[339] This quotation I am unable to trace—Ed.

1792 (or earlier)

“SWEET WAS THE WALK ALONG THE NARROW LANE”

This sonnet is found in one of Dorothy Wordsworth’s letters to her friend Miss Jane Polland, written from Forncett Rectory, on 6th May 1792. She wrote:—

“I promised to transcribe some of William’s compositions. As I made the promise I will give you a little sonnet, but all the same I charge you, as you value our friendship, not to read it, or to show it to any one—to your sister, or any other person.… I take the first that offers. It is only valuable to me because the lane which gave birth to it was the favourite evening walk of my dear William and me.” … “I have not chosen this sonnet because of any particular beauty it has; it was the first I laid my hands upon.”—Ed.

Sweet was the walk along the narrow lane
At noon, the bank and hedgerows all the way
Shagged with wild pale green tufts of fragrant hay,
Caught by the hawthorns from the loaded wain
Which Age, with many a slow stoop, strove to gain; 5
And Childhood seeming still more busy, took
His little rake with cunning sidelong look,
Sauntering to pluck the strawberries wild unseen.
Now too, on melancholy’s idle dream
Musing, the lone spot with my soul agrees 10
Quiet and dark; for through the thick-wove trees
Scarce peeps the curious star till solemn gleams
The clouded moon, and calls me forth to stray
Through tall green silent woods and ruins grey.

“WHEN LOVE WAS BORN OF HEAVENLY LINE”

Composed 1795 (or earlier).—Published 1795

Translated from some French stanzas by Francis Wrangham, and Printed in Poems by Francis Wrangham, M.A., Member of Trinity College, Cambridge, London (1795), Sold by J. Mawman, 22 Poultry, pp. 106-111. In the edition of 1795, the original French lines are printed side by side with Wordsworth’s translation, which closes the volume.—Ed.

When Love was born of heavenly line,
What dire intrigues disturb’d Cythera’s joy!
Till Venus cried, “A mother’s heart is mine;
None but myself shall nurse my boy.”
But, infant as he was, the child 5
In that divine embrace enchanted lay;
And, by the beauty of the vase beguiled,
Forgot the beverage—and pined away.
“And must my offspring languish in my sight?”
(Alive to all a mother’s pain, 10
The Queen of Beauty thus her court address’d)
“No: Let the most discreet of all my train
Receive him to her breast:
Think all, he is the God of young delight.”
Then Tenderness with Candour join’d, 15
And Gaiety the charming office sought;
Nor even Delicacy stay’d behind:
But none of those fair Graces brought
Wherewith to nurse the child—and still he pined.
Some fond hearts to Compliance seem’d inclined; 20
But she had surely spoil’d the boy:
And sad experience forbade a thought
On the wild Goddess of Voluptuous Joy.
Long undecided lay th’ important choice,
Till of the beauteous court, at length, a voice 25
Pronounced the name of Hope:—The conscious child
Stretch’d forth his little arms, and smiled.[340]
’Tis said Enjoyment (who averr’d
The charge belong’d to her alone)
Jealous that Hope had been preferr’d 30
Laid snares to make the babe her own.
Of Innocence the garb she took,
The blushing mien and downcast look;
And came her services to proffer:
And Hope (what has not Hope believed!) 35
By that seducing air deceived,
Accepted of the offer.
It happen’d that, to sleep inclined,
Deluded Hope for one short hour
To that false Innocence’s power 40
Her little charge consign’d.
The Goddess then her lap with sweetmeats fill’d
And gave, in handfuls gave, the treacherous store:
A wild delirium first the infant thrill’d;
But soon upon her breast he sunk—to wake no more. 45

[340] Compare Gray’s Progress of Poesy, iii. I. 87—

The dauntless child
Stretch’d forth his little arms, and smiled.

Ed.

THE CONVICT

Composed (?).—Published 1798

The glory of evening was spread through the west;
—On the slope of a mountain I stood,
While the joy that precedes the calm season of rest
Rang loud through the meadow and wood.
“And must we then part from a dwelling so fair?” 5
In the pain of my spirit I said,
And with a deep sadness I turned, to repair
To the cell where the convict is laid.
The thick-ribbed walls that o’ershadow the gate
Resound; and the dungeons unfold: 10
I pause; and at length, through the glimmering grate,
That outcast of pity behold.
His black matted hair on his shoulder is bent,
And deep is the sigh of his breath,
And with stedfast dejection his eyes are intent 15
On the fetters that link him to death.
’Tis sorrow enough on that visage to gaze,
That body dismiss’d from his care;
Yet my fancy has pierced to his heart, and pourtrays
More terrible images there. 20
His bones are consumed, and his life-blood is dried,
With wishes the past to undo;
And his crime, through the pains that o’erwhelm him, descried,
Still blackens and grows on his view.
When from the dark synod, or blood-reeking field, 25
To his chamber the monarch is led,
All soothers of sense their soft virtue shall yield,
And quietness pillow his head.
But if grief, self-consumed, in oblivion would doze,
And conscience her tortures appease, 30
’Mid tumult and uproar this man must repose,
In the comfortless vault of disease.
When his fetters at night have so press’d on his limbs,
That the weight can no longer be borne,
If, while a half-slumber his memory bedims, 35
The wretch on his pallet should turn,
While the jail-mastiff howls at the dull clanking chain,
From the roots of his hair there shall start
A thousand sharp punctures of cold-sweating pain,
And terror shall leap at his heart. 40
But now he half-raises his deep-sunken eye,
And the motion unsettles a tear;
The silence of sorrow it seems to supply,
And asks of me why I am here.
“Poor victim! no idle intruder has stood 45
With o’erweening complacence our state to compare,
But one, whose first wish is the wish to be good,
Is come as a brother thy sorrows to share.
“At thy name though compassion her nature resign,
Though in virtue’s proud mouth thy report be a stain, 50
My care, if the arm of the mighty were mine,
Would plant thee where yet thou might’st blossom again.”

1798

“THE SNOW-TRACKS OF MY FRIENDS I SEE”

The following incomplete stanzas were evidently written when The Complaint of a Forsaken Indian Woman was being composed. They were all discarded, but have a biographical interest. I assign them to the year 1798.—Ed.

The snow-tracks of my friends I see,
Their foot-marks do not trouble me,
For ever left alone am I.
Then wherefore should I fear to die?
They to the last my friends did cherish 5
And to the last were good and kind,
Methinks ’tis strange I did not perish
The moment I was left behind.
Why do I watch those running deer?
And wherefore, wherefore come they here? 10
And wherefore do I seem to love
The things that live, the things that move?
Why do I look upon the sky?
I do not live for what I see.
Why open thus mine eyes? To die 15
Is all that now is left for me,
If I could smother up my heart
My life would then at once depart.
My friends, you live, and yet you seem
To me the people of a dream; 20
A dream in which there is no love,
And yet, my friends, you live and move.
When I could live without a pain,
And feel no wish to be alive,
In quiet hopelessness I sleep, 25
Alas! how quiet, and how deep!
Oh no! I do not, cannot rue,
I did not strive to follow you.
I might have dropp’d, and died alone
On unknown snows, a spot unknown. 30
This spot to me must needs be dear,
Of my dear friends I see the trace.
You saw me, friends, you laid me here,
You know where my poor bones shall be,
Then wherefore should I fear to die? 35
Alas that one beloved, forlorn,
Should lie beneath the cold starlight!
With them I think I could have borne
The journey of another night,
And with my friends now far away 40
I could have lived another day.

THE OLD CUMBERLAND BEGGAR

MS. Variants, not inserted in Vol. I.

(l. 3) On a small pile of humble masonry
Placed at the foot of …
(l. 24) He travels on, a solitary man.
His age has no companion. He is weak,
So helpless in appearance that, for him
The sauntering horseman-traveller does not throw
With careless hand his pence upon the ground
But stops that he may lodge the coin
Safe in the old man’s hat: nor quits him so,
But as he goes towards him turns a look
Sidelong and half-reverted.…

1800

ANDREW JONES

Composed 1800.—Published 1800

Andrew Jones was included in the “Lyrical Ballads” of 1800, 1802, 1805, and in the Poems of 1815. It was also printed in The Morning Post, February 10, 1801. It was not republished after 1815. With this poem compare The Old Cumberland Beggar.—Ed.

I hate that Andrew Jones; he’ll breed
His children up to waste and pillage.
I wish the press-gang or the drum
Would with its rattling music come,[341]
And sweep him from the village! 5
I said not this, because he loves
Through the long day to swear and tipple;
But for the poor dear sake of one
To whom a foul deed he had done,
A friendless man, a travelling cripple! 10
For this poor crawling helpless wretch
Some horseman who was passing by,[342]
A penny on the ground had thrown;
But the poor cripple was alone
And could not stoop—no help was nigh. 15
Inch-thick the dust lay on the ground
For it had long been droughty weather;
So with his staff the cripple wrought
Among the dust till he had brought
The half-pennies together. 20
It chanced that Andrew passed that way
Just at the time; and there he found
The cripple in the mid-day heat
Standing alone, and at his feet
He saw the penny on the ground. 25
He stooped and took the penny up:[343]
And when the cripple nearer drew,
Quoth Andrew, “Under half-a-crown,
What a man finds is all his own,
And so, my friend, good-day to you.” 30
And hence I said, that Andrew’s boys
Will all be trained to waste and pillage:
And wished the press-gang, or the drum
Would with its rattling music come,[344]
And sweep him from the village! 35

[341] 1815.

With its tantara sound would come,
1800.

[342]

It chanc’d some Traveller passing by,
MS.

[343] In the text of 1800, this line is, “He stopped and took the penny up,” but in the list of errata, “stooped” is substituted for “stopped.”—Ed.

[344] 1815.

With its tantara sound would come
1800.

“THERE IS A SHAPELESS CROWD OF UNHEWN STONES”

Numerous fragments of verse, more or less unfinished, occur in the Grasmere Journals, written by Dorothy Wordsworth. One of these—which is broken up into irregular fragments, and very incomplete—is evidently part of the material which was written about the old Cumbrian shepherd Michael. The successive alterations of the text of the poem Michael are in the Grasmere Journal. These fragments have a special topographical interest, from their description of Helvellyn, and its spring, the fountain of the mists, and the stones on the summit. On the outside leather cover of the MS. book there is written, “May to Dec. 1802.”

The following lines come first:—

There is a shapeless crowd of unhewn stones[345]
That lie together, some in heaps, and some
In lines, that seem to keep themselves alive
In the last dotage of a dying form.
At least so seems it to a man who stands
In such a lonely place.

These are followed by a few lines, some of which were afterwards used in The Prelude (see vol. iii. p. 269):—

Shall he who gives his days to low pursuits,
Amid the undistinguishable crowd
Of cities, ’mid the same eternal flow
Of the same objects, melted and reduced
To one identity, by differences
That have no law, no meaning, and no end,
Shall he feel yearning to those lifeless forms,
And shall we think that Nature is less kind
To those, who all day long, through a long life,
Have walked within her sight? It cannot be.
Mary Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, William Wordsworth.
Sat. Eve., 20 past 6, May 29.

Other fragments follow, less worthy of preservation. Then the passage, which occurs in book xiii. of The Prelude, beginning—

There are who think that strong affection, love,

(see vol. iii. p. 361), with one or two variations from the final text, which were not improvements.

Five lines on Helvellyn, afterwards included in the Musings near Aquapendente (see vol. viii. p. 47, ll. 61-65), come next.

The fragments referring to Michael are written down, probably just as the brother dictated them to his sister, and would be—if not unintelligible—certainly without any literary connection or unity, were they printed in the order in which they occur. I therefore transpose them slightly, to give something like continuity to the whole; which remains, of course, a torso.

I will relate a tale for those who love
To lie beside the lonely mountain brooks,
And hear the voices of the winds and flowers.
…
… It befell
At the first falling of the autumnal snows,
Old Michael and his son one day went forth
In search of a stray sheep. It was the time
When from the heights our shepherds drive their flocks
To gather all their mountain family
Into the homestalls, ere they send them back
There to defend themselves the winter long.
Old Michael for this purpose had driven down
His flock into the vale, but as it chanced,
A single sheep was wanting. They had sought
The straggler during all the previous day
All over their own pastures, and beyond.
And now at sunrise, sallying forth again
Far did they go that morning: with their search
Beginning towards the south, where from Dove Crag
(Ill home for bird so gentle), they looked down
On Deep-dale-head, and Brothers water (named
From those two Brothers that were drowned therein);
Thence northward did they pass by Arthur’s seat,[346]
And Fairfield’s highest summit, on the right
Leaving St. Sunday’s Crag, to Grisdale tarn
They shot, and over that cloud-loving hill,
Seat-Sandal, a fond lover of the clouds;
Thence up Helvellyn, a superior mount,
With prospect underneath of Striding edge,
And Grisdale’s houseless vale, along the brink
Of Sheep-cot-cove, and those two other coves,
Huge skeletons of crags which from the coast
Of old Helvellyn spread their arms abroad
And make a stormy harbour for the winds.
Far went these shepherds in their devious quest,
From mountain ridges peeping as they passed
Down into every nook; …
… and many a sheep
On height or bottom[347] did they see, in flocks
Or single. And although it needs must seem
Hard to believe, yet could they well discern
Even at the utmost distance of two miles
(Such strength of vision to the shepherd’s eye
Doth practice give) that neither in the flocks
Nor in the single sheep was what they sought.
So to Helvellyn’s eastern side they went,
Down looking on that hollow, where the pool
Of Thirlmere flashes like a warrior’s shield
His light high up among the gloomy rocks,
With sight of now and then a straggling gleam
On Armath’s[348] pleasant fields. And now they came,
To that high spring which bears no human name,
As one unknown by others, aptly called
The fountain of the mists. The father stooped
To drink of the clear water, laid himself
Flat on the ground, even as a boy might do,
To drink of the cold well. When in like sort
His son had drunk, the old man said to him
That now he might be proud, for he that day
Had slaked his thirst out of a famous well,
The highest fountain known on British land.
Thence, journeying on a second time, they passed
Those small flat stones, which, ranged by traveller’s hands
In cyphers on Helvellyn’s highest ridge,
Lie loose on the bare turf, some half-o’ergrown
By the grey moss, but not a single stone
Unsettled by a wanton blow from foot
Of shepherd, man or boy. They have respect
For strangers who have travelled far perhaps,
For men who in such places, feeling there
The grandeur of the earth, have left inscribed
Their epitaph, which rain and snow
And the strong wind have reverenced.
…
But soon as Luke, full ten years old, could stand
Against the mountain blasts, and to the heights
Not fearing toil, nor length of weary ways,
He with his Father daily went, and they
Were as companions, why should I relate
That objects which the shepherd lov’d before
Were dearer now? that from the Boy there came
Feelings and emanations, things which were
Light to the sun and music to the wind;
And that the old man’s heart seem’d born again?
Thus in his Father’s sight the Boy grew up;
And now when he had reached his eighteenth year,
He was his comfort and his daily hope.
…
Though often thus industriously they passed[349]
Whole hours with but small interchange of speech,
Yet were there times in which they did not want
Discourse both wise and pleasant,[350] shrewd remarks
Of moral prudence,[351] clothed in images
Lively and beautiful, in rural forms,
That made their conversation fresh and fair
As is a landscape; and the shepherd oft
Would draw out of his heart the mysteries[352]
And admirations that were there, of God
And of his works: or, yielding to the bent
Of his peculiar humour, would let loose
His tongue, and give it the wind’s freedom; then,
Discoursing on remote imaginations, strong
Conceits, devices, plans, and schemes,[353]
Of alterations human hands might make
Among the mountains, fens which might be drained,
Mines opened, forests planted, and rocks split,
The fancies of a solitary man.[354]
Not with a waste of words, but for the sake
Of pleasure which I know that I shall give
To many living now, have I described
Old Michael’s manners and discourse, and thus
Minutely spoken of that aged Lamp
Round which the Shepherd and his household sate
—The light was famous in the neighbourhood
And was a public symbol …

Then follow four pages of Dorothy Wordsworth’s Journal (May 4th and 5th, 1802); and then, irregularly written, and with numerous erasures, the remainder of these unpublished lines.

… At length the boy
Said, “Father, ’tis lost labour; with your leave
I will go back and range a second time
The grounds which we have hunted through before.”
So saying, homeward, down the hill the boy
Sprang like a gust of wind: [and with a heart
Brimful of glory said within himself,
“I know where I shall find him, though the storm
Have driven him twenty miles.”
For ye must know][355] that though the storm
Drive one of those poor creatures miles and miles,
If he can crawl, he will return again
To his own hills, the spots where when a lamb
He learned to pasture at his mother’s side.
Bethinking him of this, again the boy
Pursued his way toward a brook, whose course
Was through that unfenced tract of mountain ground
Which to his father’s little farm belonged,
The home and ancient birthright of their flock.
Down the deep channel of the stream he went,
Prying through every nook. Meanwhile the rain
Began to fall upon the mountain tops,
Thick storm, and heavy, which for three hours’ space
Abated not; and all that time the boy
Was busy in his search, until at length
He spied the sheep upon a plot of grass,
An island in the brook. It was a place
Remote and deep, piled round with rocks, where foot
Of man or beast was seldom used to tread.
But now, when everywhere the summer grass
Began to fail, this sheep by hunger pressed
Had left his fellows, made his way alone
To the green plot of pasture in the brook.
Before the boy knew well what he had seen
He leapt upon the island, with proud heart,
And with a shepherd’s joy. Immediately
The sheep sprang forward to the further shore,
And was borne headlong by the roaring flood.
At this the boy looked round him, and his heart
Fainted with fear. Thrice did he turn his face
To either bank, nor could he summon up
The courage that was needful to leap back
’Cross the tempestuous torrent; so he stood
A prisoner on the island, not without
More than one thought of death, and his last hour.
Meantime the father had returned alone
To his own home, and now at the approach
Of evening he went forth to meet his son,
Nor could he guess the cause for which the boy
Had stayed so long. The shepherd took his way
Up his own mountain grounds, where, as he walked
Along the steep that overhung the brook,
He seemed to hear a voice, which was again
Repeated, like the whistling of a kite.
At this, not knowing why—as often-times
The old man afterwards was heard to say—
Down to the brook he went, and tracked its course
Upwards among the o’erhanging rocks; nor
Had he gone far ere he espied the boy
Right in the middle of the roaring stream.
Without distress or fear the shepherd heard
The outcry of his son: he stretched his staff
Towards him, bade him leap, which word scarce said
The boy was safe.…
…

Of Michael it is said—

No doubt if you in terms direct had asked
Whether he loved the mountains, true it is
That with blunt repetition of your words
He might have stared at you, and said that they
Were frightful to behold, but had you then
Discoursed with him …
Of his own business, and the goings on
Of earth and sky, then truly had you seen
That in his thoughts there were obscurities,
Wonder, and admiration, things that wrought
Not less than a religion in his heart.
And if it was his fortune to converse
With any who could talk of common things
In an unusual way, and give to them
Unusual aspects, or by questions apt
Wake sudden recognitions, that were like
Creations in the mind (and were indeed
Creations often), then when he discoursed
Of mountain sights, this untaught shepherd stood
Before the man with whom he so conversed
And looked at him as with a poet’s eye.
But speaking of the vale in which he dwelt,
And those bare rocks, if you had asked if he
For other pastures would exchange the same
And dwell elsewhere, …
… you then had seen
At once what spirit of love was in his heart.
…
I have related that this Shepherd loved
The fields and mountains, not alone for this
That from his very childhood he had lived
Among them, with a body hale and stout,
And with a vigorous mind …
… But exclude
Such reasons, and he had less cause to love
His native vale and patrimonial fields
Than others have, for Michael had liv’d on
Childless, until the time when he began
To look towards the shutting in of life.

In this MS. book there are also some of the original stanzas of Ruth, with a few variations of text.—Ed.

[345] Compare the first line of those Written with a Slate Pencil upon a Stone, the largest of a Heap lying near a deserted Quarry, upon one of the Islands at Rydal, vol. ii. p. 63.—Ed.

[346] Stone Arthur. See, in the “Poems on the Naming of Places,” the one beginning—

There is an Eminence,

Ed.

[347] Bottom is a common Cumbrian word for valley.—Ed.

[348] Armboth, on the western side of Thirlmere.—Ed.

[349] Though in these occupations they would pass†

[350] … prudent, …†

[351] Of daily Providence …†

[352] … obscurities†

[353] Day-dreams, thoughts, and schemes.†

† These variants occur in a letter of Dorothy Wordsworth to Thomas Poole.—Ed.

[354] All doubt as to these fragments being originally intended to form part of Michael is set at rest by a letter from Wordsworth to Thomas Poole, of Nether Stowey, written from Grasmere on the 9th of April 1801, in which he gives first some new lines to be added to Michael, at pp. 210 and 211 of vol. ii. of the “Lyrical Ballads” (ed. 1800); to which letter Dorothy Wordsworth added the postscript, “My brother has written the following lines, to be inserted page 206, after the ninth line—

Murmur as with the sound of summer flies;”

and then follow—

Though in these occupations they would pass
Whole hours, etc.

as printed above.

Dorothy Wordsworth adds, “Tell whether you think the insertion of these lines an improvement.”—Ed.

[355] An erased version.—Ed.

1802

“AMONG ALL LOVELY THINGS MY LOVE HAD BEEN”

Composed April 12, 1802.—Published 1807

This poem—known in the Wordsworth household as The Glowworm—was written on the 12th of April 1802, during a ride from Middleham to Barnard Castle, and was published in the edition of 1807. It was never reproduced. The “Lucy” of this and other poems was his sister Dorothy. In a letter to Coleridge, written in April 1802, he thus refers to the poem, and to the incident which gave rise to it:—“I parted from M—— on Monday afternoon, about six o’clock, a little on this side Rushyford. Soon after I missed my road in the midst of the storm.… Between the beginning of Lord Darlington’s park at Raby, and two or three miles beyond Staindrop, I composed the poem the opposite page. I reached Barnard Castle about half-past ten.… The incident of this poem took place about seven years ago between my sister and me.”

I think it probable that the “incident” occurred near Racedown, Dorsetshire, where, in the autumn of 1795 Wordsworth settled with his sister. The following is Dorothy’s account of the composition of the poem:—“Tuesday, April 20, 1802.—We sate in the orchard and repeated The Glowworm, and other poems. Just when William came to a well, or trough, which there is in Lord Darlington’s park, he began to write that poem of The Glowworm; interrupted in going through the town of Staindrop, finished it about two miles and a-half beyond Staindrop. He did not feel the jogging of the horse while he was writing; but, when he had done, he felt the effect of it.… So much for The Glowworm. It was written coming from Middleham, on Monday, April 12, 1802.”—Ed.