Skelwith Bridge

Wordsworth's Poetical Works

Volume 3: 1805



Edited by William Knight

1896



Table of Contents

Photo © FreeFoto.com





1805


During 1805, the autobiographical poem, which was afterwards named by Mrs. Wordsworth The Prelude, was finished. In that year also Wordsworth wrote the Ode to Duty, To a Sky-Lark, Fidelity, the fourth poem To the Daisy, the Elegiac Stanzas suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm, the Elegiac Verses in memory of his brother John, The Waggoner, and a few other poems.—Ed.


Contents 1805
Main Contents



French Revolution

As it Appeared to Enthusiasts at its Commencement

Reprinted from The Friend

Composed 1805.—Published 1809

The Poem

[An extract from the long poem on my own poetical education. It was first published by Coleridge in his Friend, which is the reason of its having had a place in every edition of my poems since.—I. F.]

These lines appeared first in The Friend, No. 11, October 26, 1809, p. 163. They afterwards found a place amongst the "Poems of the Imagination," in all the collective editions from 1815 onwards. They are part of the eleventh book of The Prelude, entitled "France—(concluded)," ll. 105-144. Wordsworth gives the date 1805, but these lines possibly belong to the year 1804.—Ed.




The Poem


text variant footnote line number
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 mild,
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;
Were 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!



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Variant 1:   "were" omitted from the 1820 edition only.
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Variant 2:  
1809
... us ...
The Prelude, 1850.
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Variant 3:  
1815
... Enchanter ...
1809
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Variant 4:  
1832
(To take an image which was felt no doubt
 1809
(As at some moments might not be unfelt
The Prelude, 1850.
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Variant 5:  
1815
Their ministers—used to stir in lordly wise
 1809
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Variant 6:  
1815
And deal ...
1809
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Variant 7:   "both" 'italicised' from 1815 to 1832, and also in The Prelude.
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Variant 8:  
1832
... subterraneous ...
1809
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Note:   Compare Coleridge's remarks in The Friend, vol. ii. p. 38, before quoting this poem,
"My feelings and imagination did not remain unkindled in this general conflagration; and I confess I should be more inclined to be ashamed than proud of myself if they had! I was a sharer in the general vortex, though my little world described the path of its revolution in an orbit of its own," etc.
Ed.


Contents 1805
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Ode to Duty

Composed 1805.—Published 1807

The Poem

"Jam non consilio bonus, sed more eò perductus, ut non tantum rectè facere possim, sed nisi rectè facere non possim." A
[This Ode is on the model of Gray's Ode to Adversity, which is copied from Horace's Ode to Fortune. Many and many a time have I been twitted by my wife and sister for having forgotten this dedication of myself to the stern law-giver. Transgressor indeed I have been from hour to hour, from day to day: I would fain hope, however, not more flagrantly, or in a worse way than most of my tuneful brethren. But these last words are in a wrong strain. We should be rigorous to ourselves, and forbearing, if not indulgent, to others; and, if we make comparison at all, it ought to be with those who have morally excelled us.—I. F.]

In pencil on the MS.,
"But is not the first stanza of Gray's from a chorus of Æschylus? And is not Horace's Ode also modelled on the Greek?"
This poem was placed by Wordsworth among his "Poems of Sentiment and Reflection."—Ed.




The Poem


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Stern Daughter of the Voice of God!
O Duty! if that name thou love
Who art a light to guide, a rod
To check the erring, and reprove;
Thou, who art victory and law
When empty terrors overawe;
From vain temptations dost set free;
And calm'st the weary strife of frail humanity!

There are who ask not if thine eye
Be on them; who, in love and truth,
Where no misgiving is, rely
Upon the genial sense of youth:
Glad Hearts! without reproach or blot;
Who do thy work, and know it not:
Oh, if through confidence misplaced
They fail, thy saving arms, dread Power! around them cast.

Serene will be our days and bright,
And happy will our nature be,
When love is an unerring light,
And joy its own security.
And they a blissful course may hold
Even now, who, not unwisely bold,
Live in the spirit of this creed;
Yet seek thy firm support, according to their need.

I, loving freedom, and untried;
No sport of every random gust,
Yet being to myself a guide,
Too blindly have reposed my trust:
And oft, when in my heart was heard
Thy timely mandate, I deferred
The task, in smoother walks to stray;
But thee I now would serve more strictly, if I may.

Through no disturbance of my soul,
Or strong compunction in me wrought,
I supplicate for thy control;
But in the quietness of thought:
Me this unchartered freedom tires;
I feel the weight of chance-desires:
My hopes no more must change their name,
I long for a repose that ever is the same.

Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear
The Godhead's most benignant grace;
Nor know we any thing so fair
As is the smile upon thy face:
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds
And fragrance in thy footing treads;
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;
And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong.

To humbler functions, awful Power!
I call thee: I myself commend
Unto thy guidance from this hour;
Oh, let my weakness have an end!
Give unto me, made lowly wise,
The spirit of self-sacrifice;
The confidence of reason give;
And in the light of truth thy Bondman let me live!



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From strife and from despair; a glorious ministry.
1807
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Variant 2:  
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... the right ...
 MS.
... thy will ...
 MS.
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Variant 3:  
1837
May joy be theirs while life shall last!
And Thou, if they should totter, teach them to stand fast!
1807
Long may the kindly impulse last!
But Thou, ...
 1827
And may that genial sense remain, when youth is past.
MS.
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Variant 4:  
1827
And bless'd are they who in the main
This faith, even now, do entertain:
1807
Even now this creed do entertain
MS.
This holy creed do entertain
 MS.
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Variant 5:  
1845
Yet find that other strength, ...
 1807
Yet find thy firm support, ...
 1837
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Variant 6:  
1827
Resolved that nothing e'er should press
Upon my present happiness,
I shoved unwelcome tasks away;


1807
Full oft, when in my heart was heard
Thy timely mandate, I deferred
The task imposed, from day to day;


1815
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Variant 7:  
But henceforth I would ...
MS.
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Variant 8:  
1827
... which ...
1807
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Variant 9:  
date
Yet not the less would I throughout
Still act according to the voice
Of my own wish; and feel past doubt
That my submissiveness was choice:
Not seeking in the school of pride
For "precepts over dignified,"
Denial and restraint I prize
No farther than they breed a second Will more wise.






Only in the edition of 1807.
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Variant 10:  
... more ...
MS.
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Footnote A:   This motto was added in the edition of 1837.—Ed.
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Footnote B:   Compare S. T. C. in The Friend (edition 1818, vol. iii. p. 62),
"Its instinct, its safety, its benefit, its glory is to love, to admire, to feel, and to labour."
Ed.
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Footnote C:  Compare Churchill's Gotham, i. 49:
'An Englishman in chartered freedom born.'
Ed.
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Footnote D:   Compare in Sartor Resartus,
"Happy he for whom a kind of heavenly sun brightens it [Necessity] into a ring of Duty, and plays round it with beautiful prismatic refractions."
Ed.
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Footnote E:   Compare Persius, Satura, ii. l. 38:
'Quidquic calcaverit hic, rosa fiat.'
And Ben Jonson, in The Sad Shepherd, act I. scene i. ll. 8, 9:
'And where she went, the flowers took thickest root,
As she had sow'd them with her odorous foot.'
Also, a similar reference to Aphrodite in Hesiod, Theogony, vv. 192 seq.—Ed.
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Footnote F:   Compare S. T. C. in The Friend (edition 1818), vol. iii. p. 64.—Ed.
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Footnote G:   In the original MS. sent to the printer, I find that this stanza was transcribed by Coleridge.—Ed.
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Note:   Mr. J. R. Tutin has supplied me with the text of a proof copy of the sheets of the edition of 1807, which was cancelled by Wordsworth, in which the following stanzas take the place of the first four of that edition:
'There are who tread a blameless way
In purity, and love, and truth,
Though resting on no better stay
Than on the genial sense of youth:
Glad Hearts! without reproach or blot;
Who do the right, and know it not:
May joy be theirs while life shall last
And may a genial sense remain, when youth is past.

Serene would be our days and bright;
And happy would our nature be;
If Love were an unerring light;
And Joy its own security.
And bless'd are they who in the main,
This creed, even now, do entertain,
Do in this spirit live; yet know
That Man hath other hopes; strength which elsewhere must grow.

I, loving freedom, and untried;
No sport of every random gust,
Yet being to myself a guide,
Too blindly have reposed my trust;
Resolv'd that nothing e'er should press
Upon my present happiness,
I shov'd unwelcome tasks away:
But henceforth I would serve; and strictly if I may.

O Power of Duty! sent from God
To enforce on earth his high behest,
And keep us faithful to the road
Which conscience hath pronounc'd the best:
Thou, who art Victory and Law
When empty terrors overawe;
From vain temptations dost set free,
From Strife, and from Despair, a glorious Ministry!G'
Ed.


Contents 1805
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To a Sky-Lark

Composed 1805.—Published 1807

The Poem

[Rydal Mount, 1825.A—I. F.]

In pencil opposite,
"Where there are no skylarks; but the poet is everywhere."
In the edition of 1807 this is No. 2 of the "Poems, composed during a Tour, chiefly on foot."B In 1815 it became one of the "Poems of the Fancy."—Ed.




The Poem


text variant footnote line number
Up with me! up with me into the clouds!
For thy song, Lark, is strong;
Up with me, up with me into the clouds!
Singing, singing,
With clouds and sky about thee ringing,
Lift me, guide me till I find
That spot which seems so to thy mind!

I have walked through wildernesses dreary,
And to-day my heart is weary;
Had I now the wings of a Faery,
Up to thee would I fly.
There is madness about thee, and joy divine
In that song of thine;
Lift me, guide me high and high
To thy banqueting-place in the sky.

Joyous as morning,
Thou art laughing and scorning;
Thou hast a nest for thy love and thy rest,
And, though little troubled with sloth,
Drunken Lark! thou would'st be loth
To be such a traveller as I.
Happy, happy Liver,
With a soul as strong as a mountain river
Pouring out praise to the almighty Giver,
Joy and jollity be with us both!

Alas! my journey, rugged and uneven,
Through prickly moors or dusty ways must wind;
But hearing thee, or others of thy kind,
As full of gladness and as free of heaven,
I, with my fate contented, will plod on,
And hope for higher raptures, when life's day is done.



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With all the heav'ns
1807
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But ...
 MS.
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1815
the soul ...
 1807
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Variant 4:  
1832
Up with me, up with me, high and high,
 1807
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Variant 5:   This and the previous stanza were omitted in the edition of 1827, but restored in that of 1832.
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Variant 6:  
1827
Joy and jollity be with us both!
Hearing thee, or else some other,
As merry a Brother,
I on the earth will go plodding on,
By myself, chearfully, till the day is done.



1807
What though my course be rugged and uneven,
To prickly moors and dusty ways confined,
Yet, hearing thee, or others of thy kind,
As full of gladness and as free of heaven,
I on the earth will go plodding on,
By myself, cheerfully, till the day is done.





1820
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Footnote A:  So it is printed in the Prose Works of Wordsworth (1876); but the date was 1805.—Ed.
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Footnote B:  In a MS. copy this series is called "Poems composed 'for amusement' during a Tour, chiefly on foot."—Ed.
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Note:   Compare this poem with Shelley's Skylark, and with Wordsworth's poem, on the same subject, written in the year 1825, and the last five stanzas of his Morning Exercise written in 1827; also with William Watson's First Skylark of Spring, 1895.—Ed.


Contents 1805
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Fidelity

Composed 1805.—Published 1807

The Poem

[The young man whose death gave occasion to this poem was named Charles Gough, and had come early in the spring to Patterdale for the sake of angling. While attempting to cross over Helvellyn to Grasmere he slipped from a steep part of the rock where the ice was not thawed, and perished. His body was discovered as described in this poem. Walter Scott heard of the accident, and both he and I, without either of us knowing that the other had taken up the subject, each wrote a poem in admiration of the dog's fidelity. His contains a most beautiful stanza:
"How long did'st thou think that his silence was slumber!
When the wind waved his garment how oft did'st thou start!"
I will add that the sentiment in the last four lines of the last stanza of my verses was uttered by a shepherd with such exactness, that a traveller, who afterwards reported his account in print, was induced to question the man whether he had read them, which he had not.—I. F.]

One of the "Poems of Sentiment and Reflection."—Ed.




The Poem


text variant footnote line number
A barking sound the Shepherd hears,
A cry as of a dog or fox;
He halts—and searches with his eyes
Among the scattered rocks:
And now at distance can discern
A stirring in a brake of fern;
And instantly a dog is seen,
Glancing through that covert green.

The Dog is not of mountain breed;
Its motions, too, are wild and shy;
With something, as the Shepherd thinks,
Unusual in its cry:
Nor is there any one in sight
All round, in hollow or on height;
Nor shout, nor whistle strikes his ear;
What is the creature doing here?

It was a cove, a huge recess,
That keeps, till June, December's snow;
A lofty precipice in front,
A silent tarn below!
Far in the bosom of Helvellyn,
Remote from public road or dwelling,
Pathway, or cultivated land;
From trace of human foot or hand.

There sometimes doth a leaping fish
Send through the tarn a lonely cheer;
The crags repeat the raven's croak,
In symphony austere;
Thither the rainbow comes—the cloud—
And mists that spread the flying shroud;
And sunbeams; and the sounding blast,
That, if it could, would hurry past;
But that enormous barrier holds it fast.

Not free from boding thoughts, a while
The Shepherd stood; then makes his way
O'er rocks and stones, following the Dog
As quickly as he may;
Nor far had gone before he found
A human skeleton on the ground;
The appalled Discoverer with a sigh
Looks round, to learn the history.

From those abrupt and perilous rocks
The Man had fallen, that place of fear!
At length upon the Shepherd's mind
It breaks, and all is clear:
He instantly recalled the name,
And who he was, and whence he came;
Remembered, too, the very day
On which the Traveller passed this way.

But hear a wonder, for whose sake
This lamentable tale I tell!
A lasting monument of words
This wonder merits well.
The Dog, which still was hovering nigh,
Repeating the same timid cry,
This Dog, had been through three months' space
A dweller in that savage place.

Yes, proof was plain that, since the day
When this ill-fated Traveller died,
The Dog had watched about the spot,
Or by his master's side:
How nourished here through such long time
He knows, who gave that love sublime;
And gave that strength of feeling, great
Above all human estimate!



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Variant 1:  
1820
From which immediately leaps out A Dog, and yelping runs about.
1807
And instantly a Dog is seen,
Glancing from that covert green.
1815
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Variant 2:  
1820
... does ...
 1807
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Variant 3:  
1837
binds
1807
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Variant 4:  
1815
Not knowing what to think
1807
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Variant 5:  
1837
Towards the Dog, o'er rocks and stones,
 1807.
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Variant 6:  
1815
Sad sight! the Shepherd with a sigh
 1807
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Variant 7:  
date
And signs and circumstances dawned
Till everything was clear;
He made discovery of his name.


MS.
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Variant 8:  
1815
But hear a wonder now, for sake
Of which this mournful Tale I tell!

1807
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Variant 9:  
1827
On which the Traveller thus had died
1807
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Footnote A:   Tarn is a small Mere or Lake mostly high up in the mountains,—W. W.
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Footnote B:   Compare the reference to Helvellyn, and its "deep coves, shaped by skeleton arms," in the Musings near Aquapendente (1837). Wordsworth here describes Red Tarn, under Helvellyn, to the east; but Charles Gough was killed on the Kepplecove side of Swirell Edge, and not at Red Tarn. Bishop Watson of Llandaff, writing to Hayley (see Anecdotes of the Life of Bishop Watson, p. 440), writes about Charles Gouche (evidently Gough). He had been lodging at "the Cherry Inn," near Wytheburn, sometime before his death.—Ed.
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Footnote C:   Compare The Excursion, book iv. ll. 1185-94.—Ed.
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Note:   Thomas Wilkinson—referred to in the notes to The Solitary Reaper, vol. ii. pp. 399, 400, and the verses To the Spade of a Friend, in vol. iv.—alludes to this incident at some length in his poem, Emont Vale. Wilkinson attended the funeral of young Gough, and writes of the incident with feeling, but without inspiration. Gough perished early in April, and his body was not found till July 22nd, 1805. A reference to his fate will be found in Lockhart's Life of Scott (vol. ii. p. 274); also in a letter of Mr. Luff of Patterdale, to his wife, July 23rd, 1805. Henry Crabb Robinson records (see his Diary, Reminiscences, etc., vol. ii. p. 25) a conversation with Wordsworth, in which he said of this poem, that "he purposely made the narrative as prosaic as possible, in order that no discredit might be thrown on the truth of the incident."—Ed.


Contents 1805
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Incident characteristic of a Favourite DogA

Composed 1805.—Published 1807

The Poem

[This dog I knew well. It belonged to Mrs. Wordsworth's brother, Mr. Thomas Hutchinson, who then lived at Sockburn-on-the-Tees, a beautiful retired situation, where I used to visit him and his sisters before my marriage. My sister and I spent many months there after my return from Germany in 1799— I. F.]

One of the "Poems of Sentiment and Reflection."—Ed.




The Poem


text variant footnote line number
On his morning rounds the Master
Goes to learn how all things fare;
Searches pasture after pasture,
Sheep and cattle eyes with care;
And, for silence or for talk,
He hath comrades in his walk;
Four dogs, each pair of different breed,
Distinguished two for scent, and two for speed.

See a hare before him started!
—Off they fly in earnest chase;
Every dog is eager-hearted,
All the four are in the race:
And the hare whom they pursue,
Knows from instinct what to do;
Her hope is near: no turn she makes;
But, like an arrow, to the river takes.

Deep the river was, and crusted
Thinly by a one night's frost;
But the nimble Hare hath trusted
To the ice, and safely crost; so
She hath crost, and without heed
All are following at full speed,
When, lo! the ice, so thinly spread,
Breaks—and the greyhound, Dart, is over-head!

Better fate have Prince and Swallow—
See them cleaving to the sport!
Music has no heart to follow,
Little Music, she stops short.
She hath neither wish nor heart,
Hers is now another part:
A loving creature she, and brave!
And fondly strives her struggling friend to save.

From the brink her paws she stretches,
Very hands as you would say!
And afflicting moans she fetches,
As he breaks the ice away.
For herself she hath no fears,—
Him alone she sees and hears,—
Makes efforts with complainings; nor gives o'er
Until her fellow sinks to re-appear no more.



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Hath an instinct ...
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And doth her best ...
 1807
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Makes efforts and complainings; nor gives o'er
Until her Fellow sunk, and reappear'd no more.
1807
... sank, ...
 1820
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Footnote A:   In 1807 and 1815 the title was Incident, Characteristic of a favourite Dog, which belonged to a Friend of the Author.—Ed.
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Contents 1805
Main Contents



Tribute to the Memory of the same Dog

Composed 1805.—Published 1807

The Poem

[Was written at the same time, 1805. The Dog Music died, aged and blind, by falling into a draw-well at Gallow] Hill, to the great grief of the family of the Hutchinsons, who, as has been before mentioned, had removed to that place from Sockburn.—I. F.]

One of the "Poems of Sentiment and Reflection."—Ed.




The Poem


text variant footnote line number
Lie here, without a record of thy worth,
Beneath a covering of the common earth!
It is not from unwillingness to praise,
Or want of love, that here no Stone we raise;
More thou deserv'st; but this man gives to man,
Brother to brother, this is all we can.
Yet they to whom thy virtues made thee dear
Shall find thee through all changes of the year:
This Oak points out thy grave; the silent tree
Will gladly stand a monument of thee.

We grieved for thee, and wished thy end were past;
And willingly have laid thee here at last:
For thou hadst lived till every thing that cheers
In thee had yielded to the weight of years;
Extreme old age had wasted thee away,
And left thee but a glimmering of the day;
Thy ears were deaf, and feeble were thy knees,—
I saw thee stagger in the summer breeze,
Too weak to stand against its sportive breath,
And ready for the gentlest stroke of death.
It came, and we were glad; yet tears were shed;
Both man and woman wept when thou wert dead;
Not only for a thousand thoughts that were,
Old household thoughts, in which thou hadst thy share;
But for some precious boons vouchsafed to thee,
Found scarcely any where in like degree!
For love, that comes wherever life and sense
Are given by God, in thee was most intense;
A chain of heart, a feeling of the mind,
A tender sympathy, which did thee bind
Not only to us Men, but to thy Kind:
Yea, for thy fellow-brutes in thee we saw
A soul of love, love's intellectual law:—
Hence, if we wept, it was not done in shame;
Our tears from passion and from reason came,
And, therefore, shalt thou be an honoured name!



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Variant 1:   In the editions of 1807 to 1820 the following lines began the poem. They were withdrawn in 1827.
Lie here sequester'd:—be this little mound
For ever thine, and be it holy ground!
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Variant 2:  
1827
Beneath the ...
1807
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Variant 3:  
But ...
 MS.
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Variant 4:  
1837
I pray'd for thee, and that thy end were past;
 1807
I grieved for thee, and wished thy end were past;
 1820
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Variant 5:  
1837
For love, that comes to all; the holy sense,
Best gift of God, in thee was most intense;

1807
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Variant 6:  
1837
The soul ...
 1807
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Contents 1805
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To the Daisy (4)

Composed 1805.—Published 1815

Placed by Wordsworth among his "Epitaphs and Elegiac Pieces."—Ed.





The Poem


text variant footnote line number
Sweet Flower! belike one day to have
A place upon thy Poet's grave,
I welcome thee once more:
But He, who was on land, at sea,
My Brother, too, in loving thee,
Although he loved more silently,
Sleeps by his native shore.

Ah! hopeful, hopeful was the day
When to that Ship he bent his way,
To govern and to guide:
His wish was gained: a little time
Would bring him back in manhood's prime
And free for life, these hills to climb;
With all his wants supplied.

And full of hope day followed day
While that stout Ship at anchor lay
Beside the shores of Wight;
The May had then made all things green;
And, floating there, in pomp serene,
That Ship was goodly to be seen,
His pride and his delight!

Yet then, when called ashore, he sought
The tender peace of rural thought:
In more than happy mood
To your abodes, bright daisy Flowers!
He then would steal at leisure hours,
And loved you glittering in your bowers,
A starry multitude.

But hark the word!—the ship is gone;—
Returns from her long course:—anon
Sets sail:—in season due,
Once more on English earth they stand:
But, when a third time from the land
They parted, sorrow was at hand
For Him and for his crew.

Ill-fated Vessel!—ghastly shock!
—At length delivered from the rock,
The deep she hath regained;
And through the stormy night they steer;
Labouring for life, in hope and fear,
To reach a safer shore—how near,
Yet not to be attained!

"Silence!" the brave Commander cried;
To that calm word a shriek replied,
It was the last death-shriek.
—A few (my soul oft sees that sight)
Survive upon the tall mast's height;
But one dear remnant of the night—
For Him in vain I seek.

Six weeks beneath the moving sea
He lay in slumber quietly;
Unforced by wind or wave
To quit the Ship for which he died,
(All claims of duty satisfied;)
And there they found him at her side;
And bore him to the grave.

Vain service! yet not vainly done
For this, if other end were none,
That He, who had been cast
Upon a way of life unmeet
For such a gentle Soul and sweet,
Should find an undisturbed retreat
Near what he loved, at last—

That neighbourhood of grove and field
To Him a resting-place should yield,
A meek man and a brave!
The birds shall sing and ocean make
A mournful murmur for his sake;
And Thou, sweet Flower, shalt sleep and wake
Upon his senseless grave.



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1837
From her long course returns:— ...
 1815
return


Variant 2:  
1837
Towards a safer shore— ...
1815
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Variant 3:  
1837
—A few appear by morning light,
Preserved upon the tall mast's height:
Oft in my Soul I see that sight;


1815
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Variant 4:   In the edition of 1827 and subsequent ones, Wordsworth here inserted a footnote, asking the reader to refer to No. VI. of the "Poems on the Naming of Places," beginning "When, to the attractions of the busy world," p. 66. His note of 1837 refers also to the poem which there precedes the present one, viz. the Elegiac Stanzas.—Ed.
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Elegiac StanzasA

Composed 1805.—Published 1807

The Poem

[Sir George Beaumont painted two pictures of this subject, one of which he gave to Mrs. Wordsworth, saying she ought to have it; but Lady Beaumont interfered, and after Sir George's death she gave it to Sir Uvedale Price, at whose house at Foxley I have seen it.—I. F.]

Placed by Wordsworth among his "Epitaphs and Elegiac Pieces."—Ed.




The Poem


text variant footnote line number
I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged Pile!
Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee:
I saw thee every day; and all the while
Thy Form was sleeping on a glassy sea.

So pure the sky, so quiet was the air!
So like, so very like, was day to day!
Whene'er I looked, thy Image still was there;
It trembled, but it never passed away.

How perfect was the calm! it seemed no sleep;
No mood, which season takes away, or brings:
I could have fancied that the mighty Deep
Was even the gentlest of all gentle Things.

Ah! Then, if mine had been the Painter's hand,
To express what then I saw; and add the gleam,
The light that never was, on sea or land,
The consecration, and the Poet's dream;

I would have planted thee, thou hoary Pile
Amid a world how different from this!
Beside a sea that could not cease to smile;
On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss.

Thou shouldst have seemed a treasure-house divine
Of peaceful years; a chronicle of heaven;—
Of all the sunbeams that did ever shine
The very sweetest had to thee been given.

A Picture had it been of lasting ease,
Elysian quiet, without toil or strife;
No motion but the moving tide, a breeze,
Or merely silent Nature's breathing life.

Such, in the fond illusion of my heart,
Such Picture would I at that time have made:
And seen the soul of truth in every part,
A stedfast peace that might not be betrayed.

So once it would have been,—'tis so no more;
I have submitted to a new control:
A power is gone, which nothing can restore;
A deep distress hath humanised my Soul.

Not for a moment could I now behold
A smiling sea, and be what I have been:
The feeling of my loss will ne'er be old;
This, which I know, I speak with mind serene.

Then, Beaumont, Friend! who would have been the Friend,
If he had lived, of Him whom I deplore,
This work of thine I blame not, but commend;
This sea in anger, and that dismal shore.

O 'tis a passionate Work!—yet wise and well,
Well chosen is the spirit that is here;
That Hulk which labours in the deadly swell,
This rueful sky, this pageantry of fear!

And this huge Castle, standing here sublime,
love to see the look with which it braves,
Cased in the unfeeling armour of old time,
The lightning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves.

Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone,
Housed in a dream, at distance from the Kind!
Such happiness, wherever it be known,
Is to be pitied; for 'tis surely blind.

But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer,
And frequent sights of what is to be borne!
Such sights, or worse, as are before me here.—
Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.



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and add a gleam,
The lustre, known to neither sea nor land,
But borrowed from the youthful Poet's dream;


1820
... the gleam, ...
 1827
The edition of 1832 returns to the text of 1807.a
return


Variant 2:  
1845
... a treasure-house, a mine
1807
The whole of this stanza was omitted in the editions of 1820-1843.
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Variant 3:  
1815
... delusion ...
 1807
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Variant 4:  
1837
A faith, a trust, that could not be betray'd.
 1807
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Footnote A:   The original title, in MS, was Verses suggested, etc,—Ed.
return to footnote mark


Footnote B:   Miss Arnold wrote to me, in December 1893:
"I have never doubted that the Peele Castle of Wordsworth is the Piel off Walney Island. I know that my brother Matthew so believed, and I went with him some years ago from Furness Abbey over to Piel, visiting it as the subject of the picture and the poem."
Ed.
return




Sub-Footnote a:   Many years ago Principal Shairp wrote to me,
"Have you noted how the two lines, 'The light that never was,' etc., stood in the edition of 1827? I know no other such instance of a change from commonplace to perfection of ideality."
The Principal had not remembered at the time that the "perfection of ideality" was in the original edition of 1807. The curious thing is that the prosaic version of 1820 and 1827 ever took its place. Wordsworth's return to his original reading was one of the wisest changes he introduced into the text of 1832.—Ed.
return to footnote mark




Note:   There is a Peele Castle, on a small rocky island, close to the town of Peele, in the Isle of Man; yet separated from it, much as St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall is separated from the mainland. This castle was believed by many to be the one which Sir George painted, and which gave rise to the foregoing lines. I visited it in 1879, being then ignorant that any other Peele Castle existed; and although, the day being calm, and the season summer, I thought Sir George had idealized his subject much—(as I had just left Coleorton, where the picture still exists)—I accepted the customary opinion. But I am now convinced, both from the testimony of the Arnold familyB, and as the result of a visit to Piel Castle, near Barrow in Furness, that Wordsworth refers to it. The late Bishop of Lincoln, in his uncle's Memoirs (vol. i. p. 299), quotes the line
"I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged pile,"
and adds,
"He had spent four weeks there of a college summer vacation at the house of his cousin, Mr. Barker."
This house was at Rampside, the village opposite Piel, on the coast of Lancashire. The "rugged pile," too, now "cased in the unfeeling armour of old time," painted by Beaumont, is obviously this Piel Castle near Barrow. I took the engraving of his picture with me, when visiting it: and although Sir George—after the manner of landscape artists of his day—took many liberties with his subjects, it is apparent that it was this, and not Peele Castle in Mona, that he painted. The "four summer weeks" referred to in the first stanza, were those spent at Piel during the year 1794.

With the last verse of these Elegiac Stanzas compare stanzas ten and eleven of the Ode, Intimations of Immortality, vol. viii.

One of the two pictures of "Peele Castle in a Storm"—engraved by S. W. Reynolds, and published in the editions of Wordsworth's poems of 1815 and 1820—is still in the Beaumont Gallery at Coleorton Hall.

The poem is so memorable that I have arranged to make this picture of "Peele Castle in a Storm," the vignette to vol. xv. of this edition. It deserves to be noted that it was to the pleading of Barron Field that we owe the restoration of the original line of 1807,
'The light that never was, on sea or land.'
An interesting account of Piel Castle will be found in Hearne and Byrne's Antiquities. It was built by the Abbot of Furness in the first year of the reign of Edward III.—Ed.


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Elegiac Verses

In Memory of My Brother, John Wordsworth, Commander of the E. I. Company's Ship, The Earl Of Abergavenny, in which He Perished by Calamitous Shipwreck, Feb. 6th, 1805.

Composed 1805.—Published 1842

The Poem

Composed near the Mountain track, that leads from Grasmere through Grisdale Hawes, where it descends towards Patterdale.
["Here did we stop; and here looked round, While each into himself descends."
The point is two or three yards below the outlet of Grisedale Tarn, on a foot-road by which a horse may pass to Patterdale— a ridge of Helvellyn on the left, and the summit of Fairfield on the right.—I. F.]

This poem was included among the "Epitaphs and Elegiac Pieces."—Ed.




The Poem


stanza text variant footnote line number
I The Sheep-boy whistled loud, and lo!
That instant, startled by the shock,
The Buzzard mounted from the rock
Deliberate and slow:
Lord of the air, he took his flight;
Oh! could he on that woeful night
Have lent his wing, my Brother dear,
For one poor moment's space to Thee,
And all who struggled with the Sea,
When safety was so near.



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II Thus in the weakness of my heart
I spoke (but let that pang be still)
When rising from the rock at will,
I saw the Bird depart.
And let me calmly bless the Power
That meets me in this unknown Flower,
Affecting type of him I mourn!
With calmness suffer and believe,
And grieve, and know that I must grieve,
Not cheerless, though forlorn.



15




20
III Here did we stop; and here looked round
While each into himself descends,
For that last thought of parting Friends
That is not to be found.
Hidden was Grasmere Vale from sight,
Our home and his, his heart's delight,
His quiet heart's selected home.
But time before him melts away,
And he hath feeling of a day
Of blessedness to come.



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IV Full soon in sorrow did I weep,
Taught that the mutual hope was dust,
In sorrow, but for higher trust,
How miserably deep!
All vanished in a single word,
A breath, a sound, and scarcely heard.
Sea—Ship—drowned—Shipwreck—so it came,
The meek, the brave, the good, was gone;
He who had been our living John
Was nothing but a name.



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V That was indeed a parting! oh,
Glad am I, glad that it is past;
For there were some on whom it cast
Unutterable woe.
But they as well as I have gains;—
From many a humble source, to pains
Like these, there comes a mild release;
Even here I feel it, even this Plant
Is in its beauty ministrant
To comfort and to peace.



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VI He would have loved thy modest grace,
Meek Flower! To Him I would have said,
"It grows upon its native bed
Beside our Parting-place;
There, cleaving to the ground, it lies
With multitude of purple eyes,
Spangling a cushion green like moss;
But we will see it, joyful tide!
Some day, to see it in its pride,
The mountain will we cross."



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VII —Brother and friend, if verse of mine
Have power to make thy virtues known,
Here let a monumental Stone
Stand—sacred as a Shrine;
And to the few who pass this way,
Traveller or Shepherd, let it say,
Long as these mighty rocks endure,—
Oh do not Thou too fondly brood,
Although deserving of all good,
On any earthly hope, however pure!



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Footnote A:   See 2nd vol. of the Author's Poems, page 298, and 5th vol., pages 311 and 314, among Elegiac Pieces.—W. W. 1842.

These poems are those respectively beginning:

"When, to the attractions of the busy world ..."

"I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged Pile! ..."

"Sweet Flower! belike one day to have ..."

Ed.
return to footnote mark






Note:   The plant alluded to is the Moss Campion (Silene acaulis, of Linnæus). See note at the end of the volume.—W. W. 1842.

See among the "Poems on the Naming of Places," No. VI.—W. W. 1845.

The note is as follows:
"Moss Campion (Silene acaulis). This most beautiful plant is scarce in England, though it is found in great abundance upon the mountains of Scotland. The first specimen I ever saw of it in its native bed was singularly fine, the tuft or cushion being at least eight inches diameter, and the root proportionably thick. I have only met with it in two places among our mountains, in both of which I have since sought for it in vain.

Botanists will not, I hope, take it ill, if I caution them against carrying off inconsiderately rare and beautiful plants. This has often been done, particularly from Ingleborough and other mountains in Yorkshire, till the species have totally disappeared, to the great regret of lovers of nature living near the places where they grew."—W. W. 1842.
See also The Prelude, book xiv. 1. 419, p. 379.—Ed.


This poem underwent no change in successive editions.

At a meeting of "The Wordsworth Society" held at Grasmere, in July 1881, it was proposed by one of the members, the Rev. H. D. Rawnsley, then Vicar of Wray, to erect some memorial at the parting-place of the brothers. The brothers John and William Wordsworth parted at Grisedale Tarn, on the 29th September 1800. The originator of the idea wrote thus of it in June 1882:
"A proposition, made by one of its members to the Wordsworth Society when it met in Grasmere in 1881, to mark the spot in the Grisedale Pass of Wordsworth's parting from his brother John—and to carry out a wish the poet seems to have hinted at in the last of his elegiac verses in memory of that parting—is now being put into effect. It has been determined, after correspondence with Lord Coleridge, Dr. Cradock, Professor Knight, and Mr. Hills, to have inscribed —(on the native rock, if possible)—the first four lines of Stanzas III. and VII. of these verses:
'Here did we stop; and here looked round
While each into himself descends,
For that last thought of parting Friends
That is not to be found.
...
Brother and friend, if verse of mine
Have power to make thy virtues known,
Here let a monumental Stone
Stand—sacred as a Shrine.'
The rock selected is a fine mass, facing the east, on the left of the track as one descends from Grisedale Tarn towards Patterdale, and is about 100 yards from the tarn. No more suitable one can be found, and we have the testimony of Mr. David Richardson of Newcastle, who has practical knowledge of engineering, that it is the fittest, both from shape and from slight incline of plane.

It has been proposed to sink a panel in the face of the rock, that so the inscription may be slightly protected, and to engrave the letters upon the face of the panel thus obtained. But it is not quite certain yet that the grain of the rock— volcanic ash—will admit of the lettering. If this cannot be carried out, it has been determined to have the letters engraved upon a slab of Langdale slate, and imbed it in the Grisedale Rock.

It is believed that the simplicity of the design, the lonely isolation of this mountain memorial, will appeal at once
' ... to the few who pass this way,
Traveller or Shepherd.'
And we in our turn appeal to English tourists who may chance to see it, to forego the wish of adding to it, or taking anything from it, by engraving their own names; and to let the Monumental Stone stand, as the poet wished it might
' ... stand, sacred as a Shrine.'
We owe great thanks to Mrs. Sturge for first surveying the place, to ascertain the possibility of finding a mountain rock sufficiently striking in position; to Mr. Richardson, jun., for his etching of the rock, upon which the inscription is to be made; to his father for the kind trouble he took in the measurement of the said rock; and particularly to the seconder of the original proposal, and my coadjutor in the task of final selection and superintending the work, Mr. W. H. Hills. H. D. Rawnsley. P. S.—When we came to examine the rock, we found the area for the panel less than we had hoped for, owing to certain rock fissures, which, by acting as drains for the rainwater on the surface, would have much interfered with the durability of the inscription. The available space for the panel remains 3 feet 7 in length by 1 foot 9 inches in depth. Owing to the fineness of the grain of the stone, it may be quite possible to letter the native rock; but it has been difficult to fix on a style of lettering for the inscription that shall be at once in good taste, forcible, and plain. It was proposed that the Script type of letter which was made use of in the inscription cut on the rock, in the late Mr. Ball's garden grounds below the Mount at Rydal, should be adopted; but a final decision has been given in favour of a style of lettering which Mrs. Rawnsley has designed. The panel is, from its position, certain to attract the eye of the wanderer from Patterdale up to the Grisedale Pass.

H. D. R."
See the note to The Waggoner, p. 112, referring to the Rock of Names, on the shore of Thirlmere.

The following extract from Recollections from 1803 to 1837, with a Conclusion in 1868, by the Hon. Amelia Murray (London: Longmans, Green, and Co. 1868)—refers to the loss of the Abergavenny:
"One morning, coming down early, I saw what I thought was a great big ship without any hull. This was the Abergavenny, East Indiaman, which had sunk with all sails set, hardly three miles from the shore, and all on board perished.

Had any of the crew taken refuge in the main-top, they might have been saved; but the bowsprit, which was crowded with human beings, gave a lurch into the sea as the ship settled down, and thus all were washed off—though the timber appeared again above water when the 'Abergavenny' touched the ground. The ship had sprung a leak off St. Alban's Head; and in spite of pumps, she went to the bottom just within reach of safety."
pp. 12, 13.

A Narrative of the loss of the "Earl of Abergavenny" East Indiaman, off Portland, Feb. 5, 1805, was published in pamphlet form (8vo, 1805), by Hamilton and Bird, 21 High Street, Islington.

For much in reference to John Wordsworth, which illustrates both these Elegiac Verses, and the poem "On the Naming of Places" which follows them, I must refer to his Life to be published in another volume of this series; but there is one letter of Dorothy Wordsworth's, written to her friend Miss Jane Pollard (afterwards Mrs. Marshall), in reference to her brother's death, which may find a place here. For the use of it I am indebted to the kindness of Mrs. Marshall's daughter, the Dowager Lady Monteagle:
"March 16th, 1805. Grasmere.

"... It does me good to weep for him, and it does me good to find that others weep, and I bless them for it. ... It is with me, when I write, as when I am walking out in this vale, once so full of joy. I can turn to no object that does not remind me of our loss. I see nothing that he would not have loved, and enjoyed.... My consolations rather come to me in gusts of feeling, than are the quiet growth of my mind. I know it will not always be so. The time will come when the light of the setting sun upon these mountain tops will be as heretofore a pure joy; not the same gladness, that can never be—but yet a joy even more tender. It will soothe me to know how happy he would have been, could he have seen the same beautiful spectacle.... He was taken away in the freshness of his manhood; pure he was, and innocent as a child. Never human being was more thoroughly modest, and his courage I need not speak of. He was 'seen speaking with apparent cheerfulness to the first mate a few minutes before the ship went down;' and when nothing more could be done, He said, 'the will of God be done.' I have no doubt when he felt that it was out of his power to save his life he was as calm as before, if some thought of what we should endure did not awaken a pang.... He loved solitude, and he rejoiced in society. He would wander alone amongst these hills with his fishing-rod, or led on by the mere pleasure of walking, for many hours; or he would walk with W. or me, or both of us, and was continually pointing out—with a gladness which is seldom seen but in very young people—something which perhaps would have escaped our observation; for he had so fine an eye that no distinction was unnoticed by him, and so tender a feeling that he never noticed anything in vain. Many a time has he called out to me at evening to look at the moon or stars, or a cloudy sky, or this vale in the quiet moonlight; but the stars and moon were his chief delight. He made of them his companions when he was at sea, and was never tired of those thoughts which the silence of the night fed in him. Then he was so happy by the fireside. Any little business of the house interested him. He loved our cottage. He helped us to furnish it, and to make the garden. Trees are growing now which he planted.... He staid with us till the 29th of September, having come to us about the end of January. During that time Mary Hutchinson—now Mary Wordsworth—staid with us six weeks. John used to walk with her everywhere, and they were exceedingly attached to each other; so my poor sister mourns with us, not merely because we have lost one who was so dear to William and me, but from tender love to John and an intimate knowledge of him. Her hopes as well as ours were fixed on John.... I can think of nothing but of our departed Brother, yet I am very tranquil to-day. I honour him, and love him, and glory in his memory...."
Southey, writing to his friend, C. W. W. Wynn, on the 3rd of April 1805, says:
"Dear Wynn,

I have been grievously shocked this evening by the loss of the Abergavenny, of which Wordsworth's brother was captain. Of course the news came flying up to us from all quarters, and it has disordered me from head to foot. At such circumstances I believe we feel as much for others as for ourselves; just as a violent blow occasions the same pain as a wound, and he who breaks his shin feels as acutely at the moment as the man whose leg is shot off. In fact, I am writing to you merely because this dreadful shipwreck has left me utterly unable to do anything else. It is the heaviest calamity Wordsworth has ever experienced, and in all probability I shall have to communicate it to him, as he will very likely be here before the tidings can reach him. What renders any near loss of this kind so peculiarly distressing is, that the recollection is perpetually freshened when any like event occurs, by the mere mention of shipwreck, or the sound of the wind. Of all deaths it is the most dreadful, from the circumstances of terror which accompany it...."
(See The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, vol. ii. p. 321.)

The following is part of a letter from Mary Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth on the same subject. It is undated:
"My Dear Miss Wordsworth,—

I wished to tell you that you would one day feel the kind of peaceful state of mind and sweet memory of the dead, which you so happily describe, as now almost begun; but I felt that it was improper, and most grating to the feelings of the afflicted, to say to them that the memory of their affliction would in time become a constant part, not only of their dreams, but of their most wakeful sense of happiness. That you would see every object with and through your lost brother, and that that would at last become a real and everlasting source of comfort to you, I felt, and well knew, from my own experience in sorrow; but till you yourself began to feel this, I did not dare to tell you so; but I send you some poor lines, which I wrote under this conviction of mind, and before I heard Coleridge was returning home.

...
"Why is he wandering on the sea?—
Coleridge should now with Wordsworth be.
By slow degrees he'd steal away
Their woes, and gently bring a ray
(So happily he'd time relief,)
Of comfort from their very grief.
He'd tell them that their brother dead,
When years have passed o'er their head,
Will be remembered with such holy,
True and tender melancholy,
That ever this lost brother John
Will be their heart's companion.
His voice they'll always hear,
His face they'll always see;
There's naught in life so sweet
As such a memory."
(See Final Memorials of Charles Lamb, by Thomas Noon Talfourd, vol. ii. pp. 233, 234.)—Ed.


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When, to the Attractions of the Busy World"

Composed 1800 to 1805.—Published 1815

The Poem

[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.—I. F.]

This was No. VI. of the "Poems on the Naming of Places." For several suggested changes in MS. see Appendix I. p. 385.—Ed.




The Poem


text variant footnote line number
When, to the attractions of the busy world,
Preferring studious leisure, I had chosen
A habitation in this peaceful Vale,
Sharp season followed of continual storm
In deepest winter; and, from week to week,
Pathway, and lane, and public road, were clogged
With frequent showers of snow. Upon a hill
At a short distance from my cottage, stands
A stately Fir-grove, whither I was wont
To hasten, for I found, beneath the roof
Of that perennial shade, a cloistral place
Of refuge, with an unincumbered floor.
Here, in safe covert, on the shallow snow,
And, sometimes, on a speck of visible earth,
The redbreast near me hopped; nor was I loth
To sympathise with vulgar coppice birds
That, for protection from the nipping blast,
Hither repaired.—A single beech-tree grew
Within this grove of firs! and, on the fork
Of that one beech, appeared a thrush's nest;
A last year's nest, conspicuously built
At such small elevation from the ground
As gave sure sign that they, who in that house
Of nature and of love had made their home
Amid the fir-trees, all the summer long
Dwelt in a tranquil spot. And oftentimes,
A few sheep, stragglers from some mountain-flock,
Would watch my motions with suspicious stare,
From the remotest outskirts of the grove,—
Some nook where they had made their final stand,
Huddling together from two fears—the fear
Of me and of the storm. Full many an hour
Here did I lose. But in this grove the trees
Had been so thickly planted, and had thriven
In such perplexed and intricate array;
That vainly did I seek, beneath their stems
A length of open space, where to and fro
My feet might move without concern or care;
And, baffled thus, though earth from day to day
Was fettered, and the air by storm disturbed,
I ceased the shelter to frequent,—and prized,
Less than I wished to prize, that calm recess.

The snows dissolved, and genial Spring returned
To clothe the fields with verdure. Other haunts
Meanwhile were mine; till, one bright April day,
By chance retiring from the glare of noon
To this forsaken covert, there I found
A hoary pathway traced between the trees,
And winding on with such an easy line
Along a natural opening, that I stood
Much wondering how I could have sought in vain
For what was now so obvious. To abide,
For an allotted interval of ease,
Under my cottage-roof, had gladly come
From the wild sea a cherished Visitant;
And with the sight of this same path—begun,
Begun and ended, in the shady grove,
Pleasant conviction flashed upon my mind
That, to this opportune recess allured,
He had surveyed it with a finer eye,
A heart more wakeful; and had worn the track
By pacing here, unwearied and alone,
In that habitual restlessness of foot
That haunts the Sailor measuring o'er and o'er
His short domain upon the vessel's deck,
While she pursues her course through the dreary sea.
When thou hadst quitted Esthwaite's pleasant shore,
And taken thy first leave of those green hills
And rocks that were the play-ground of thy youth,
Year followed year, my Brother! and we two,
Conversing not, knew little in what mould
Each other's mind was fashioned; and at length
When once again we met in Grasmere Vale,
Between us there was little other bond
Than common feelings of fraternal love.
But thou, a School-boy, to the sea hadst carried
Undying recollections; Nature there
Was with thee; she, who loved us both, she still
Was with thee; and even so didst thou become
A silent Poet; from the solitude
Of the vast sea didst bring a watchful heart
Still couchant, an inevitable ear,
And an eye practised like a blind man's touch.
—Back to the joyless Ocean thou art gone;
Nor from this vestige of thy musing hours
Could I withhold thy honoured name,—and now
I love the fir-grove with a perfect love.
Thither do I withdraw when cloudless suns
Shine hot, or wind blows troublesome and strong;
And there I sit at evening, when the steep
Of Silver-how, and Grasmere's peaceful lake,
And one green island, gleam between the stems
Of the dark firs, a visionary scene!
And, while I gaze upon the spectacle
Of clouded splendour, on this dream-like sight
Of solemn loveliness, I think on thee,
My Brother, and on all which thou hast lost.
Nor seldom, if I rightly guess, while Thou,
Muttering the verses which I muttered first
Among the mountains, through the midnight watch
Art pacing thoughtfully the vessel's deck
In some far region, here, while o'er my head,
At every impulse of the moving breeze,
The fir-grove murmurs with a sea-like sound,
Alone I tread this path;—for aught I know,
Timing my steps to thine; and, with a store
Of undistinguishable sympathies,
Mingling most earnest wishes for the day
When we, and others whom we love, shall meet
A second time, in Grasmere's happy Vale.



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Variant 1:  
1836
... between ...
1815
return


Variant 2:  
1836
And, baffled thus, before the storm relaxed,
I ceased that Shelter to frequent,—

1815
... the shelter ...
1827
return


Variant 3:  
1827
Much wondering at my own simplicity
How I could e'er have made a fruitless search
1815
return


Variant 4:  
date
... At the sight
Conviction also flashed upon my mind
That this same path (within the shady grove
Begun and ended) by my Brother's steps
Had been impressed.— ...



These additional lines appeared only in 1815 and 1820.
return


Variant 5:  
1845
... To sojourn a short while
Beneath my roof He from the barren seas
Had newly come—a cherished Visitant!


1815
... To abide,
For an allotted interval of ease,
Beneath my cottage roof, had newly come
From the wild sea a cherished Visitant;
1827
Beneath my cottage roof, had gladly come
1840
... had meanwhile come
 C.a
return


Variant 6:   This and the previous line were added in 1827.
return


Variant 7:  
1827
And much did it delight me to perceive
1815
return


Variant 8:  
1827
A heart more wakeful; that, more both to part
From place so lovely, he had worn the track

1815
return


Variant 9:  
1845
With which the Sailor measures ...
1815
return


Variant 10:  
1845
While she is travelling ...
 1815
return


Variant 11:  
1836
... minds were fashioned;...
1815
return


Variant 12:  
1827
... art gone;
And now I call the path-way by thy name,
And love the fir-grove

1815
return


Variant 13:  
1827
... placid ...
1815
return


Variant 14:  
1827
Art pacing to and fro ...
 1815
return




Footnote A:   Compare Daniel's Hymens Triumph, ii. 4:
'And where no sun could see him, where no eye
Might overlook his lonely privacy;
There in a path of his own making, trod
Rare as a common way, yet led no way
Beyond the turns he made.'
Ed.
return to footnote mark


Footnote B:   Compare the line in Coleridge's Hymn before Sun-rise, in the Vale of Chamouni:
'Ye pine groves with your soft and soul-like sound,'
Ed.
return




Sub-Footnote a:   In the late Lord Coleridge's copy of the edition of 1836, there is a footnote in Wordsworth's handwriting to the word "meanwhile" which is substituted for "newly." "If newly come, could he have traced a visible path?"—Ed.
return to footnote mark




Note:   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.—W. W. 1815.

For the date of this poem in the Chronological Tables given in the editions of 1815 and 1820, Wordsworth assigned the year 1802. But, in the edition of 1836, he assigned it to the year 1805, the date retained by Mr. Carter in the edition of 1857. Captain Wordsworth perished on the 5th of February 1805; and if the poem was written in 1805, it must have been in the month of January of that year. The note to the poem is explicit—"Not long after" he "perished by shipwreck," etc. Thus the poem may have been written in the beginning of 1805; but it is not at all certain that part of it at least does not belong to an earlier year. John Wordsworth lived with his brother and sister at the Town-end Cottage, Grasmere, during part of the winter, and during the whole of the spring, summer, and autumn of 1800, William and John going together on foot into Yorkshire from the 14th of May to the 7th of June. John left Grasmere on Michaelmas day (September 29th) 1800, and never returned to it again. The following is Miss Wordsworth's record of that day in her Journal of 1800:
"On Monday, 29th, John left us. William and I parted with him in sight of Ullswater. It was a fine day, showery, but with sunshine and fine clouds. Poor fellow, my heart was right sad, I could not help thinking we should see him again, because he was only going to Penrith."
In the spring of 1801, John Wordsworth sailed for China in the Abergavenny. He returned from this voyage in safety, and the brothers met once again in London. He went to sea again in 1803, and returned to London in 1804, but could not visit Grasmere; and in the month of February 1805—shortly after he was appointed to the command of the Abergavenny— the ship was lost at the Bill of Portland, and every one on board perished. It is clear that the latter part of the poem, "When, to the attractions of the busy world," was written between John Wordsworth's departure from Grasmere and the loss of the Abergavenny, i. e. between September 1800 and February 1805, as there are references in it both to what his brother did at Grasmere and to his return to sea:
'Back to the joyless Ocean thou art gone.'
There are some things in the earlier part of the poem that appear to negative the idea of its having been written in 1800. The opening lines seem to hint at an experience somewhat distant. He speaks of being "wont" to do certain things. But, on the other hand, I find an entry in Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal, which leads me to believe that the poem may have been begun in 1800, and that the first part, ending (as it did then) with the line:
'While she is travelling through the dreary sea,'
may have been finished before John Wordsworth left Grasmere; the second part being written afterwards, while he was at sea; and that this is the explanation of the date given in the editions of 1815 and 1820, viz. 1802.

Passages occur in Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal to the following effect:
"Monday Morning, 1st September.—We walked in the wood by the lake. William read Joanna and the Firgrove to Coleridge."
A little earlier there is the record,
"Saturday, 22nd August.—William was composing all the morning.... William read us the poem of Joanna beside the Rothay by the roadside."
Then, on Friday, the 25th August, there is the entry,
"We walked over the hill by the Firgrove, I sate upon a rock and observed a flight of swallows gathering together high above my head. We walked through the wood to the stepping stones, the lake of Rydale very beautiful, partly still, I left William to compose an inscription, that about the path...."
Then, next day,
"Saturday morning, 30th August.—William finished his inscription of the Pathway, then walked in the wood, and when John returned he sought him, and they bathed together."
To what poem Dorothy Wordsworth referred under the name of the "Inscription of the Pathway" has puzzled me much. There is no poem amongst his "Inscriptions" (written in or before August 1800) that corresponds to it in the least. But, if my conjecture is right that this "Poem on the Naming of Places," beginning:
'When, to the attractions of the busy world,'
was composed at two different times, it is quite possible that "the Firgrove" which was read—along with Joanna—to Coleridge on September lst, 1800, was the first part of this very poem.

If this supposition is correct, some light is cast both on the "Inscription of the Pathway." and on the date assigned by Wordsworth himself to the poem. There is a certain fitness, however, in this poem being placed—as it now is—in sequence to the Elegiac Verses in memory of John Wordsworth, beginning, "The Sheep-boy whistled loud," and near the fourth poem To the Daisy, beginning, "Sweet Flower! belike one day to have."

The "Fir-grove" still exists. It is between Wishing Gate and White Moss Common, and almost exactly opposite the former. Standing at the gate and looking eastwards, the grove is to the left, not forty yards distant. Some of the firs (Scotch ones) still survive, and several beech trees, not "a single beech-tree," as in the poem. From this, one might infer that the present colony had sprung up since the beginning of the century, and that the special tree, in which was the thrush's nest, had perished; but Dr. Cradock wrote to me that "Wordsworth pointed out the tree to Miss Cookson a few days before Dora Wordsworth's death. The tree is near the upper wall and tells its own tale." The Fir-grove—"John's Grove"— can easily be entered by a gate about a hundred yards beyond the Wishing-gate, as one goes toward Rydal. The view from it, the "visionary scene,"
            'the spectacle
Of clouded splendour, ... this dream-like sight
Of solemn loveliness,'
is now much interfered with by the new larch plantations immediately below the firs. It must have been very different in Wordsworth's time, and is constantly referred to in his sister's Journal as a favourite retreat, resorted to
'when cloudless suns
'Shone hot, or wind blew troublesome and strong.'
In the absence of contrary testimony, it might be supposed that "the track" which the brother had "worn,"
'By pacing here, unwearied and alone,'
faced Silver-How and the Grasmere Island, and that the single beech tree was nearer the lower than the upper wall. But Miss Cookson's testimony is explicit. Only a few fir trees survive at this part of the grove, which is now open and desolate, not as it was in those earlier days, when
            'the trees
Had been so thickly planted, and had thriven
With such perplexed and intricate array,
That vainly did I seek, beneath their stems
A length of open space ...'
Dr. Cradock remarks,
"As to there being more than one beech, Wordsworth would not have hesitated to sacrifice servile exactness to poetical effect." He had a fancy for "one":
'Fair as a star when only one
Is shining in the sky;'
"'One' abode, no more;" Grasmere's "one green island;" "one green field."
Since the above note was printed, new light has been cast on the "Inscription of the Pathway," for which see volume viii. of this edition.—Ed.


Contents 1805
Main Contents



The Cottager to her Infant

By my Sister

Composed 1805.—Published 1815

[Suggested to her, while beside my sleeping children.—I. F.]

One of the "Poems founded on the Affections."—Ed.




The Poem


text variant footnote line number
The days are cold, the nights are long,
The north-wind sings a doleful song;
Then hush again upon my breast;
All merry things are now at rest,
Save thee, my pretty Love!

The kitten sleeps upon the hearth,
The crickets long have ceased their mirth;
There's nothing stirring in the house
Save one wee, hungry, nibbling mouse,
Then why so busy thou?

Nay! start not at that sparkling light;
'Tis but the moon that shines so bright
On the window pane bedropped with rain:
Then, little Darling! sleep again,
And wake when it is day.



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Note:  This poem underwent no change in successive editions. The title in all the earlier ones (1815 to 1843) was The Cottager to her Infant. By a Female Friend; and in the preface to the edition of 1815, Wordsworth wrote,
"Three short pieces (now first published) are the work of a Female Friend; ... if any one regard them with dislike, or be disposed to condemn them, let the censure fall upon him, who, trusting in his own sense of their merit, and their fitness for the place which they occupy, extorted them from the Authoress."
In the edition of 1845, he disclosed the authorship; and gave the more natural title, By my Sister. Other two poems by her were introduced into the edition of 1815, and subsequent ones, viz. the Address to a Child, and The Mother's Return. In an appendix to a MS. copy of the Recollections of a Tour made in Scotland, by Dorothy Wordsworth, transcribed by Mrs. Clarkson, I find the poem 'The Cottager to her Infant' with two additional stanzas, which are there attributed to Wordsworth. The appendix runs thus:
"To my Niece Dorothy, a sleepless Baby

The Cottager to Her Infant

(The third and fourth stanzas which follow by W. W.)
'Ah! if I were a lady gay
I should not grieve with thee to play;
Right gladly would I lie awake
Thy lively spirits to partake,
And ask no better cheer.

But, Babe! there's none to work for me.
And I must rise to industry;
Soon as the cock begins to crow
Thy mother to the fold must go
To tend the sheep and kine.'"
Ed.


Contents 1805
Main Contents



The WaggonerA

Composed 1805.—Published 1819

The Poem

[Written at Town-end, Grasmere. The characters and story from fact.—I. F.]
"In Cairo's crowded streets
The impatient Merchant, wondering, waits in vain,
And Mecca saddens at the long delay."

Thomson.B



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 it 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 20th, 1819.




The Poem


Canto the First


text variant footnote line number
'Tis spent—this burning day of June!
Soft darkness o'er its latest gleams is stealing;
The buzzing dor-hawk, round and round, is wheeling,—
That solitary bird
Is all that can be heard
In silence deeper far than that of deepest noon!

Confiding Glow-worms, 'tis a night
Propitious to your earth-born light!
But, where the scattered stars are seen
In hazy straits the clouds between,
Each, in his station twinkling not,
Seems changed into a pallid spot.
The mountains against heaven's grave weight
Rise up, and grow to wondrous height.
The air, as in a lion's den,
Is close and hot;—and now and then
Comes a tired and sultry breeze
With a haunting and a panting,
Like the stifling of disease;
But the dews allay the heat,
And the silence makes it sweet.

Hush, there is some one on the stir!
'Tis Benjamin the Waggoner;
Who long hath trod this toilsome way,
Companion of the night and day.
That far-off tinkling's drowsy cheer,
Mix'd with a faint yet grating sound
In a moment lost and found,
The Wain announces—by whose side
Along the banks of Rydal Mere
He paces on, a trusty Guide,—
Listen! you can scarcely hear!
Hither he his course is bending;—
Now he leaves the lower ground,
And up the craggy hill ascending
Many a stop and stay he makes,
Many a breathing-fit he takes;—
Steep the way and wearisome,
Yet all the while his whip is dumb!

The Horses have worked with right good-will,
And so have gained the top of the hill;
He was patient, they were strong,
And now they smoothly glide along,
Recovering breath, and pleased to win
The praises of mild Benjamin.
Heaven shield him from mishap and snare!
But why so early with this prayer?
Is it for threatenings in the sky?
Or for some other danger nigh?
No; none is near him yet, though he
Be one of much infirmity;
For at the bottom of the brow,
Where once the Dove and Olive-bough
Offered a greeting of good ale
To all who entered Grasmere Vale;
And called on him who must depart
To leave it with a jovial heart;
There, where the Dove and Olive-bough
Once hung, a Poet harbours now,
A simple water-drinking Bard;
Why need our Hero then (though frail
His best resolves) be on his guard?
He marches by, secure and bold;
Yet while he thinks on times of old,
It seems that all looks wondrous cold;
He shrugs his shoulders, shakes his head,
And, for the honest folk within,
It is a doubt with Benjamin
Whether they be alive or dead!

Here is no danger,—none at all!
Beyond his wish he walks secure;
But pass a mile—and then for trial,—
Then for the pride of self-denial;
If he resist that tempting door,
Which with such friendly voice will call;
If he resist those casement panes,
And that bright gleam which thence will fall
Upon his Leaders' bells and manes,
Inviting him with cheerful lure:
For still, though all be dark elsewhere,
Some shining notice will be there
Of open house and ready fare.

The place to Benjamin right well
Is known, and by as strong a spell
As used to be that sign of love
And hope—the Olive-bough and Dove;
He knows it to his cost, good Man!
Who does not know the famous Swan?
Object uncouth! and yet our boast,
For it was painted by the Host;
His own conceit the figure planned,
'Twas coloured all by his own hand;
And that frail Child of thirsty clay,
Of whom I sing this rustic lay,
Could tell with self-dissatisfaction
Quaint stories of the bird's attraction!

Well! that is past—and in despite
Of open door and shining light.
And now the conqueror essays
The long ascent of Dunmail-raise;
And with his team is gentle here
As when he clomb from Rydal Mere;
His whip they do not dread—his voice
They only hear it to rejoice.
To stand or go is at their pleasure;
Their efforts and their time they measure
By generous pride within the breast;
And, while they strain, and while they rest,
He thus pursues his thoughts at leisure.

Now am I fairly safe to-night—
And with proud cause my heart is light:
I trespassed lately worse than ever—
But Heaven has blest a good endeavour;
And, to my soul's content, I find
The evil One is left behind.
Yes, let my master fume and fret,
Here am I—with my horses yet!
My jolly team, he finds that ye
Will work for nobody but me!
Full proof of this the Country gained;
It knows how ye were vexed and strained,
And forced unworthy stripes to bear,
When trusted to another's care.
Here was it—on this rugged slope,
Which now ye climb with heart and hope,
I saw you, between rage and fear,
Plunge, and fling back a spiteful ear,
And ever more and more confused,
As ye were more and more abused:
As chance would have it, passing by
I saw you in that jeopardy:
A word from me was like a charm;
Ye pulled together with one mind;
And your huge burthen, safe from harm,
Moved like a vessel in the wind!
—Yes, without me, up hills so high
'Tis vain to strive for mastery.
Then grieve not, jolly team! though tough
The road we travel, steep, and rough;
Though Rydal-heights and Dunmail-raise,
And all their fellow banks and braes,
Full often make you stretch and strain,
And halt for breath and halt again,
Yet to their sturdiness 'tis owing
That side by side we still are going!

While Benjamin in earnest mood
His meditations thus pursued,
A storm, which had been smothered long,
Was growing inwardly more strong;
And, in its struggles to get free,
Was busily employed as he.
The thunder had begun to growl—
He heard not, too intent of soul;
The air was now without a breath—
He marked not that 'twas still as death.
But soon large rain-drops on his head
Fell with the weight of drops of lead;—
He starts—and takes, at the admonition,
A sage survey of his condition.
The road is black before his eyes,
Glimmering faintly where it lies;
Black is the sky—and every hill,
Up to the sky, is blacker still—
Sky, hill, and dale, one dismal room,
Hung round and overhung with gloom;
Save that above a single height
Is to be seen a lurid light,
Above Helm-crag—a streak half dead,
A burning of portentous red;
And near that lurid light, full well
The Astrologer, sage Sidrophel,
Where at his desk and book he sits,
Puzzling aloft his curious wits;
He whose domain is held in common
With no one but the Ancient Woman,
Cowering beside her rifted cell,
As if intent on magic spell;-
Dread pair, that, spite of wind and weather,
Still sit upon Helm-crag together!

The Astrologer was not unseen
By solitary Benjamin;
But total darkness came anon,
And he and every thing was gone:
And suddenly a ruffling breeze,
(That would have rocked the sounding trees
Had aught of sylvan growth been there)
Swept through the Hollow long and bare:
The rain rushed down—the road was battered,
As with the force of billows shattered;
The horses are dismayed, nor know
Whether they should stand or go;
And Benjamin is groping near them,
Sees nothing, and can scarcely hear them.
He is astounded,—wonder not,—
With such a charge in such a spot;
Astounded in the mountain gap
With thunder-peals, clap after clap,
Close-treading on the silent flashes—
And somewhere, as he thinks, by crashes
Among the rocks; with weight of rain,
And sullen motions long and slow,
That to a dreary distance go—
Till, breaking in upon the dying strain,
A rending o'er his head begins the fray again.

Meanwhile, uncertain what to do,
And oftentimes compelled to halt,
The horses cautiously pursue
Their way, without mishap or fault;
And now have reached that pile of stones,
Heaped over brave King Dunmail's bones;
He who had once supreme command,
Last king of rocky Cumberland;
His bones, and those of all his Power,
Slain here in a disastrous hour!

When, passing through this narrow strait,
Stony, and dark, and desolate,
Benjamin can faintly hear
A voice that comes from some one near,
A female voice:—"Whoe'er you be,
Stop," it exclaimed, "and pity me!"
And, less in pity than in wonder,
Amid the darkness and the thunder,
The Waggoner, with prompt command,
Summons his horses to a stand.

While, with increasing agitation,
The Woman urged her supplication,
In rueful words, with sobs between—
The voice of tears that fell unseen;
There came a flash—a startling glare,
And all Seat-Sandal was laid bare!
'Tis not a time for nice suggestion,
And Benjamin, without a question,
Taking her for some way-worn rover,
Said, "Mount, and get you under cover!"
Another voice, in tone as hoarse
As a swoln brook with rugged course,
Cried out, "Good brother, why so fast?
I've had a glimpse of you—'avast!'
Or, since it suits you to be civil,
Take her at once—for good and evil!"

"It is my Husband," softly said
The Woman, as if half afraid:
By this time she was snug within,
Through help of honest Benjamin;
She and her Babe, which to her breast
With thankfulness the Mother pressed;
And now the same strong voice more near
Said cordially, "My Friend, what cheer?
Rough doings these! as God's my judge,
The sky owes somebody a grudge!
We've had in half an hour or less
A twelvemonth's terror and distress!"

Then Benjamin entreats the Man
Would mount, too, quickly as he can:
The Sailor—Sailor now no more,
But such he had been heretofore—
To courteous Benjamin replied,
"Go you your way, and mind not me;
For I must have, whate'er betide,
My Ass and fifty things beside,—
Go, and I'll follow speedily!"

The Waggon moves—and with its load
Descends along the sloping road;
And the rough Sailor instantly
Turns to a little tent hard by:
For when, at closing-in of day,
The family had come that way,
Green pasture and the soft warm air
Tempted them to settle there.—
Green is the grass for beast to graze,
Around the stones of Dunmail-raise!

The Sailor gathers up his bed,
Takes down the canvass overhead;
And, after farewell to the place,
A parting word—though not of grace,
Pursues, with Ass and all his store,
The way the Waggon went before.



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Canto Second


text variant footnote line number
If Wytheburn's modest House of prayer,
As lowly as the lowliest dwelling,
Had, with its belfry's humble stock,
A little pair that hang in air,
Been mistress also of a clock,
(And one, too, not in crazy plight)
Twelve strokes that clock would have been telling
Under the brow of old Helvellyn—
Its bead-roll of midnight,
Then, when the Hero of my tale
Was passing by, and, down the vale
(The vale now silent, hushed I ween
As if a storm had never been)
Proceeding with a mind at ease;
While the old Familiar of the seas
Intent to use his utmost haste,
Gained ground upon the Waggon fast,
And gives another lusty cheer;
For spite of rumbling of the wheels,
A welcome greeting he can hear;—
It is a fiddle in its glee
Dinning from the Cherry Tree!

Thence the sound—the light is there—
As Benjamin is now aware,
Who, to his inward thoughts confined,
Had almost reached the festive door,
When, startled by the Sailor's roar,
He hears a sound and sees the light,
And in a moment calls to mind
That 'tis the village Merry-Night!

Although before in no dejection,
At this insidious recollection
His heart with sudden joy is filled,—
His ears are by the music thrilled,
His eyes take pleasure in the road
Glittering before him bright and broad;
And Benjamin is wet and cold,
And there are reasons manifold
That make the good, tow'rds which he's yearning,
Look fairly like a lawful earning.

Nor has thought time to come and go,
To vibrate between yes and no;
For, cries the Sailor, "Glorious chance
That blew us hither!—let him dance,
Who can or will!—my honest soul,
Our treat shall be a friendly bowl!"
He draws him to the door—"Come in,
Come, come," cries he to Benjamin!
And Benjamin—ah, woe is me!
Gave the word—the horses heard
And halted, though reluctantly.

"Blithe souls and lightsome hearts have we,
Feasting at the Cherry Tree!"
This was the outside proclamation,
This was the inside salutation;
What bustling—jostling—high and low!
A universal overflow!
What tankards foaming from the tap!
What store of cakes in every lap!
What thumping—stumping—overhead!
The thunder had not been more busy:
With such a stir you would have said,
This little place may well be dizzy!
'Tis who can dance with greatest vigour—
'Tis what can be most prompt and eager;
As if it heard the fiddle's call,
The pewter clatters on the wall;
The very bacon shows its feeling,
Swinging from the smoky ceiling!

A steaming bowl, a blazing fire,
What greater good can heart desire?
'Twere worth a wise man's while to try
The utmost anger of the sky:
To seek for thoughts of a gloomy cast,
If such the bright amends at last.
Now should you say I judge amiss,
The Cherry Tree shows proof of this;
For soon of all the happy there,
Our Travellers are the happiest pair;
All care with Benjamin is gone—
A Cæsar past the Rubicon!
He thinks not of his long, long strife;—
The Sailor, Man by nature gay,
Hath no resolves to throw away;
And he hath now forgot his Wife,
Hath quite forgotten her—or may be
Thinks her the luckiest soul on earth,
Within that warm and peaceful berth,
        Under cover,
        Terror over,
Sleeping by her sleeping Baby.

With bowl that sped from hand to hand,
The gladdest of the gladsome band,
Amid their own delight and fun,
They hear—when every dance is done,
When every whirling bout is o'er—
The fiddle's squeak—that call to bliss,
Ever followed by a kiss;
They envy not the happy lot,
But enjoy their own the more!

While thus our jocund Travellers fare,
Up springs the Sailor from his chair—
Limps (for I might have told before
That he was lame) across the floor—
Is gone—returns—and with a prize;
With what?—a Ship of lusty size;
A gallant stately Man-of-war,
Fixed on a smoothly-sliding car.
Surprise to all, but most surprise
To Benjamin, who rubs his eyes,
Not knowing that he had befriended
A Man so gloriously attended!

"This," cries the Sailor, "a Third-rate is—
Stand back, and you shall see her gratis!
This was the Flag-ship at the Nile,
The Vanguard—you may smirk and smile,
But, pretty Maid, if you look near,
You'll find you've much in little here!
A nobler ship did never swim,
And you shall see her in full trim:
I'll set, my friends, to do you honour,
Set every inch of sail upon her."
So said, so done; and masts, sails, yards,
He names them all; and interlards
His speech with uncouth terms of art,
Accomplished in the showman's part;
And then, as from a sudden check,
Cries out—"'Tis there, the quarter-deck
On which brave Admiral Nelson stood—
A sight that would have roused your blood!
One eye he had, which, bright as ten,
Burned like a fire among his men;
Let this be land, and that be sea,
Here lay the French—and thus came we!"

Hushed was by this the fiddle's sound,
The dancers all were gathered round,
And, such the stillness of the house,
You might have heard a nibbling mouse;
While, borrowing helps where'er he may,
The Sailor through the story runs
Of ships to ships and guns to guns;
And does his utmost to display
The dismal conflict, and the might
And terror of that marvellous night!
"A bowl, a bowl of double measure,"
Cries Benjamin, "a draught of length,
To Nelson, England's pride and treasure,
Her bulwark and her tower of strength!"
When Benjamin had seized the bowl,
The mastiff, from beneath the waggon,
Where he lay, watchful as a dragon,
Rattled his chain;—'twas all in vain,
For Benjamin, triumphant soul!
He heard the monitory growl;
Heard—and in opposition quaffed
A deep, determined, desperate draught!
Nor did the battered Tar forget,
Or flinch from what he deemed his debt:
Then, like a hero crowned with laurel,
Back to her place the ship he led;
Wheeled her back in full apparel;
And so, flag flying at mast head,
Re-yoked her to the Ass:—anon,
Cries Benjamin, "We must be gone."
Thus, after two hours' hearty stay,
Again behold them on their way!













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Canto Third


text variant footnote line number
Right gladly had the horses stirred,
When they the wished-for greeting heard,
The whip's loud notice from the door,
That they were free to move once more.
You think, those doings must have bred
In them disheartening doubts and dread;
No, not a horse of all the eight,
Although it be a moonless night,
Fears either for himself or freight;
For this they know (and let it hide,
In part, the offences of their guide)
That Benjamin, with clouded brains,
Is worth the best with all their pains;
And, if they had a prayer to make,
The prayer would be that they may take
With him whatever comes in course,
The better fortune or the worse;
That no one else may have business near them,
And, drunk or sober, he may steer them.

So, forth in dauntless mood they fare,
And with them goes the guardian pair.

Now, heroes, for the true commotion,
The triumph of your late devotion!
Can aught on earth impede delight,
Still mounting to a higher height;
And higher still—a greedy flight!
Can any low-born care pursue her,
Can any mortal clog come to her?
No notion have they—not a thought,
That is from joyless regions brought!
And, while they coast the silent lake,
Their inspiration I partake;
Share their empyreal spirits—yea,
With their enraptured vision, see—
O fancy—what a jubilee!
What shifting pictures—clad in gleams
Of colour bright as feverish dreams!
Earth, spangled sky, and lake serene,
Involved and restless all—a scene
Pregnant with mutual exaltation,
Rich change, and multiplied creation!
This sight to me the Muse imparts;—
And then, what kindness in their hearts!
What tears of rapture, what vow-making,
Profound entreaties, and hand-shaking!
What solemn, vacant, interlacing,
As if they'd fall asleep embracing!
Then, in the turbulence of glee,
And in the excess of amity,
Says Benjamin, "That Ass of thine,
He spoils thy sport, and hinders mine:
If he were tethered to the waggon,
He'd drag as well what he is dragging;
And we, as brother should with brother,
Might trudge it alongside each other!"

Forthwith, obedient to command,
The horses made a quiet stand;
And to the waggon's skirts was tied
The Creature, by the Mastiff's side,
The Mastiff wondering, and perplext
With dread of what will happen next;
And thinking it but sorry cheer,
To have such company so near!

This new arrangement made, the Wain
Through the still night proceeds again;
No Moon hath risen her light to lend;
But indistinctly may be kenned
The Vanguard, following close behind,
Sails spread, as if to catch the wind!

"Thy wife and child are snug and warm,
Thy ship will travel without harm;
I like," said Benjamin, "her shape and stature:
And this of mine—this bulky creature
Of which I have the steering—this,
Seen fairly, is not much amiss!
We want your streamers, friend, you know;
But, altogether as we go,
We make a kind of handsome show!
Among these hills, from first to last,
We've weathered many a furious blast;
Hard passage forcing on, with head
Against the storm, and canvass spread.
I hate a boaster; but to thee
Will say't, who know'st both land and sea,
The unluckiest hulk that stems the brine
Is hardly worse beset than mine,
When cross-winds on her quarter beat;
And, fairly lifted from my feet,
I stagger onward—heaven knows how;
But not so pleasantly as now:
Poor pilot I, by snows confounded,
And many a foundrous pit surrounded!
Yet here we are, by night and day
Grinding through rough and smooth our way;
Through foul and fair our task fulfilling;
And long shall be so yet—God willing!"

"Ay," said the Tar, "through fair and foul—
But save us from yon screeching owl!"
That instant was begun a fray
Which called their thoughts another way:
The mastiff, ill-conditioned carl!
What must he do but growl and snarl,
Still more and more dissatisfied
With the meek comrade at his side!
Till, not incensed though put to proof,
The Ass, uplifting a hind hoof,
Salutes the Mastiff on the head;
And so were better manners bred,
And all was calmed and quieted.

"Yon screech-owl," says the Sailor, turning
Back to his former cause of mourning,
"Yon owl!—pray God that all be well!
'Tis worse than any funeral bell;
As sure as I've the gift of sight,
We shall be meeting ghosts to-night!"
—Said Benjamin, "This whip shall lay
A thousand, if they cross our way.
I know that Wanton's noisy station,
I know him and his occupation;
The jolly bird hath learned his cheer
Upon the banks of Windermere;
Where a tribe of them make merry,
Mocking the Man that keeps the ferry;
Hallooing from an open throat,
Like travellers shouting for a boat.
—The tricks he learned at Windermere
This vagrant owl is playing here—
That is the worst of his employment:
He's at the top of his enjoyment!"

This explanation stilled the alarm,
Cured the foreboder like a charm;
This, and the manner, and the voice,
Summoned the Sailor to rejoice;
His heart is up—he fears no evil
From life or death, from man or devil;
He wheels—and, making many stops,
Brandished his crutch against the mountain tops;
And, while he talked of blows and scars,
Benjamin, among the stars,
Beheld a dancing—and a glancing;
Such retreating and advancing
As, I ween, was never seen
In bloodiest battle since the days of Mars!



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Canto Fourth


text variant footnote line number
Thus they, with freaks of proud delight,
Beguile the remnant of the night;
And many a snatch of jovial song
Regales them as they wind along;
While to the music, from on high,
The echoes make a glad reply.—
But the sage Muse the revel heeds
No farther than her story needs;
Nor will she servilely attend
The loitering journey to its end.
—Blithe spirits of her own impel
The Muse, who scents the morning air,
To take of this transported pair
A brief and unreproved farewell;
To quit the slow-paced waggon's side,
And wander down yon hawthorn dell,
With murmuring Greta for her guide.
—There doth she ken the awful form
Of Raven-crag—black as a storm—
Glimmering through the twilight pale;
And Ghimmer-crag, his tall twin brother,
Each peering forth to meet the other:—
And, while she roves through St. John's Vale,
Along the smooth unpathwayed plain,
By sheep-track or through cottage lane,
Where no disturbance comes to intrude
Upon the pensive solitude,
Her unsuspecting eye, perchance,
With the rude shepherd's favoured glance,
Beholds the faeries in array,
Whose party-coloured garments gay
The silent company betray:
Red, green, and blue; a moment's sight!
For Skiddaw-top with rosy light
Is touched—and all the band take flight.
—Fly also, Muse! and from the dell
Mount to the ridge of Nathdale Fell;
Thence, look thou forth o'er wood and lawn
Hoar with the frost-like dews of dawn;
Across yon meadowy bottom look,
Where close fogs hide their parent brook;
And see, beyond that hamlet small,
The ruined towers of Threlkeld-hall,
Lurking in a double shade,
By trees and lingering twilight made!
There, at Blencathara's rugged feet,
Sir Lancelot gave a safe retreat
To noble Clifford; from annoy
Concealed the persecuted boy,
Well pleased in rustic garb to feed
His flock, and pipe on shepherd's reed
Among this multitude of hills,
Crags, woodlands, waterfalls, and rills;
Which soon the morning shall enfold,
From east to west, in ample vest
Of massy gloom and radiance bold.

The mists, that o'er the streamlet's bed
Hung low, begin to rise and spread;
Even while I speak, their skirts of grey
Are smitten by a silver ray;
And lo!—up Castrigg's naked steep
(Where, smoothly urged, the vapours sweep
Along—and scatter and divide,
Like fleecy clouds self-multiplied)
The stately waggon is ascending,
With faithful Benjamin attending,
Apparent now beside his team—
Now lost amid a glittering steam:
And with him goes his Sailor-friend,
By this time near their journey's end;
And, after their high-minded riot,
Sickening into thoughtful quiet;
As if the morning's pleasant hour,
Had for their joys a killing power.
And, sooth, for Benjamin a vein
Is opened of still deeper pain,
As if his heart by notes were stung
From out the lowly hedge-rows flung;
As if the warbler lost in light
Reproved his soarings of the night,
In strains of rapture pure and holy
Upbraided his distempered folly.

Drooping is he, his step is dull;
But the horses stretch and pull;
With increasing vigour climb,
Eager to repair lost time;
Whether, by their own desert,
Knowing what cause there is for shame,
They are labouring to avert
As much as may be of the blame,
Which, they foresee, must soon alight
Upon his head, whom, in despite
Of all his failings, they love best;
Whether for him they are distrest,
Or, by length of fasting roused,
Are impatient to be housed:
Up against the hill they strain
Tugging at the iron chain,
Tugging all with might and main,
Last and foremost, every horse
To the utmost of his force!
And the smoke and respiration,
Rising like an exhalation,
Blend with the mist—a moving shroud
To form, an undissolving cloud;
Which, with slant ray, the merry sun
Takes delight to play upon.
Never golden-haired Apollo,
Pleased some favourite chief to follow
Through accidents of peace or war,
In a perilous moment threw
Around the object of his care
Veil of such celestial hue;
Interposed so bright a screen—
Him and his enemies between!

Alas! what boots it?—who can hide,
When the malicious Fates are bent
On working out an ill intent?
Can destiny be turned aside?
No—sad progress of my story!
Benjamin, this outward glory
Cannot shield thee from thy Master,
Who from Keswick has pricked forth,
Sour and surly as the north;
And, in fear of some disaster,
Comes to give what help he may,
And to hear what thou canst say;
If, as needs he must forebode,
Thou hast been loitering on the road!
His fears, his doubts, may now take flight—
The wishcd-for object is in sight;
Yet, trust the Muse, it rather hath
Stirred him up to livelier wrath;
Which he stifles, moody man!
With all the patience that he can;
To the end that, at your meeting,
He may give thee decent greeting.

There he is—resolved to stop,
Till the waggon gains the top;
But stop he cannot—must advance:
Him Benjamin, with lucky glance,
Espies—and instantly is ready,
Self-collected, poised, and steady:
And, to be the better seen,
Issues from his radiant shroud,
From his close-attending cloud,
With careless air and open mien.
Erect his port, and firm his going;
So struts yon cock that now is crowing;
And the morning light in grace
Strikes upon his lifted face,
Hurrying the pallid hue away
That might his trespasses betray.
But what can all avail to clear him,
Or what need of explanation,
Parley or interrogation?
For the Master sees, alas!
That unhappy Figure near him,
Limping o'er the dewy grass,
Where the road it fringes, sweet,
Soft and cool to way-worn feet;
And, O indignity! an Ass,
By his noble Mastiffs side,
Tethered to the waggon's tail:
And the ship, in all her pride,
Following after in full sail!
Not to speak of babe and mother;
Who, contented with each other,
And snug as birds in leafy arbour,
Find, within, a blessed harbour!

With eager eyes the Master pries;
Looks in and out, and through and through;
Says nothing—till at last he spies
A wound upon the Mastiff's head,
A wound, where plainly might be read
What feats an Ass's hoof can do!
But drop the rest:—this aggravation,
This complicated provocation,
A hoard of grievances unsealed;
All past forgiveness it repealed;
And thus, and through distempered blood
On both sides, Benjamin the good,
The patient, and the tender-hearted,
Was from his team and waggon parted;
When duty of that day was o'er,
Laid down his whip—and served no more.—
Nor could the waggon long survive,
Which Benjamin had ceased to drive:
It lingered on;—guide after guide
Ambitiously the office tried;
But each unmanageable hill
Called for his patience and his skill;—
And sure it is, that through this night,
And what the morning brought to light,
Two losses had we to sustain,
We lost both Waggoner and Wain!



Accept, O Friend, for praise or blame,
The gift of this adventurous song;
A record which I dared to frame,
Though timid scruples checked me long;
They checked me—and I left the theme
Untouched;—in spite of many a gleam
Of fancy which thereon was shed,
Like pleasant sunbeams shifting still
Upon the side of a distant hill:
But Nature might not be gainsaid;
For what I have and what I miss
I sing of these;—it makes my bliss!
Nor is it I who play the part,
But a shy spirit in my heart,
That comes and goes—will sometimes leap
From hiding-places ten years deep;
Or haunts me with familiar face,
Returning, like a ghost unlaid,
Until the debt I owe be paid.
Forgive me, then; for I had been
On friendly terms with this Machine:
In him, while he was wont to trace
Our roads, through many a long year's space,
A living almanack had we;
We had a speaking diary,
That in this uneventful place,
Gave to the days a mark and name
By which we knew them when they came.
—Yes, I, and all about me here,
Through all the changes of the year,
Had seen him through the mountains go,
In pomp of mist or pomp of snow,
Majestically huge and slow:
Or, with a milder grace adorning
The landscape of a summer's morning;
While Grasmere smoothed her liquid plain
The moving image to detain;
And mighty Fairfield, with a chime
Of echoes, to his march kept time;
When little other business stirred,
And little other sound was heard;
In that delicious hour of balm,
Stillness, solitude, and calm,
While yet the valley is arrayed,
On this side with a sober shade;
On that is prodigally bright—
Crag, lawn, and wood—with rosy light.
—But most of all, thou lordly Wain!
I wish to have thee here again,
When windows flap and chimney roars,
And all is dismal out of doors;
And, sitting by my fire, I see
Eight sorry carts, no less a train!
Unworthy successors of thee,
Come straggling through the wind and rain:
And oft, as they pass slowly on,
Beneath my windows, one by one,
See, perched upon the naked height
The summit of a cumbrous freight,
A single traveller—and there
Another; then perhaps a pair—
The lame, the sickly, and the old;
Men, women, heartless with the cold;
And babes in wet and starveling plight;
Which once, be weather as it might,
Had still a nest within a nest,
Thy shelter—and their mother's breast!
Then most of all, then far the most,
Do I regret what we have lost;
Am grieved for that unhappy sin
Which robbed us of good Benjamin;—
And of his stately Charge, which none
Could keep alive when He was gone!



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Variant 1:  
1819
The Night-hawk is singing his frog-like tune,
Twirling his watchman's rattle about—
1805. MS.a
The dor-hawk, solitary bird,
Round the dim crags on heavy pinions wheeling,
Buzzes incessantly, a tiresome tune;
That constant voice is all that can be heard



1820
... on heavy pinions wheeling,
With untired voice sings an unvaried tune;
Those burring notes are all that can be heard

1836
The text of 1845 returns to the first version of 1819.
return


Variant 2:  
1819
Now that the children are abed
The little glow-worms nothing dread,
Such prize as their bright lamps would be.
Sooth they come in company,
And shine in quietness secure,
On the mossy bank by the cottage door,
As safe as on the loneliest moor.
In the play, or on the hill,
Everything is hushed and still;
The clouds show here and there a spot
Of a star that twinkles not,
The air as in ...









From a MS. copy of the poem
in Henry Crabb Robinson's Diary, etc. 1812.
Now that the children's busiest schemes
Do all lie buried in blank sleep,
Or only live in stirring dreams,
The glow-worms fearless watch may keep;
Rich prize as their bright lamps would be,
They shine, a quiet company,
On mossy bank by cottage-door,
As safe as on the loneliest moor.
In hazy straits the clouds between,
And in their stations twinkling not,
Some thinly-sprinkled stars are seen,
Each changed into a pallid spot.










1836
The text of 1845 returns to that of 1819.
return


Variant 3:  
1836
The mountains rise to wond'rous height,
And in the heavens there is a weight;

1819
And in the heavens there hangs a weight;
1827
In the editions of 1819 to 1832, these two lines follow the line "Like the stifling of disease."
return


Variant 4:  
1819
... faint ...
1836
The text of 1845 returns to that of 1819.
return


Variant 5:  
1819
But welcome dews ...
1836
The text of 1845 returns to that of 1819.
return


Variant 6:  
1819
... or ...
1836
The text of 1845 returns to that of 1819.
return


Variant 7:  
1819
Listen! you can hardly hear!
Now he has left the lower ground,
And up the hill his course is bending,
With many a stop and stay ascending;—



1836
The text of 1845 returns to that of 1819.
return


Variant 8:  
1836
And now ...
1819
return


Variant 9:  
1836
Gathering ...
1819
return


Variant 10:  
1819
No;—him infirmities beset,
But danger is not near him yet;
1836
The text of 1845 returns to that of 1819.
return


Variant 11:  
1836
is he secure;
 1819
return


Variant 12:  
1836
full well
 1819
return


Variant 13:  
1836
Uncouth although the object be,
An image of perplexity;
Yet not the less it is our boast,


1819
return


Variant 14:  
1827
... I frame ...
1819
return


Variant 15:  
1836
And never was my heart more light.
 1819
return


Variant 16:  
1836
... will bless ...
 1819
return


Variant 17:  
1836
... delight, ...
 1819
return


Variant 18:  
1836
Good proof of this the Country gain'd,
One day, when ye were vex'd and strain'd—
Entrusted to another's care,
And forc'd unworthy stripes to bear.


1819
return


Variant 19:  
1836. (Expanding four lines into six.)
Here was it—on this rugged spot
Which now contented with our lot
We climb—that piteously abused
Ye plung'd in anger and confused:


1819
return


Variant 20:  
1836
... in your ...
1819
return


Variant 21:  
1836
The ranks were taken with one mind;
 1819
return


Variant 22:  
1819
Our road be, narrow, steep, and rough;
 1836
The text of 1845 returns to that of 1819.
return


Variant 23:  
1836
large drops upon his head
 1819
return


Variant 24:  
1836
He starts-and, at the admonition,
Takes a survey of his condition.
1819
return


Variant 25:  
1836
A huge and melancholy room,
 1819
return


Variant 26:  
1836
... on high ...
1819
return


Variant 27:   1836. The previous four lines were added in the edition of 1820, where they read as follows:
And suddenly a ruffling breeze
(That would have sounded through the trees
Had aught of sylvan growth been there)
Was felt throughout the region bare:



1820
return


Variant 28:  
1836
By peals of thunder, clap on clap!
And many a terror-striking flash;—
And somewhere, as it seems, a crash,

1819
return


Variant 29:  
1820
And rattling ...
 1819
return


Variant 30:  
1836. (Compressing six lines into four.)
The voice, to move commiseration,
Prolong'd its earnest supplication—
"This storm that beats so furiously—
This dreadful place! oh pity me!"

While this was said, with sobs between,
And many tears, by one unseen;






1819
return


Variant 31:  
1845
And Benjamin, without further question,
Taking her for some way-worn rover,
1819
And, kind to every way-worn rover,
Benjamin, without a question,
1836
return


Variant 32:  
1820
... trouble ...
 1819
return


Variant 33:  
1845
And to a little tent hard by
Turns the Sailor instantly;
1819
And to his tent-like domicile,
Built in a nook with cautious skill,
The Sailor turns, well pleased to spy
His shaggy friend who stood hard by
Drenched—and, more fast than with a tether,
Bound to the nook by that fierce weather,
Which caught the vagrants unaware:
For, when, ere closing-in ...







1836
return


Variant 34:  
1836
Had tempted ...
 1819
return


Variant 35:  
1836
Proceeding with an easy mind;
While he, who had been left behind,
 1819
return


Variant 36:  
1820
Who neither heard nor saw—no more
Than if he had been deaf and blind,
Till, startled by the Sailor's roar,


1819
return


Variant 37:  
1819
That blew us hither! dance, boys, dance!
Rare luck for us! my honest soul,
I'll treat thee to a friendly bowl!"

1836
The text of 1845 returns to that of 1819.
return


Variant 38:  
1836
To seek for thoughts of painful cast,
If such be the amends at last.

1819
return


Variant 39:  
1836
... think ...
1819
return


Variant 40:  
1819
For soon among ...
 1836
The text of 1845 returns to that of 1819.
return


Variant 41:  
1819
And happiest far is he, the One
No longer with himself at strife,
A Cæsar past the Rubicon!
The Sailor, Man by nature gay,
Found not a scruple in his way;




1836
The text of 1845 returns to that of 1819.
return


Variant 42:  
1836
Deems that she is happier, laid
Within that warm and peaceful bed;
1819
return


Variant 43:  
1845
With bowl in hand,
(It may not stand)
Gladdest of the gladsome band,
Amid their own delight and fun,



1819
With bowl that sped from hand to hand,
Refreshed, brimful of hearty fun,
The gladdest of the gladsome band,


1836
return


Variant 44:  
1836
They hear—when every fit is o'er—
1819
return


Variant 45:  
1836
... wondrous ...
 1819
return


Variant 46:  
1836
... these ...
 1819
return


Variant 47:  
1836
... the Mastiff's side,
(The Mastiff not well pleased to be
So very near such company.)


1819
return


Variant 48:  
1832
... all together, ...
1819
return


Variant 49:  
1836
... sails ...
 1819
return


Variant 50:  
1836
On ...
 1819
return

Variant 51:  
1836
He's in the height ...
 1819
return


Variant 52:  
1836
He wheel'd— ...
1819
return


Variant 53:  
1827
And, rambling on ...
1819
return


Variant 54:  
1819
Now hidden by the glittering steam:
 1836
The text of 1845 returns to that of 1819.
return


Variant 55:   1845. The previous eight lines were added in 1836, when they read thus:
Say more: for by that power a vein
Seems opened of brow-saddening pain:
As if their hearts by notes were stung
From out the lowly hedge-rows flung;
As if the warbler lost in light
Reproved their soarings of the night;
In strains of rapture pure and holy
Upbraided their distempered folly.







1836
return


Variant 56:  
1845
They are drooping, weak, and dull;
 1819
Drooping are they, and weak and dull;—
 1836
return


Variant 57:  
1836
Knowing that there's cause ...
1819
Knowing there is cause ...
1827
return


Variant 58:  
1845
They are labouring to avert
At least a portion of the blame

1819
They now are labouring to avert
(Kind creatures!) something of the blame,

1836
return


Variant 59:  
1836
Which full surely will alight
Upon his head, whom, in despite
Of all his faults, they love the best;

1819
Upon his head, ...
1820
return


Variant 60:  
1836
Blends ...
 1819
return


Variant 61:  
1845
Never, surely, old Apollo,
He, or other God as old,
Of whom in story we are told,
Who had a favourite to follow
Through a battle or elsewhere,
Round the object of his care,
In a time of peril, threw
Veil of such celestial hue;






1819
Never Venus or Apollo,
Pleased a favourite chief to follow
Through accidents of peace or war,
In a time of peril threw,
Round the object of his care,
Veil of such celestial hue;





1832
Never golden-haired Apollo,
Nor blue-eyed Pallas, nor the Idalian Queen,
When each was pleased some favourite chief to follow
Through accidents of peace or war,
In a perilous moment threw
Around the object of celestial care
A veil so rich to mortal view.






1836
Never Venus or Apollo,
Intent some favourite chief to follow
Through accidents of peace or war,
Round the object of their care
In a perilous moment threw
A veil of such celestial hue.




C.
Round each object of their care
 C.
return


Variant 62:  
1819
Fails to shield ...
 1836
The text of 1845 returns to that of 1819.
return


Variant 63:  
1836
Or ...
 1819
return


Variant 64:  
1819
If, as he cannot but forebode,
 1836
The text of 1845 returns to that of 1819.
return


Variant 65:  
1836
Thou hast loitered ...
 1819
return


Variant 66:  
1836
His doubts—his fears ...
 1819
return


Variant 67:  
1827. (Compressing two lines into one.)
Sometimes, as in the present case,
Will show a more familiar face;
1819
Or, proud all rivalship to chase,
Will haunt me with familiar face;

1820
return


Variant 68:  
1819
Or, with milder grace ...
 1832
The edition of 1845 reverts to the text of 1819.
return


Variant 69:  
1836
... window ...
 1819
return


Variant 70:   "Once" 'italicised' in 1820 only.
return




Footnote A:   The title page of the edition of 1819 runs as follows:
The Waggoner, A Poem. To which are added, Sonnets. By William Wordsworth.
"What's in a Name?"
...
"Brutus will start a Spirit as soon as Cæsar!"
London, etc. etc., 1819.
Ed.
return to footnote mark


Footnote B:   See The Seasons (Summer), ll. 977-79.—Ed.
return


Footnote C:  Such is the progress of refinement, this rude piece of self-taught art has been supplanted by a professional production.—W. W. 1819.

Mr. William Davies writes to me,
"I spent a week there (the Swan Inn) early in the fifties, and well remember the sign over the door distinguishable from afar: the inn, little more than a cottage (the only one), with clean well-sanded floor, and rush-bottomed chairs: the landlady, good old soul, one day afraid of burdening me with some old coppers, insisted on retaining them till I should return from an uphill walk, when they were duly tendered to me. Here I learnt many particulars of Hartley Coleridge, dead shortly before, who had been a great favourite with the host and hostess. The grave of Wordsworth was at that time barely grassed over."
Ed.
return


Footnote D:  See Wordsworth's note, p. 109.—Ed.
return


Footnote E:  A mountain of Grasmere, the broken summit of which presents two figures, full as distinctly shaped as that of the famous cobler, near Arracher, in Scotland.—W. W. 1819.
return


Footnote F:  A term well known in the North of England, as applied to rural Festivals, where young persons meet in the evening for the purpose of dancing.—W. W. 1819.
return


Footnote G:   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.— W. W. 1819.
return


Footnote H:   Compare in Tristram Shandy:
"And this, said he, is the town of Namur, and this is the citadel: and there lay the French, and here lay his honour and myself."
Ed.
return


Footnote J:   See Wordsworth's note, p. 109.—Ed.
return


Footnote K:  The crag of the ewe lamb.—W. W. 1820.
return


Footnote L:   Compare Tennyson's "Farewell, we lose ourselves in light."—Ed.
return


Footnote M:   Compare Wordsworth's lines, beginning, "She was a Phantom of delight," p. i, and Hamlet, act II. sc. ii. l. 124.—Ed.
return




Footnote a:   See Wordsworth's note, p. 109.—Ed.
return




Note I:   Several years after the event that forms the subject of the foregoing 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 great difficulty with a word, as related in the poem, was told me by an eye-witness.




Note II:  
'The Dor-hawk, solitary bird.'
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.




Note III:   After the line, 'Can any mortal clog come to her', followed in the MS. an incident which has been kept back. Part of the suppressed verses shall here be given as a gratification of private feeling, which the well-disposed reader will find no difficulty in excusing. They are now printed for the first time.
Can any mortal clog come to her?
It can: ...
...
But Benjamin, in his vexation,
Possesses inward consolation;
He knows his ground, and hopes to find
A spot with all things to his mind,
An upright mural block of stone,
Moist with pure water trickling down.
A slender spring; but kind to man
It is, a true Samaritan;
Close to the highway, pouring out
Its offering from a chink or spout;
Whence all, howe'er athirst, or drooping
With toil, may drink, and without stooping.

Cries Benjamin, "Where is it, where?
Voice it hath none, but must be near."
—A star, declining towards the west,
Upon the watery surface threw
Its image tremulously imprest,
That just marked out the object and withdrew:
Right welcome service! ...
...

Rock of Names!
Light is the strain, but not unjust
To Thee and thy memorial-trust,
That once seemed only to express
Love that was love in idleness;
Tokens, as year hath followed year,
How changed, alas, in character!
For they were graven on thy smooth breast
By hands of those my soul loved best;
Meek women, men as true and brave
As ever went to a hopeful grave:
Their hands and mine, when side by side
With kindred zeal and mutual pride,
We worked until the Initials took
Shapes that defied a scornful look.—
Long as for us a genial feeling
Survives, or one in need of healing,
The power, dear Rock, around thee cast,
Thy monumental power, shall last
For me and mine! O thought of pain,
That would impair it or profane!
Take all in kindness then, as said
With a staid heart but playful head;
And fail not Thou, loved Rock! to keep
Thy charge when we are laid asleep.
W. W.




Editor's Note:   There is no poem more closely identified with the Grasmere district of the English Lakes—and with the road from Grasmere to Keswick—than The Waggoner is, and in none are the topographical allusions more minute and faithful.

Wordsworth seemed at a loss to know in what "class" of his poems to place The Waggoner; and his frequent changes—removing it from one group to another—shew the artificial character of these classes. Thus, in the edition of 1820, it stood first among the "Poems of the Fancy." In 1827 it was the last of the "Poems founded on the Affections." In 1832 it was reinstated among the "Poems of the Fancy." In 1836 it had a place of its own, and was inserted between the "Poems of the Fancy" and those "Founded on the Affections;" while in 1845 it was sent back to its original place among the "Poems of the Fancy;" although in the table of contents it was printed as an independent poem, closing the series.

The original text of The Waggoner underwent little change, till the year 1836, when it was carefully revised, and altered throughout. The final edition of 1845, however, reverted, in many instances—especially in the first canto—to the original text of 1819.

As this poem was dedicated to Charles Lamb, it may be of interest to note that, some six months afterwards, Lamb presented Wordsworth with a copy of the first edition of 'Paradise Regained' (the edition of 1671), writing on it the following sentence,
"Charles Lamb, to the best knower of Milton, and therefore the worthiest occupant of this pleasant edition.—Jan. 2nd, 1820."
The opening stanzas are unrivalled in their description of a sultry June evening, with a thunder-storm imminent.
' 'Tis spent—this burning day of June!
Soft darkness o'er its latest gleams is stealing;
The buzzing dor-hawk, round and round, is wheeling,—
That solitary bird
Is all that can be heard
In silence deeper far than that of deepest noon!
...
...
The mountains against heaven's grave weight
Rise up, and grow to wondrous height.
The air, as in a lion's den,
Is close and hot;—and now and then
Comes a tired and sultry breeze
With a haunting and a panting,
Like the stifling of disease;
But the dews allay the heat,
And the silence makes it sweet.'
The Waggoner takes what is now the middle road, of the three leading from Rydal to Grasmere (see the note to The Primrose of the Rock). The "craggy hill" referred to in the lines
'Now he leaves the lower ground,
And up the craggy hill ascending
...
Steep the way and wearisome,'
is the road from Rydal Quarry up to White Moss Common, with the Glowworm rock on the right, and the "two heath-clad rocks," referred to in the last of the "Poems on the Naming of Places," on the left. He next passes "The Wishing Gate" on the left, John's Grove on the right, and descends by Dove Cottage—where Wordsworth lived—to Grasmere.
'... at the bottom of the brow,
Where once the Dove and Olive-Bough
Offered a greeting of good ale
To all who entered Grasmere Vale;
And called on him who must depart
To leave it with a jovial heart;
There, where the Dove and Olive-Bough
Once hung, a Poet harbours now,
A simple water-drinking Bard.'
He goes through Grasmere, passes the Swan Inn, '
He knows it to his cost, good Man!
Who does not know the famous Swan?
Object uncouth! and yet our boast,
For it was painted by the Host;
His own conceit the figure planned,
'Twas coloured all by his own hand.'
As early as 1819, when the poem was first published, "this rude piece of self-taught art had been supplanted" by a more pretentious figure. The Waggoner passes the Swan,
'And now the conqueror essays
The long ascent of Dunmail-raise.'
As he proceeds, the storm gathers, and "struggles to get free." Road, hill, and sky are dark; and he barely sees the well-known rocks at the summit of Helm-crag, where two figures seem to sit, like those on the Cobbler, near Arrochar, in Argyle.
'Black is the sky—and every hill,
Up to the sky, is blacker still—
Sky, hill, and dale, one dismal room,
Hung round and overhung with gloom;
Save that above a single height
Is to be seen a lurid light,
Above Helm-crag—a streak half dead,
A burning of portentous red;
And near that lurid light, full well
The Astrologer, sage Sidrophel,
Where at his desk and book he sits,
Puzzling aloft his curious wits;
He whose domain is held in common
With no one but the Ancient Woman,
Cowering beside her rifted cell,
As if intent on magic spell;—
Dread pair, that, spite of wind and weather,
Still sit upon Helm-crag together!'
At the top of the "raise"—the water-shed between the vales of Grasmere and Wytheburn—he reaches the familiar pile of stones, at the boundary between the shires of Westmoreland and Cumberland.
'... that pile of stones,
Heaped over brave King Dunmail's bones;
...
Green is the grass for beast to graze,
Around the stones of Dunmail-raise!'
The allusion to Seat-Sandal laid bare by the flash of lightning, and the description, in the last canto, of the ascent of the Raise by the Waggoner on a summer morning, are as true to the spirit of the place as anything that Wordsworth has written. He tells his friend Lamb, fourteen years after he wrote the poem of The Waggoner,
'Yes, I, and all about me here,
Through all the changes of the year,
Had seen him through the mountains go,
In pomp of mist or pomp of snow,
Majestically huge and slow:
Or, with a milder grace adorning
The landscape of a summer's morning;
While Grasmere smoothed her liquid plain
The moving image to detain;
And mighty Fairfield, with a chime
Of echoes, to his march kept time;
When little other business stirred,
And little other sound was heard;
In that delicious hour of balm,
Stillness, solitude, and calm,
While yet the valley is arrayed,
On this side with a sober shade;
On that is prodigally bright—
Crag, lawn, and wood—with rosy light.'
From Dunmail-raise the Waggoner descends to Wytheburn. Externally,
'... Wytheburn's modest House of prayer,
As lowly as the lowliest dwelling,'
remains very much as it was in 1805; but the primitive simplicity and "lowliness" of the chapel was changed by the addition a few years ago of an apse, by the removal of some of the old rafters, and by the reseating of the pews.

The Cherry Tree Tavern, where "the village Merry-night" was being celebrated, still stands on the eastern or Helvellyn side of the road. It is now a farm-house; but it will be regarded with interest from the description of the rustic dance, which recalls ('longo intervallo') 'The Jolly Beggars' of Burns. After two hours' delay at the Cherry Tree, the Waggoner and Sailor "coast the silent lake" of Thirlmere, and pass the Rock of Names.

This rock was, until lately, one of the most interesting memorials of Wordsworth and his friends that survived in the Lake District; but the vale of Thirlmere is now a Manchester water-tank, and the place which knew the Rock of Names now knows it no more. It was a sort of trysting place of the poets of Grasmere and Keswick—being nearly half-way between the two places—and there, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and other members of their households often met. When Coleridge left Grasmere for Keswick, the Wordsworths usually accompanied him as far as this rock; and they often met him there on his way over from Keswick to Grasmere. Compare the Hon. Mr. Justice Coleridge's Reminiscences. (Memoirs of Wordsworth, vol. ii. p. 310.)

The rock was on the right hand of the road, a little way past Waterhead, at the southern end of Thirlmere; and on it were cut the letters,
W. W.
M. H.
D. W.
S. T. C.
J. W.
S. H.
the initials of William Wordsworth, Mary Hutchinson, Dorothy Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Wordsworth, and Sarah Hutchinson. The Wordsworths settled at Grasmere at the close of the year 1799. As mentioned in a previous note, John Wordsworth lived with his brother and sister during most of that winter, and during the whole of the spring, summer, and autumn of 1800, leaving it finally on September 29, 1800. These names must therefore have been cut during the spring or summer of 1800. There is no record of the occurrence, and no allusion to the rock, in Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal of 1800. But that Journal, so far as I have seen it, begins on the 14th of May 1800. Almost every detail of the daily life and ways of the household at Dove Cottage is so minutely recorded in it, that I am convinced that this incident of the cutting of names in the Thirlmere Rock would have been mentioned, had it happened between the 14th of May and John Wordsworth's departure from Grasmere in September. Such references as this, for example, occur in the Journal:
"Saturday, August 2.—William and Coleridge went to Keswick. John went with them to Wytheburn, and staid all day fishing."
I therefore infer that it was in the spring or early summer of 1800 that the names were cut.

I may add that the late Dean of Westminster—Dean Stanley—took much interest in this Rock of Names; and doubt having been cast on the accuracy of the place and the genuineness of the inscriptions, in a letter from Dr. Fraser, then Bishop of Manchester, which he forwarded to me, he entered into the question with all the interest with which he was wont to track out details in the architecture or the history of a Church.

There were few memorials connected with Wordsworth more worthy of preservation than this "upright mural block of stone." When one remembered that the initials on the rock were graven by the hands of William and John Wordsworth, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, possibly with the assistance of Dorothy Wordsworth, the two Hutchinsons (Mary and Sarah), and that Wordsworth says of it,
'We worked until the Initials took
Shapes that defied a scornful look,'
this Thirlmere Rock was felt to be a far more interesting memento of the group of poets that used to meet beside it, than the Stone in the grounds of Rydal Mount, which was spared at Wordsworth's suit, "from some rude beauty of its own." There was simplicity, as well as strength, in the way in which the initials were cut. But the stone was afterwards desecrated by tourists, and others, who had the audacity to scratch their own names or initials upon it. In 1877 I wrote, "The rock is as yet wonderfully free from such; and its preservation is probably due to the dark olive-coloured moss, with which the 'pure water trickling down' has covered the face of the 'mural block,' and thus secured it from observation, even on that highway;" but I found in the summer of 1882 that several other names had been ruthlessly added. When the Manchester Thirlmere scheme was finally resolved upon, an effort was made to remove the Stone, with the view of its being placed higher up the hill on the side of the new roadway. In the course of this attempt, the Stone was broken to pieces.

There is a very good drawing of "The Rock of Names" by Mr. Harry Goodwin, in Through the Wordsworth Country, 1892.

"The Muse" takes farewell of the Waggoner as he is proceeding with the Sailor and his quaint model of the Vanguard along the road toward Keswick. She "scents the morning air," and
'Quits the slow-paced waggon's side,
To wander down yon hawthorn dell,
With murmuring Greta for her guide.'
The "hawthorn dell" is the upper part of the Vale of St. John.
'—There doth she ken the awful form
Of Raven-crag—black as a storm—
Glimmering through the twilight pale;
And Ghimmer-crag, his tall twin brother,
Each peering forth to meet the other.'
Raven-crag is well known,—H.C. Robinson writes of it in his Diary in 1818, as "the most significant of the crags at a spot where there is not one insignificant,"—a rock on the western side of Thirlmere, where the Greta issues from the lake. But there is no rock in the district now called by the name of Ghimmer-crag, or the crag of the Ewe-lamb. I am inclined to think that Wordsworth referred to the "Fisher-crag" of the Ordnance Survey and the Guide Books. No other rock round Thirlmere can with any accuracy be called the "tall twin brother" of Raven-crag: certainly not Great How, nor any spur of High Seat or Bleaberry Fell. Fisher-crag resembles Raven-crag, as seen from Thirlmere Bridge, or from the high road above it; and it is somewhat remarkable that Green—in his Guide to the Lakes (a volume which the poet possessed)—makes use of the same expression as that which Wordsworth adopts regarding these two crags, Raven and Fisher.
"The margin of the lake on the Dalehead side has its charms of wood and water; and Fischer Crag, twin brother to Raven Crag, is no bad object, when taken near the island called Buck's Holm"
(A Description of Sixty Studies from Nature, by William Green of Ambleside, 1810, p. 57). I cannot find any topographical allusion to a Ghimmer-crag in contemporary local writers. Clarke, in his Survey of the Lakes, does not mention it.

The Castle Rock, in the Vale of Legberthwaite, between High Fell and Great How, is the fairy castle of Sir Walter Scott's 'Bridal of Triermain'. "Nathdale Fell" is the ridge between Naddle Vale (Nathdale Vale) and that of St. John, now known as High Rigg. The old Hall of Threlkeld has long been in a state of ruinous dilapidation, the only habitable part of it having been for many years converted into a farmhouse. The remaining local allusions in The Waggoner are obvious enough: Castrigg is the shortened form of Castlerigg, the ridge between Naddle Valley and Keswick.

In the "Reminiscences" of Wordsworth, which the Hon. Mr. Justice Coleridge wrote for the late Bishop of Lincoln, in 1850, there is the following reference to The Waggoner. (See Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 310.)
"The Waggoner seems a very favourite poem of his. He said his object in it had not been understood. It was a play of the fancy on a domestic incident, and lowly character. He wished by the opening descriptive lines to put his reader into the state of mind in which he wished it to be read. If he failed in doing that, he wished him to lay it down. He pointed out with the same view, the glowing lines on the state of exultation in which Ben and his companions are under the influence of liquor. Then he read the sickening languor of the morning walk, contrasted with the glorious uprising of Nature, and the songs of the birds. Here he has added about six most exquisite lines."
The lines referred to are doubtless the eight (p. 101), beginning
'Say more; for by that power a vein,'
which were added in the edition of 1836.

The following is Sara Coleridge's criticism of The Waggoner. (See Biographia Literaria, vol. ii. pp. 183, 184, edition 1847.)
"Due honour is done to 'Peter Bell', at this time, by students of poetry in general; but some, even of Mr. Wordsworth's greatest admirers, do not quite satisfy me in their admiration of 'The Waggoner', a poem which my dear uncle, Mr. Southey, preferred even to the former. 'Ich will meine Denkungs Art hierin niemandem aufdringen', as Lessing says: I will force my way of thinking on nobody, but take the liberty, for my own gratification, to express it. The sketches of hill and valley in this poem have a lightness, and spirit—an Allegro touch—distinguishing them from the grave and elevated splendour which characterises Mr. Wordsworth's representations of Nature in general, and from the passive tenderness of those in 'The White Doe', while it harmonises well with the human interest of the piece; indeed it is the harmonious sweetness of the composition which is most dwelt upon by its special admirers. In its course it describes, with bold brief touches, the striking mountain tract from Grasmere to Keswick; it commences with an evening storm among the mountains, presents a lively interior of a country inn during midnight, and concludes after bringing us in sight of St. John's Vale and the Vale of Keswick seen by day-break—'Skiddaw touched with rosy light,' and the prospect from Nathdale Fell 'hoar with the frost-like dews of dawn:' thus giving a beautiful and well-contrasted Panorama, produced by the most delicate and masterly strokes of the pencil. Well may Mr. Ruskin, a fine observer and eloquent describer of various classes of natural appearances, speak of Mr. Wordsworth as the great poetic landscape painter of the age. But Mr. Ruskin has found how seldom the great landscape painters are powerful in expressing human passions and affections on canvas, or even successful in the introduction of human figures into their foregrounds; whereas in the poetic paintings of Mr. Wordsworth the landscape is always subordinate to a higher interest; certainly, in 'The Waggoner', the little sketch of human nature which occupies, as it were, the front of that encircling background, the picture of Benjamin and his temptations, his humble friends and the mute companions of his way, has a character of its own, combining with sportiveness a homely pathos, which must ever be delightful to some of those who are thoroughly conversant with the spirit of Mr. Wordsworth's poetry. It may be compared with the ale-house scene in 'Tam o'Shanter', parts of Voss's Luise, or Ovid's Baucis and Philemon; though it differs from each of them as much as they differ from each other. The Epilogue carries on the feeling of the piece very beautifully."
The editor of Southey's Life and Correspondence—his son, the Rev. Charles Cuthbert Southey—tells us, in a note to a letter from S.T. Coleridge to his father, that the Waggoner's name was Jackson; and that "all the circumstances of the poem are accurately correct." This Jackson, after retiring from active work as waggoner, became the tenant of Greta Hall, where first Coleridge, and afterwards Southey lived. The Hall was divided into two houses, one of which Jackson occupied, and the other of which he let to Coleridge, who speaks thus of him in the letter to Southey, dated Greta Hall, Keswick, April 13, 1801:
"My landlord, who dwells next door, has a very respectable library, which he has put with mine; histories, encyclopedias, and all the modern poetry, etc. etc. etc. A more truly disinterested man I never met with; severely frugal, yet almost carelessly generous; and yet he got all his money as a common carrier, by hard labour, and by pennies and pennies. He is one instance among many in this country of the salutary effect of the love of knowledge—he was from a boy a lover of learning."
(See 'Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, vol. ii. pp. 147, 148.)

Charles Lamb—to whom The Waggoner was dedicated—wrote thus to Wordsworth on 7th June 1819:
"My dear Wordsworth,—You cannot imagine how proud we are here of the dedication. We read it twice for once that we do the poem. I mean all through; yet Benjamin is no common favourite; there is a spirit of beautiful tolerance in it. It is as good as it was in 1806; and it will be as good in 1829, if our dim eyes shall be awake to peruse it. Methinks there is a kind of shadowing affinity between the subject of the narrative and the subject of the dedication.
...
"I do not know which I like best,—the prologue (the latter part especially) to P. Bell, or the epilogue to Benjamin. Yes, I tell stories; I do know I like the last best; and the Waggoner altogether is a pleasanter remembrance to me than the Itinerant.
...
"C. Lamb."
(See The Letters of Charles Lamb, edited by Alfred Ainger, vol. ii. pp. 24-26.)

To this may be added what Southey wrote to Mr. Wade Browne on 15th June 1819:
"I think you will be pleased with Wordsworth's Waggoner, if it were only for the line of road which it describes. The master of the waggon was my poor landlord Jackson, and the cause of his exchanging it for the one-horse cart was just as is represented in the poem; nobody but Benjamin could manage it upon these hills, and Benjamin could not resist the temptations by the wayside."
(See The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, vol. iv. p. 318.)—Ed.

1804 ← end of Volume III: 1805 → The Prelude
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