The last stanza is only in the editions of 1802-1805
.
| 1836 |
|
And then he said "How sweet it were
|
1800 |
| 1845 |
|
A gardener in the shade,
Still wandering with an easy mind
To build ...
|
1800 |
In sunshine or through shade
To wander with an easy mind;
And build ...
|
1836 |
| 1820 |
|
Sweet Ruth alone at midnight shed
|
1800 |
| 1800 |
|
... unhallow'd ...
|
1802 and MS. |
The edition of 1805 returns to the reading of 1800.
| 1845 |
|
... magic ...
|
1800 |
... gorgeous ...
|
1815 |
The text of 1805 returns to that of 1800.
| 1800 |
|
For passions, amid forms so fair
And stately, wanted not their share
|
1802 |
The text of 1805 returns to that of 1800.
| 1800 |
|
Ill did he live ...
|
1802 |
The text of 1805 returns to that of 1800.
| 1805 |
|
When I, in thoughtlessness and pride,
Had crossed ...
|
1802 |
When first, in confidence and pride,
I crossed ...
|
1820 |
C., and the edition of 1840, revert to the reading of 1805.
| 1840 and C. |
|
"It was a fresh and glorious world,
A banner bright that was unfurled
Before me suddenly:
|
1805 |
A banner bright that shone unfurled
|
1836 |
| Lines 163-168, and 175-180, were added in 1802. Lines
169-174 were added in 1805. All these were omitted in 1815, but were
restored in 1820. |
|
| 1845 |
|
So was it then, and so is now:
For, Ruth! with thee I know not how
I feel my spirit burn
|
1802 |
"But wherefore speak of this? for now,
Sweet Ruth! with thee, ...
|
1805 |
Dear Ruth! with thee ...
|
1836 |
| 1836 |
|
Even as the east when day comes forth;
And to the west, and south, and north,
|
1802 |
It is my purer better mind
O maiden innocently kind
What sights I might have seen!
Even now upon my eyes they break!
And then the youth began to speak
Of lands where he had been.
|
MS. |
| 1845 |
|
But now the pleasant dream was gone,
|
1800 |
Full soon that purer mind ...
|
1820 |
| 1836 |
|
And there, exulting in her wrongs,
Among the music of her songs
She fearfully carouz'd ib.
|
1800 |
And there she sang tumultuous songs,
By recollection of her wrongs,
To fearful passion rouzed.
|
1820 |
| 1802 |
|
And to the pleasant Banks of Tone
She took her way, to dwell alone
|
1800 |
| 1805 |
|
(And in this tale we all agree)
|
1800 |
| 1805 |
|
The neighbours grieve for her, and say
That she will ...
|
1802 |
| This stanza first appeared in the edition of 1802. |
|
Taken from the portrait of the chief in Bartram's
frontispiece.—Ed.
"The tall aspiring Gordonia lacianthus ... gradually changing colour,
from green to golden yellow, from that to a scarlet, from scarlet to
crimson, and lastly to a brownish purple, ... so that it may be said
to change and renew its garments every morning throughout the year."
See Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East Florida,
the Cherokee Country, etc., by William Bartram (1791), pp. 159,
160.—Ed.
"Its thick foliage of a dark green colour is flowered over with large
milk-white, fragrant blossoms, ... renewed every morning, and that in
such incredible profusion that the tree appears silvered over with
them, and the ground beneath covered with the fallen flowers. It, at
the same time, continually pushes forth new twigs, with young buds on
them."
(Bartram's Travels, etc., p. 159.)—Ed.
Magnolia grandiflora.—W. W. 1800;
and Bartram's
Travels, p. 8. —Ed.
"The Cypressus distichia stands in the first order of North American
trees. Its majestic stature, lifting its cumbrous top towards the
skies, and casting a wide shade upon the ground, as a dark intervening
cloud," etc.
(Bartram's Travels, p. 88).—Ed.
The splendid appearance of these scarlet flowers, which are
scattered with such profusion over the Hills in the Southern parts of
North America is frequently mentioned by Bartram in his
Travels
.—W. W. 1800.
Mr. Ernest Coleridge tells me he
"has traced, to a note-book of Coleridge's in the British Museum, the
source from which Wordsworth derived his description of Georgian
scenery in Ruth. He does, I know, refer to Bartram, but the
whole passage is a poetical rendering, and a pretty close one, of
Bartram's poetical narrative. I have a portrait—the frontispiece of
Bartram's Travels—of Mico Chlucco, king of the Seminoles,
whose feathers nod in the breeze just as did the military casque of
the 'youth from Georgia's shore.'"
Ed.
"North and south almost endless green plains and meadows, embellished
with islets and projecting promontories of high dark forests, where
the pyramidal Magnolia grandiflora ... conspicuously towers."
(Bartram's Travels, p. 145).—Ed.
The Tone is a River of Somersetshire, at no great distance
from the Quantock Hills. These Hills, which are alluded to a few stanzas
below, are extremely beautiful, and in most places richly covered with
Coppice woods. W. W. 1800.
The edition of 1805 substitutes the stanzas beginning,
'It was a fresh and glorious world'
for stanzas 2, 3, and 4 of the above six in this note, but it inserts
these omitted stanzas later on as Nos. 27, 28, 29.—Ed.
Wordsworth wrote to Barren Field in 1828 that this stanza
"was altered, Lamb having observed that it was not English. I like it
better myself;'
(i.e. the version of 1800)
"but certainly to carouse cups—that is to empty them—is the genuine
English."
Ed.
Note:
The following extract from Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal gives the date
of the stanzas added to Ruth in subsequent editions:
"Sunday, March 8th, 1802.—I stitched up The Pedlar, wrote out
Ruth, read it with the alterations.... William brought two new
stanzas of Ruth."
The transpositions of stanzas, and their omission from certain editions
and their subsequent re-introduction, in altered form, in later ones,
make it extremely difficult to give the textual history of Ruth in
footnotes. They are even more bewildering than the changes introduced
into Simon Lee.—Ed.
1799 Contents
Main Contents
Wordsworth's Poetical Works, Volume 2: 1800
Edited by William Knight
1896
Table of Contents
1800
Towards the close of December 1799, Wordsworth came to live at Dove
Cottage, Town-end, Grasmere. The poems written during the following year
(1800), are more particularly associated with that district of the
Lakes. Two of them were fragments of a canto of The Recluse, entitled
"Home at Grasmere," referring to his settlement at Dove Cottage. Others,
such as Michael, and The Brothers—classed by him afterwards among
the "Poems founded on the Affections,"—deal with incidents in the rural
life of the dalesmen of Westmoreland and Cumberland. Most of the "Poems
on the Naming of Places" were written during this year; and the "Places"
are all in the neighbourhood of Grasmere. To these were added several
"Pastoral Poems"—such as The Idle Shepherd Boys; or, Dungeon-Ghyll
Force—sundry "Poems of the Fancy," and one or two "Inscriptions." In
all, twenty-five poems were written in the year 1800; and, with the
exception of the two fragments of The Recluse, they were published
during the same year in the second volume of the second edition of
"Lyrical Ballads." It is impossible to fix the precise date of the
composition of the fragments of The Recluse; but, as they refer to the
settlement at Dove Cottage—where Wordsworth went to reside with his
sister, on the 21st of December 1799—they may fitly introduce the poems
belonging to the year 1800. They were first published in 1851 in the
Memoirs of Wordsworth (vol. i. pp. 157 and 155 respectively), by the
poet's nephew, the late Bishop of Lincoln. The entire canto of The
Recluse, entitled "Home at Grasmere," will be included in this edition.
The first two poems which follow, as belonging to the year 1800, are
parts of The Recluse, viz. "On Nature's invitation do I come," (which
is ll. 71-97, and 110-125), and "Bleak season was it, turbulent and
bleak," (which is ll. 152-167). They are not reprinted from the
Memoirs of 1851, because the text there given was, in several
instances, inaccurately reproduced from the original MS., which has been
re-examined. They were printed here, in The Recluse(1888), and in my
Life of Wordsworth (vol. i. 1889).—Ed.
Contents 1800
Main Contents
"On Nature's invitation do I come"
Composed (probably) in 1800.—Published 1851
The Poem