WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth — Volume 5 (of 8) cover

The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth — Volume 5 (of 8)

Chapter 8: Book Second
By William Wordsworth
Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

British LiteraturePoetry

About This Book

A long, meditative poem arranged in linked books combines dramatic conversations with sustained philosophical reflection. Through interlocutors including a wanderer, a solitary figure, and a pastor, it traces moments of despondency and its correction, considers the shaping influence of nature and memory, and explores consolation, moral feeling, and intellectual growth. Settings such as mountain churchyards, a parsonage, and lakeside evenings provide scenes for pastoral and ethical observation, while recurring motifs probe human suffering, sympathy, faith, and the poet's inward development.

[96] 1845.

... ask no more;
Be wise and chearful; and no longer read
1814.
The forms of things with an unworthy eye.
... ask no more:
Doubt not that oft-times in her soul she felt
The unbounded might of prayer—upon her knees
Was taught that heavenly consolation springs
From sources deeper far than deepest pain
For the meek Sufferer. Why then should we read
C.
The forms of things with a dejected eye?

[97] 1836.

1814.
... did to my heart convey

[98] 1845.

1814.
The passing shews ...

[99] 1845.

Appeared an idle dream, that could not live
1814.
Where meditation was. I turned away

FOOTNOTES:

[S] In a copy of the quarto edition of The Excursion (1814) bequeathed by the Poet to his grandson, the Rev. John Wordsworth, there are numerous changes of text in his own handwriting, or that of his wife. The majority of these were incorporated in later editions. Several of them, however, were not. These are reproduced in this edition, wherever it has been thought expedient to preserve them, and are indicated as "MS." readings. On the fly-leaf of the same presentation copy of the 1814 edition, Mrs. Wordsworth wrote out Mr. R. P. Gillies' sonnet, addressed to the author of The Excursion.—ED.

[T] Compare An Evening Walk (vol. i. p. 9)—

When, in the south, the wan noon, brooding still,
ED.
Breathed a pale steam around the glaring hill.

[U] Compare An Evening Walk (vol. i. p. 11)—

ED.
And its own twilight softens the whole scene.

[V] Compare the sonnet composed in boyhood, beginning—

Sweet was the walk along the narrow lane,

and printed in an Appendix to vol. viii.—ED.

[W] Compare the Sonnet composed at —— Castle, in the "Memorials of a Tour in Scotland," 1803 (vol. ii. p. 410)—

ED.
A brotherhood of venerable Trees.

[W1] Hawkshead. Compare the notes to The Prelude, in books i. and ii. The Fenwick note tells us, "At Hawkshead, while I was a schoolboy, there occasionally resided a Packman, with whom I had frequent conversations upon what had befallen him, and what he had observed, during his wandering life; and, as was natural, we took much to each other."—ED.

[X] Compare the Elegiac Stansas, suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle, in a Storm (vol. iii. p. 54)—

The consecration, and the Poet's dream;

and the Discourse on Poetry in the Preface to the "Lyrical Ballads" of 1800. See the Prose Works.—ED.

[Y] Compare Sir Henry Taylor, Philip van Artevelde, act 1. scene v.—

ED.
The world knows nothing of its greatest men.

[Z] Compare Horace, Epistles i. 17, 10—

ED.
Nec vixit male qui natus moriensque fefellit.

[AA] Compare Elegiac Stanzas, suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle (vol. iii. p. 54)—

ED.
The light that never was, on sea or land.

[AB] Compare Resolution and Independence, stanza xiv. (vol. ii. p. 319)—

Such as grave Livers do in Scotland use,
ED.
Religious men, who give to God and man their dues.

[AC] Compare Byron, Childe Harold, canto iv. stanza clxxxiv.—

From a boy
I wantoned with thy breakers—they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
ED.
Made them a terror,—'twas a pleasing fear.

[AD] Compare Ode, Intimations of Immortality, stanza ix. (vol. viii.)—

those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things, etc.

and The Prelude, book ii. l. 350 (vol. iii. p. 164)—

what I saw
Appeared like something in myself, a dream,
ED.
A prospect in the mind.

[AE] Compare Milton, Il Penseroso, l. 109—

Or call up him that left half told
ED.
The story of Cambuscan bold.

[AF] Compare Lines Written in Early Spring (vol. i. p. 269)—

And 'tis my faith that every flower
ED.
Enjoys the air it breathes.

[AG] Compare The Prelude, book ii. l. 411 (vol. iii. p. 166)—

Communing ...
With every form of creature, as it looked
Towards the Uncreated with a countenance
ED.
Of adoration, with an eye of love.

[AH] Compare book iv. ll. 111-14; also in Robert Browning's Old Pictures in Florence, stanza i.—

And washed by the morning water-gold,
ED.
Florence lay out on the mountain-side.

[AI] The sea is not visible from the hills of Athole, except from the summit of Ben y' Gloe, where it can be seen to the south-east in the clearest weather. Wordsworth did not care for local accuracy in this passage. It was quite unnecessary for his purpose. Compare his account of the morning walk near Hawkshead in The Prelude, and see the Appendix-note to book iv. l. 338 (vol. iii. p. 389).—ED.

[AJ] Compare Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey (vol. ii. p. 54), in which Wordsworth speaks of the rock, the mountain, and the wood, their colours and their forms, as an appetite, a feeling, and a love—

That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, nor any interest
ED.
Unborrowed from the eye.

[AK] Compare the line in the sonnet on Milton (vol. ii. p. 346)—

ED.
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart.

[AL] In this description of the eagle's birth-place, and the peak "familiar with forgotten years," Wordsworth probably wandered in imagination from the Athole district to Westmoreland, as this part of the poem was in all likelihood written in 1801-2. He visited the Athole country, with his sister, in 1803; going up as far as Blair, and returning: but there is no peak in that district (at least none that he would see) that shows

Inscribed upon its visionary sides,
The history of many a winter storm,
Or obscure records of the path of fire,

as does, for example, the Stob Dearg in the Buchaile Etive Mor group in Argyll, a peak which he saw in the course of his Scottish tour in that year. —ED.

[AM] Compare Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey (vol. ii. p.54)—

The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood.
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
ED.
An appetite.

[AN] With this description of the boy and youth, compare Coleridge's words in The Friend, vol. iii. p. 46 (edition of 1818)—

"We have been discoursing of infancy, childhood, boyhood, and youth, of pleasures lying upon the unfolding intellect plenteously as morning dew-drops—of knowledge inhaled insensibly like the fragrance—of dispositions stealing into the spirit like music from unknown quarters—of images uncalled for and rising up like exhalations, of hopes plucked like beautiful wild flowers from the ruined tombs that border the highways of antiquity, to make a garland for a living forehead: in a word, we have been treating of nature as a teacher of truth through joy and through gladness, and as a creatress of the faculties by a process of smoothness and delight. We have made no mention of fear, shame, sorrow, nor of ungovernable and vexing thoughts; because, although these have been and have done mighty service, they are overlooked in that stage of life when youth is passing into manhood, overlooked or forgotten."—ED.

[AO] Enterprise. Compare the poem To Enterprise, which, Wordsworth says, "arose out of The Italian Itinerant, and The Swiss Goatherd." Compare also the latter poem, No. xxv. of the "Memorials of a Tour on the Continent" (1820).—ED.

[AP] See Wordsworth's note, p. 383.

[AQ] Compare the Preface to "Lyrical Ballads" (1800), in the Prose Works.—ED.

[AR] Compare Simon Lee, ll. 5-8 (vol. i. p. 263)—

Full five-and-thirty years he lived
A running huntsman merry;
And still the centre of his cheek
Is red as a ripe cherry.

Also the description of Margaret, p. 60 of this volume.—ED.

[AS] Compare Resolution and Independence, stanza xiii. (vol. ii. p. 318).

[AT] Compare Julius Cæsar, act III. scene ii. l. 81—

ED.
The good is oft interred with their bones.

[AU] See Moschus's epitaph on Bion, 1-7—

Αἴλινά μοι στοναχεῖτε νάπαι καὶ Δώρεον ὕδωρ,
καὶ ποταμοὶ κλαίοιτε τὸν ἰμερόεντα Βίωνα.
νῦν φυτά μοι μύρεσθε, καὶ ἄλσεα νῦν γοάοισθε.
ἄνθεα νῦν στυγνοῖσιν ἀποπνείοιτε κορύμβοις.
νῦν ῥόδα φοινίσσεσθε τὰ πένθιμα, νῦν ἀνεμῶναι,
νῦν ὑάκινθε λάλει τὰ σα γράμματα, καὶ πλέον αἲ αἲ
λάμβανε τοῖς πετάλοισι καλὸς τεθνακε μελικτάς.

And compare Virgil, Ecl. v. 27, 28; Georg. I. 466-488; Georg. IV. 461-463; Catullus, Carmen XXXI., Ad Sirmionem Peninsulam, the three last lines. See also Theocritus, Idyll 3, and compare the philosophic myths in the stories of Orpheus, Amphion, etc.—ED.

[AV] Compare δν οἱ θεοὶ ϕιλοῦσιν, ἀποθνήσκει νέος.

Whom the gods love, die young.

Menander, quoted (amongst others) by Plutarch, Consol. ad Apollonium, cap. 34. For other authorities, see Meineke's Comicorum Græcorum Fragmenta.—ED.

[AW] The hand-loom was common in many of the cottages of the country, as well as in the manufacturing towns of England and Scotland, until quite recently.—ED.

[AX] Psalm ciii. 16.—ED.

[AY] Compare λύοντες οὐκ ἤκουον.—(Æsch. Prom. v. 447.)

Also S. Matt. xiii. 13-15—

They seeing, see not; and hearing, they hear not.

And Shakespeare, Richard III. act IV. scene iv. 1. 26—

ED.
Blind sight, dead life, poor mortal-living ghost.

[AZ] Compare The Waggoner, vol. iii. p. 77—

ED.
In silence deeper far than that of deepest noon!

[BA] Compare Resolution and Independence, stanza xiii. (vol. ii. p. 319)—

Ere he replied, a flash of mild surprise
ED.
Broke from the sable orbs of his yet-vivid eyes.

[BB] Compare Burns's Epistle to William Simpson, Ochiltree—

ED.
Adoun some trotting burn's meander.

[BC] Compare Midsummer Night's Dream, act 1. scene i. l. 211—

ED.
Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass.

[BD] Sedum acre.—ED.

[BE] Statice armerium.—ED.

[BF] Convolvulus arvensis.—ED.

[BG] Mr. H. H. Turner suggests that this line would be more naturally written,

Bespake a hand of sleepy negligence.

The change would have been an improvement.—ED.

[BH] "The scene of the first book of the poem is, I must own, laid in a tract of country not sufficiently near to that which soon comes into view in the second book, to agree with the fact. All that relates to Margaret, and the ruined cottage, etc., was taken from observations made in the south-west of England; and certainly it would require more than seven-league boots to stretch in one morning, from a common in Somersetshire, or Dorsetshire, to the heights of Furness Fells, and the deep valleys they embosom."—I. F.

Compare with the first book of The Excursion the first three books of The Prelude.—ED.

[BI] Compare stanza xi. in the Ode, Intimations of Immortality (vol. viii.)—

To me the meanest flower that blows can give
ED.
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

Book Second

THE SOLITARY

ARGUMENT

The Author describes his travels with the Wanderer, whose character is further illustrated—Morning scene, and view of a Village Wake—Wanderer's account of a Friend whom he purposes to visit—View, from an eminence, of the Valley which his Friend had chosen for his retreat[100]—Sound of singing from below—A funeral procession—Descent into the Valley—Observations drawn from the Wanderer at sight of a book accidentally discovered in a recess in the Valley—Meeting with the Wanderer's friend, the Solitary—Wanderer's description of the mode of burial in this mountainous district—Solitary contrasts with this, that of the individual carried a few minutes before from the cottage[101]—The cottage entered—Description of the Solitary's apartment—Repast there—View, from the window, of two mountain summits; and the Solitary's description of the companionship they afford him—Account of the departed inmate of the cottage—Description of a grand spectacle upon the mountains, with its effect upon the Solitary's mind—Leave[102] the house.