99. A Whirl-blast from behind the Hill. [III.]
Observed in the holly grove at Alfoxden, where these verses were written in the spring of 1799. I had the pleasure of again seeing, with dear friends, this Grove in unimpaired beauty forty-one years after. [The ‘dear friends’ were Mrs. Wordsworth, Miss Fenwick, Mr. and Mrs. Quillinan, and Mr. William Wordsworth, May 18, 1841. Memoirs, i. 112.]
100. The Waterfall and the Eglantine. [IV.]
Suggested nearer to Grasmere on the same mountain track. The eglantine remained many years afterwards, but is now gone. [In pencil on opposite page — Mr. W. shewed me the place 1848. E.Q.]
101. The Oak and the Broom; a Pastoral. [V.]
1800. Suggested upon the mountain pathway that leads from Upper Rydal to Grasmere. The ponderous block of stone, which is mentioned in the poem, remains, I believe, to this day, a good way up Nab-Scar. Broom grows under it, and in many places on the side of the precipice.
102. To a Sexton. [VI.]
Written in Germany, 1799.
103. To the Daisy. [VII.]
This Poem, and two others to the same flower, were written in the year 1802; which is mentioned, because in some of the ideas, though not in the manner in which those ideas are connected, and likewise even in some of the expressions, there is a resemblance to passages in a Poem (lately published) of Mr. [James] Montgomery’s, entitled a ‘Field Flower.’ This being said, Mr. Montgomery will not think any apology due to him; but I cannot, however, help addressing him in the words of the Father of English Poets:
‘Though it happe me to rehersin That ye han in your freshe songes saied, Forberith me, and beth not ill apaied, Sith that ye se I doe it in the honour Of Love, and eke in service of the Flour.’
1807. [Foot-note.] See, in Chaucer and the older Poets, the honours formerly paid to this flower.
104. To the same Flower. [VIII.]
‘To the Daisy,’ ‘To the same Flower,’ and ‘The Green Linnet’ — all composed at Town-End Orchard, where the bird was often seen as here described.
105. To the small Celandine. [XI.]
Grasmere, Town-End. It is remarkable that this flower coming out so early in the spring as it does, and so bright and beautiful, and in such profusion, should not have been noticed earlier in English verse. What adds much to the interest that attends it, is its habit of shutting itself up and opening out according to the degree of light and temperature of the air. [In pencil on opposite page — Has not Chaucer noticed it?] [Note.] Common Pilewort.
106. The Seven Sisters.
The story of this Poem is from the German of Frederica Brun.
107. The Redbreast chasing the Butterfly. [XV.]
Observed as described in the then beautiful Orchard at Town-End.
108. Song for the Spinning-wheel. [XVI.]
1806. The belief on which this is founded I have often heard expressed by an old neighbour of Grasmere.
109. Hint from the Mountains. [XVII.]
Bunches of fern may often be seen wheeling about in the wind, as here described. The particular bunch that suggested these verses was noticed in the Pass of Dunmail-Raise. The verses were composed in 1817, but the application is for all times and places.
110. On seeing a Needle-case in the Form of a Harp. [XVIII.] 1827.
111. The Contrast: the Parrot and the Wren.
This parrot belonged to Mrs. Luff while living at Fox-Ghyll. The wren was one that haunted for many years the Summer-house between the two terraces at Rydal Mount. [In pencil on opposite page — Addressed to Dora.]
112. The Danish Boy. [XXII.]
Written in Germany, 1799. It was entirely a fancy; but intended as a prelude to a ballad poem never written.
113. Song for the Wandering Jew. [XXIII.] 1800.
114. Stray Pleasures. [XXIV.]
Suggested on the Thames by the sight of one of those floating mills that used to be seen there. This I noticed on the Surrey side, between Somerset House and Blackfriars Bridge. Charles Lamb was with me at the time; and I thought it remarkable that I should have to point out to him, an idolatrous Londoner, a sight so interesting as the happy group dancing on the platform. Mills of this kind used to he, and perhaps still are, not uncommon on the Continent. I noticed several upon the river Saone in the year 1799; particularly near the town of Chalons, where my friend Jones and I halted a day when we crossed France, so far on foot. There we embarked and floated down to Lyons.
115. The Pilgrim’s Dream; or the Star and the Glowworm. [XXV.]
I distinctly recollect the evening when these verses were suggested in 1818. It was on the road between Rydal and Grasmere, where glow-worms abound. A star was shining above the ridge of Loughrigg Fell just opposite. I remember a blockhead of a critic in some Review or other crying out against this piece. ‘What so monstrous,’ said he, ‘as to make a star talk to a glowworm!’ Poor fellow, we know well from this sage observation what the ‘primrose on the river’s brim was to him.’
Further — In writing to Coleridge he says: ‘I parted from M — — on Monday afternoon, about six o’clock, a little on this side Rushyford. Soon after I missed my road in the midst of the storm.... Between the beginning of Lord Darlington’s park at Raby, and two or three miles beyond Staindrop, I composed the poem on the opposite page [‘The Pilgrim’s Dream,’ &c.]. I reached Barnard Castle about half-past ten. Between eight and nine evening I reached Eusemere.’ [Memoirs, i. pp. 181-2.]
116. The Poet and the caged Turtle-dove. [XXVI.]
Rydal Mount, 1830. This dove was one of a pair that had been given to my daughter by our excellent friend Miss Jewsbury, who went to India with her husband Mr. Fletcher, where she died of cholera. The dove survived its mate many years, and was killed, to our great sorrow, by a neighbour’s cat that got in at the window and dragged it partly out of the cage. These verses were composed extempore, to the letter, in the Terrace Summer-house before spoken of. It was the habit of the bird to begin cooing and murmuring whenever it heard me making my verses. [In pencil on opposite page — Dora.]
117. A Wren’s Nest. [XXVII.]
In Dora’s Field, 1833: Rydal Mount. This nest was built as described, in a tree that grows near the pool in Dora’s field next the Rydal Mount Garden.
118. Love lies bleeding. [XXVIII.]
It has been said that the English, though their country has produced so many great poets, is now the most unpoetical nation in Europe. It is probably true; for they have more temptation to become so than any other European people. Trade, commerce, and manufactures, physical science and mechanic arts, out of which so much wealth has arisen, have made our countrymen infinitely less sensible to movements of imagination and fancy than were our forefathers in their simple state of society. How touching and beautiful were in most instances the names they gave to our indigenous flowers, or any other they were familiarly acquainted with! Every month for many years have we been importing plants and flowers from all quarters of the globe, many of which are spread through our gardens, and some, perhaps, likely to be met with on the few commons which we have left. Will their botanical names ever be displaced by plain English appellations which will bring them home to our hearts by connection with our joys and sorrows? It can never be, unless society treads back her steps towards those simplicities which have been banished by the undue influence of towns spreading and spreading in every direction, so that city life with every generation takes more and more the lead of rural. Among the ancients, villages were reckoned the seats of barbarism. Refinement, for the most part false, increases the desire to accumulate wealth; and, while theories of political economy are boastfully pleading for the practice, inhumanity pervades all our dealings in buying and selling. This selfishness wars against disinterested imagination in all directions, and, evils coming round in a circle, barbarism spreads in every quarter of our island. Oh, for the reign of justice! and then the humblest man among us would have more peace and dignity in and about him than the highest have now.
119. R
ural Illusions. [XXV.]
Rydal Mount, 1832. Observed a hundred times in the grounds at Rydal Mount.
120. The Kitten and the falling Leaves. [XXXI.]
1805. Seen at Town-End, Grasmere. The elder bush has long since disappeared; it hung over the wall near the cottage, and the kitten continued to leap up, catching the leaves as here described. The infant was Dora.
121. The Waggoner. [XXXIII.]
DEDICATION.
‘In Cairo’s crowded streets The impatient Merchant, wondering, waits in vain, And Mecca saddens at the long delay.’ THOMSON.
To CHARLES LAMB, ESQ.
MY DEAR FRIEND,
When I sent you, a few weeks ago, ‘The Tale of Peter Bell,’ you asked ‘why “The Waggoner” was not added?’ — To say the truth, — from the higher tone of imagination, and the deeper touches of passion aimed at in the former, I apprehended, this little Piece could not accompany it without disadvantage. In the year 1806, if I am not mistaken, ‘The Waggoner’ was read to you in manuscript, and, as you have remembered it for so long a time, I am the more encouraged to hope that, since the localities on which the Poem partly depends did not prevent its being interesting to you, it may prove acceptable to others. Being therefore in some measure the cause of its present appearance, you must allow me the gratification of inscribing it to you; in acknowledgment of the pleasure I have derived from your Writings, and of the high esteem with which I am very truly yours,
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
Rydal Mount, May 20, 1819.
122. The Waggoner.
Town-End, 1805. The character and story from fact.
123. Benjamin ‘the Waggoner.’
Several years after the event that forms the subject of the Poem, in company with my friend, the late Mr. Coleridge, I happened to fall in with the person to whom the name of Benjamin is given. Upon our expressing regret that we had not, for a long time, seen upon the road either him or his waggon, he said: — ’They could not do without me; and as to the man who was put in my place, no good could come out of him; he was a man of no ideas.’
The fact of my discarded hero’s getting the horses out of a difficulty with a word, as related in the poem, was told me by an eye-witness.
124. The Dor-Hawk.
‘The buzzing Dor-hawk round and round is wheeling’ (c. i. l. 3).
When the Poem was first written the note of the bird was thus described: —
‘The Night-hawk is singing his frog-like tune, Twirling his watchman’s rattle about’ —
but from unwillingness to startle the reader at the outset by so bold a mode of expression, the passage was altered as it now stands.
125. Helmcrag (c. i. l. 168).
A mountain of Grasmere, the broken summit of which presents two figures, full as distinctly shaped as that of the famous Cobbler near Arroquhar in Scotland.
126. Merrynight (c. ii. l. 30).
A term well known in the North of England, and applied to rural festivals where young persons meet in the evening for the purpose of dancing.
‘The fiddles squeak — that call to bliss’ (c. ii. l. 97).
At the close of each strathspey, or jig, a particular note from the fiddle summons the Rustic to the agreeable duty of saluting his partner.
127. Ghimmer-Crag (c. iii. l. 21).
The crag of the ewe-lamb.
VI. POEMS OF THE IMAGINATION.
128. There was a Boy. [I.]
Written in Germany, 1799. This is an extract from the Poem on my own poetical education. This practice of making an instrument of their own fingers is known to most boys, though some are more skilful at it than others. William Raincock of Rayrigg, a fine spirited lad, took the lead of all my schoolfellows in this art.
129. To the Cuckoo. [II.] Composed in the Orchard at Town-End, 1804.
130. A Night-piece. [III.]
Composed on the road between Nether Stowey and Alfoxden, extempore. I distinctly remember the very moment when I was struck, as described, ‘He looks up at the clouds,’ &c.
131. Yew-trees. [V.]
Grasmere, 1803. These Yew-trees are still standing, but the spread of that at Lorton is much diminished by mutilation. I will here mention that a little way up the hill on the road leading from Rossthwaite to Stonethwaite lay the trunk of a yew-tree which appeared as you approached, so vast was its diameter, like the entrance of a cave, and not a small one. Calculating upon what I have observed of the slow growth of this tree in rocky situations, and of its durability, I have often thought that the one I am describing must have been as old as the Christian era. The tree lay in the line of a fence. Great masses of its ruins were strewn about, and some had been rolled down the hill-side and lay near the road at the bottom. As you approached the tree you were struck with the number of shrubs and young plants, ashes, &c. which had found a bed upon the decayed trunk and grew to no inconsiderable height, forming, as it were, a part of the hedgerow. In no part of England, or of Europe, have I ever seen a yew-tree at all approaching this in magnitude, as it must have stood. By the bye, Hutton, the Old Guide of Keswick, had been so imprest with the remains of this tree that he used gravely to tell strangers that there could be no doubt of its having been in existence before the Flood.
132. Nutting. [VI.]
Written in Germany: intended as part of a poem on my own life, but struck out as not being wanted there. Like most of my schoolfellows I was an impassioned Nutter. For this pleasure the Vale of Esthwaite, abounding in coppice wood, furnished a very wide range. These verses arose out of the remembrance of feelings I had often had when a boy, and particularly in the extensive woods that still stretch from the side of Esthwaite Lake towards Graythwaite, the seat of the ancient family of Sandys.
133. She was a Phantom of Delight. [VIII.]
1804. Town-End. The germ of this Poem was four lines composed as a part of the verses on the Highland Girl. Though beginning in this way, it was written from my heart, as is sufficiently obvious.
134. The Nightingale. [IX.]
Town-End, 1806. [So, but corrected in pencil ‘Written at Coleorton.’]
135. Three Years she grew, &c. [X.]
1799. Composed in the Hartz Forest. [In pencil on opposite page — Who?]
136. I wandered lonely as a Cloud. [XII.] [= ‘The Daffodils.’]
Town-End, 1804. ‘The Daffodils.’ The two best lines in it are by Mary. The daffodils grew and still grow on the margin of Ulswater, and probably may be seen to this day as beautiful in the month of March nodding their golden heads beside the dancing and foaming waves. [In pencil on opposite page — Mrs. Wordsworth — but which? See the answer to this, infra.]
137. The Daffodils. [xii.]
Grasmere, Nov. 4.
MT DEAR WRANGHAM,
I am indeed much pleased that Mrs. Wrangham and yourself have been gratified by these breathings of simple nature; the more so, because I conclude from the character of the Poems which you have particularised that the Volumes cannot but improve upon you. I see that you have entered into the spirit of them. You mention ‘The Daffodils.’ You know Butler, Montagu’s friend: not Tom Butler, but the Conveyancer: when I was in town in spring, he happened to see the Volumes lying on Montagu’s mantle-piece, and to glance his eye upon the very poem of ‘The Daffodils.’ ‘Aye,’ says he, ‘a fine morsel this for the Reviewers.’ When this was told me (for I was not present), I observed that there were two lines in that little poem which, if thoroughly felt, would annihilate nine-tenths of the reviews of the kingdom, as they would find no readers; the lines I alluded to were these:
‘They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude.’
[These two lines were composed by Mrs. Wordsworth: Memoirs, i. 183-4.]
138. The Reverie of poor Susan. [XIII.]
Written 1801 or 1802. This arose out of my observations of the affecting music of these birds, hanging in this way in the London streets during the freshness and stillness of the Spring morning.
139. Power
of Music. [XIV.]
Taken from life, 1806.
140. Star-gazers. [XV.] Observed by me in Leicester Square, as here
141. Written in March. [XVI.]
Extempore, 1801. This little poem was a favourite with Joanna Baillie.
142. Beggars. [XVIII.]
Town-End, 1802. Met and described by me to my sister near the Quarry at the head of Rydal Lake — a place still a chosen resort of vagrants travelling with their families.
143. Gipsies. [XX.]
Composed at Coleorton, 1807. I had observed them, as here described, near Castle Donnington on my way to and from Derby.
144. Ruth.
Written in Germany, 1799. Suggested by an account I had of a wanderer in Somersetshire.
145. Resolution and Independence. [XXII.]
Town-End, 1807. This old man I met a few hundred yards from my cottage at Town-End, Grasmere; and the account of him is taken from his own mouth. I was in the state of feeling described in the beginning of the poem, while crossing over Barton Fell from Mr. Clarkson’s at the foot of Ullswater, towards Askham. The image of the hare I then observed on the ridge of the Fell.
146. The Thorn. [XXIII.]
Alfoxden, 1798. Arose out of my observing on the ridge of Quantock Hill, on a stormy day, a thorn, which I had often past in calm and bright weather without noticing it. I said to myself, cannot I by some invention do as much to make this Thorn permanently an impressive object as the storm has made it to my eyes at this moment? I began the poem accordingly, and composed it with great rapidity. Sir George Beaumont painted a picture from it, which Wilkie thought his best. He gave it to me; though, when he saw it several times at Rydal Mount afterwards, he said, ‘I could make a better, and would like to paint the same subject over again.’ The sky in this picture is nobly done, but it reminds one too much of Wilson. The only fault however, of any consequence, is the female figure, which is too old and decrepit for one likely to frequent an eminence on such a call.
Delphi Complete Works of William Wordsworth Page 389