by their wit well know how to use them judiciously.’ See the Chronicle of Geoffrey of Monmouth and Milton’s History of England.

  49. To a Butterfly. [III.]

  1801. Written at the same time and place.

  50. A Farewell. [IV]

  1802. Composed just before my sister and I went to fetch Mary from Gallowhill, near Scarborough.

  51. Stanzas written in my Pocket-copy of Thomson’s ‘Castle of Indolence.’

  Composed in the Orchard, Grasmere, Town-End. Coleridge living with us much at the time, his son Hartley has said that his father’s character and history are here preserved in a livelier way than in anything that has been written about him.

  52. Louisa. After accompanying her on a mountain Excursion. [VI.]

  Town-End, 1805.

  53. Strange Fits of Passion have I known. [VII.]

  *She dwelt among the Springs of Dove. [VIII.]

  *I travelled among unknown Men. [IX.]

  These three poems were written in Germany, 1799.

  54. Ere with cold Beads of midnight Dew. [X.]

  Rydal Mount, 1826. Suggested by the condition of a friend.

  55. To — — . [XI.]

  Rydal Mount, 1824. Prompted by the undue importance attached to personal beauty by some dear friends of mine. [In opposite page in pencil — S. C.]

  56. ‘Tis said that some have died for Love. [XIII.]

  1800.

  57. A Complaint. [XIV.]

  Suggested by a change in the manners of a friend. Coleorton, 1806. [Town-End marked out and Coleorton written in pencil; and on opposite page in pencil — Coleridge, S. T.]

  58. To — — . [XV.]

  Rydal Mount, 1824. Written on [Mrs.] Mary Wordsworth.

  59. ‘How rich that Forehead’s calm Expanse!’[XVII.]

  Rydal Mount, 1824. Also on M. W.

  60. To — — . [XIX]

  Rydal Mount, 1824. To M. W., Rydal Mount.

  61. Lament of Mary Queen of Scots. [XX.]

  This arose out of a flash of Moonlight that struck the ground when I was approaching the steps that lead from the garden at Rydal Mount to the front of the house. ‘From her sunk eye a stagnant tear stole forth,’ is taken, with some loss, from a discarded poem, ‘The Convict,’ in which occurred, when he was discovered lying in the cell, these lines:

  ‘But now he upraises the deep-sunken eye; The motion unsettles a tear; The silence of sorrow it seems to supply, And asks of me, why I am here.’

  62. The Complaint of a forsaken Indian Woman. [XXI.]

  When a Northern Indian, from sickness, is unable to continue his journey with his companions, he is left behind, covered over with deer-skins, and is supplied with water, food, and fuel, if the situation of the place will afford it. He is informed of the track which his companions intend to pursue, and if he be unable to follow, or overtake them, he perishes alone in the desert; unless he should have the good fortune to fall in with some other tribes of Indians. The females are equally, or still more, exposed to the same fate. See that very interesting work, Hearne’s Journey from Hudson’s Bay to the Northern Ocean. In the high northern latitudes, as the same writer informs us, when the northern lights vary their position in the air, they make a rustling and a crackling noise, as alluded to in the following poem.

  63. Ibid.

  At Alfoxden, in 1798, where I read Hearne’s Journey with great interest. It was composed for the volume of ‘Lyrical Ballads.’

  64. The Last of the Flock. [XXII.]

  Produced at the same time [as ‘The Complaint,’ No. 62] and for the same purpose. The incident occurred in the village of Holford, close by Alfoxden.

  65. Repentance [XXIII.]

  Town-End, 1804. Suggested by the conversation of our next neighbour, Margaret Ashburner.

  66. The Affliction of Margaret — — . [XXIV.]

  Town-End, 1804. This was taken from the case of a poor widow who lived in the town of Penrith. Her sorrow was well known to Mary, to my sister, and I believe to the whole town. She kept a shop, and when she saw a stranger passing by, she was in the habit of going out into the street to inquire of him after her son.

  67. The Cottager to her Infant. [XXV.]

  By my sister. Suggested to her while beside my sleeping children.

  68. Maternal Grief.

  This was in part an overflow from the Solitary’s description of his own and his wife’s feelings upon the decease of their children; and I will venture to add, for private notice solely, is faithfully set forth from my wife’s feelings and habits after the loss of our two children, within half a year of each other.

  69. The Sailor’s Mother. [XXVII.]

  Town-End, 1800. I met this woman near the Wishing-Gate, on the high-road that then led from Grasmere to Ambleside. Her appearance was exactly as here described, and such was her account, nearly to the letter.

  70. The Childless Father. [XXVIII.]

  Town-End, 1800. When I was a child at Cockermouth, no funeral took place without a basin filled with sprigs of boxwood being placed upon a table covered with a white cloth in front of the house. The huntings (on foot) which the Old Man is suffered to join as here described were of common, almost habitual, occurrence in our vales when I was a boy; and the people took much delight in them. They are now less frequent.

  71. Funeral Basin.

  ‘Filled the funeral basin at Timothy’s door.’

  In several parts of the North of England, when a funeral takes place, a basin full of sprigs of boxwood is placed at the door of the house from which the coffin is taken up, and each person who attends the funeral ordi
narily takes a sprig of this boxwood, and throws it into the grave of the deceased.

  72. The Emigrant Mother. [XXIX.]

  1802. Suggested by what I have noticed in more than one French fugitive during the time of the French Revolution. If I am not mistaken, the lines were composed at Sockburn when I was on a visit to Mary and her brothers.

  73. Vaudracour and Julia. [XXX.]

  The following tale was written as an Episode, in a work from which its length may perhaps exclude it. The facts are true; no invention as to these has been exercised, as none was needed.

  74. Ibid.

  Town-End, 1805. Faithfully narrated, though with the omission of many pathetic circumstances, from the mouth of a French lady, who had been an eye and ear-witness of all that was done and said. Many long years after I was told that Dupligne was then a monk in the Convent of La Trappe.

  75. The Idiot Boy.

  Alfoxden, 1798. The last stanza, ‘The cocks did crow, and the sun did shine so cold,’ was the foundation of the whole. The words were reported to me by my dear friend Thomas Poole; but I have since heard the same reported of other idiots. Let me add, that this long poem was composed in the groves of Alfoxden, almost extempore; not a word, I believe, being corrected, though one stanza was omitted. I mention this in gratitude to those happy moments, for, in truth, I never wrote anything with so much glee.

  76. Michael. [XXXII.]

  Town-End, 1807. Written about the same time as ‘The Brothers.’ The sheepfold on which so much of the poem turns, remains, or rather the ruins of it. The character and circumstances of Luke were taken from a family to whom had belonged, many years before, the house we lived in at Town-End, along with some fields and woodlands on the eastern shore of Grasmere. The name of the Evening Star was not in fact given to this house, but to another on the same side of the valley more to the north. [On opposite page in pencil — ’ Greenhead Ghyll.’]

  77. Clipping.

  ‘The Clipping Tree, a name which yet it bears’ (foot-note on 1. 169).

  Clipping is the word used in the North of England for shearing.

  78. The Widow on Windermere Side. [XXXIV.]

  The facts recorded in this Poem were given me and the character of the person described by my highly esteemed friend the Rev. R. P. Graves, who has long officiated as Curate at Bowness, to the great benefit of the parish and neighbourhood. The individual was well known to him. She died before these Verses were composed. It is scarcely worth while to notice that the stanzas are written in the sonnet-form; which was adopted when I thought the matter might be included in 28 lines.

  79. The Armenian Lady’s Love. [XXXIV.]

  The subject of the following poem is from the ‘Orlandus’ of the author’s friend, Kenelm Henry Digby: and the liberty is taken of inscribing it to him as an acknowledgment, however unworthy, of pleasure and instruction derived from his numerous and valuable writings, illustrative of the piety and chivalry of the olden time. *Rydal Mount, 1830.

  80. Percy’s ‘Reliques’ (foot-note on 1. 2).

  ‘You have heard “a Spanish Lady How she wooed an English man.”‘

  See in Percy’s Reliques that fine old ballad, ‘The Spanish Lady’s Love’; from which Poem the form of stanza, as suitable to dialogue, is adopted.

  81. Loving and Liking. [XXXV.]

  By my Sister. Rydal Mount, 1832. It arose, I believe, out of a casual expression of one of Mr. Swinburne’s children.

  82. Farewell Lines. [XXXVI.]

  These Lines were designed as a farewell to Charles Lamb and his Sister, who had retired from the throngs of London to comparative solitude in the village of Enfield, Herts, [sic.]

  83. (1) The Redbreast.

  Lines 45-6.

  ‘Of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John Blessing the bed she lies upon.’

  The words —

  ‘Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John, Bless the bed that I lie on,’

  are part of a child’s prayer still in general use through the northern counties.

  84. (2)

  Rydal Mount, 1834. Our cats having been banished the house, it was soon frequented by Red-breasts. Two or three of them, when the window was open, would come in, particularly when Mary was breakfasting alone, and hop about the table picking up the crumbs. My Sister being then confined to her room by sickness, as, dear creature, she still is, had one that, without being caged, took up its abode with her, and at night used to perch upon a nail from which a picture had hung. It used to sing and fan her face with its wings in a manner that was very touching. [In pencil — - But who was the pale-faced child?]

  85. Her Eyes are wild. [XXXVIII.]

  Alfoxden, 1798. The subject was reported to me by a lady of Bristol, who had seen the poor creature.

  IV. POEMS ON THE NAMING OF PLACES.

  86. Advertisement.

  By persons resident in the country and attached to rural objects, many places will be found unnamed or of unknown names, where little Incidents must have occurred, or feelings been experienced, which will have given to such places a private and peculiar interest. From a wish to give some sort of record to such Incidents, and renew the gratification of such feelings, Names have been given to Places by the Author and some of his Friends, and the following Poems written in consequence.

  87. It was an April Morn, &c. [I.]

  Grasmere, 1800. This poem was suggested on the banks of the brook that runs through Easedale, which is, in some parts of its course, as wild and beautiful as brook can be. I have composed thousands of verses by the side of it.

  88. ‘May call it Emmas Dell’ (I. 47).

  [In pencil, with reference to the last line is this — Emma’s Dell — Who was Emma?]

  89. To Joanna Hutchinson. [II.]

  Grasmere, 1800. The effect of her laugh is an extravagance; though the effect of the reverberation of voices in some parts of these mountains is very striking. There is, in ‘The Excursion,’ an allusion to the bleat of a lamb thus re-echoed and described, without any exaggeration, as I heard it on the side of Stickle Tarn, from the precipice that stretches on to Langdale Pikes.

  90. Inscriptions.

  In Cumberland and Westmoreland are several Inscriptions upon the native rock, which, from the wasting of time, and the rudeness of the workmanship, have been mistaken for Runic. They are without doubt Roman. The Rotha mentioned in the poem is the River which, flowing through the lakes of Grasmere and Ryedale, falls into Wynandermere. On Helmcrag, that impressive single mountain at the head of the Vale of Grasmere, is a rock which from most points of view bears a striking resemblance to an old woman cowering. Close by this rock is one of those fissures or caverns which in the language of the country are called dungeons. Most of the mountains here mentioned immediately surround the Vale of Grasmere; of the others, some are at a considerable distance, but they belong to the same cluster.

  91. There is an Eminence, &c. [III.]

  1800. It is not accurate that the eminence here alluded to could be seen from our orchard seat. It arises above the road by the side of Grasmere Lake, towards Keswick, and its name is Stone Arthur.

  92. ‘A narrow Girdle of rough Stones and Crags’ [IV.]

  ‘ — — Point Kash Judgment’ (last line).

  1800. The character of the eastern shore of Grasmere Lake is quite changed since these verses were written, by the public road being carried along its side. The friends spoken of were Coleridge and my sister, and the fact occurred strictly as recorded.

  93. To Mary Hutchinson. [V.]

  Two years before our marriage. The pool alluded to is in Rydal Upper Park.

  94. When to the Attractions, &c. [VI.]

  1805. The grove still exists; but the plantation has been walled in, and is not so accessible as when my brother John wore the path in the manner here described. The grove was a favourite haunt with us all while we lived at Town-End.

  95. Captain Wordsworth.

  ‘When we, and others whom we love, shall meet A second time, in Grasmere’s
happy Vale’ (last lines).

  This wish was not granted; the lamented Person not long after perished by shipwreck, in discharge of his duty as Commander of the Honourable East India Company’s Vessel, the Earl of Abergavenny.

  V. POEMS OF THE FANCY.

  96. A Morning Exercise. [I.]

  Rydal Mount, 1825. I could wish the last five stanzas of this to be read with the poem addressed to the Skylark. [No. 158.]

  97. Birds.

  ‘A feathered task-master cries, “Work away!” And, in thy iteration, “Whip Poor Will!” Is heard the spirit of a toil-worn slave’ (II. 15-17).

  See Waterton’s Wanderings in South America.

  98. A Flower-garden. [II.]

  Planned by my friend Lady Beaumont in connexion with the garden at Coleorton.