[208] “In the thirteenth sonnet he anticipates that a time may come when the punishment of death will be needed no longer; but he wishes that the disuse of it should grow out of the absence of the need, not be imposed by legislation.” (Sir Henry Taylor.)—Ed.
[209] In the editions of 1842, 1845, and 1850 the date “1840” follows this poem. It may have been written in that year.—Ed.
Published 1842
One of the “Sonnets dedicated to Liberty and Order.”—Ed.
[210] These lines were written several years ago, when reports prevailed of cruelties committed in many parts of America, by men making a law of their own passions. A far more formidable, as being a more deliberate mischief, has appeared among those States, which have lately broken faith with the public creditor in a manner so infamous. I cannot, however, but look at both evils under a similar relation to inherent good, and hope that the time is not distant when our brethren of the West will wipe off this stain from their name and nation.
Additional Note.
I am happy to add that this anticipation is already partly realised; and that the reproach addressed to the Pennsylvanians is no longer applicable to them. I trust that those other states to which it may yet apply will soon follow the example now set them by Philadelphia, and redeem their credit with the world.—W.W. 1850.
“This editorial note is on a fly-leaf at the end of the fifth volume of the edition, which was completed only a short time before the Poet’s death. It contains probably the last sentences composed by him for the press. It was promptly added by him in consequence of a suggestion from me, that the sonnet addressed “To Pennsylvanians” was no longer just—a fact which is mentioned to shew that the fine sense of truth and justice which distinguish his writings was active to the last.” (Note to Professor Reed’s American Edition of 1851.)—Ed.
Only four poems, viz. Poor Robin, two sonnets referring to Miss Gillies, and one on Haydon’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington, belong to 1840.—Ed.
Composed 1840.—Published 1842
[The picture which gave occasion to this and the following sonnet was from the pencil of Miss M. Gillies, who resided for several weeks under our roof at Rydal Mount.—I.F.]
One of the “Miscellaneous Sonnets.”—Ed.
[211] Miss Gillies told me that she visited Rydal Mount in 1841, at the invitation of the Wordsworths, to make a miniature portrait of the poet on ivory, which had been commissioned by Mr. Moon, the publisher, for the purpose of engraving. An engraving of this portrait was published on the 6th of August 1841. The original is now in America. I think she must have been wrong in her memory of the year, which was 1840. Miss Gillies also told me that the Wordsworths were so pleased with what she had done for Mr. Moon that they wished a replica for themselves, with Mrs. Wordsworth added. She painted this; and a copy of it, subsequently taken for Miss Quillinan, was long in her possession at Loughrigg Holme. It now belongs to Mr. Gordon Wordsworth. It is to the portrait of Mrs. Wordsworth that this sonnet and the next refer.—Ed.
[212] Compare the lines in vol. iii. p. 5—
The fact that these two lines had been added by Mrs. Wordsworth (see note to the poem, p. 7) was doubtless remembered by the poet, when he wrote this sonnet suggested by her portrait.—Ed.
Composed 1840.—Published 1842
One of the “Miscellaneous Sonnets.”—Ed.
[213] Compare—
Ed.
Composed March 1840.—Published 1842
[I often ask myself what will become of Rydal Mount after our day. Will the old walls and steps remain in front of the house and about the grounds, or will they be swept away with all the beautiful mosses and ferns and wild geraniums and other flowers which their rude construction suffered and encouraged to grow among them?[215]—This little wild flower—“Poor Robin”—is here constantly courting my attention, and exciting what may be called a domestic interest with the varying aspects of its stalks and leaves and flowers.[216] Strangely do the tastes of men differ according to their employment and habits of life. “What a nice well would that be,” said a labouring man to me one day, “if all that rubbish was cleared off.” The “rubbish” was some of the most beautiful mosses and lichens and ferns and other wild growths that could possibly be seen. Defend us from the tyranny of trimness and neatness showing itself in this way! Chatterton says of freedom—“Upon her head wild weeds were spread,” and depend upon it if “the marvellous boy” had undertaken to give Flora a garland, he would have preferred what we are apt to call weeds to garden flowers. True taste has an eye for both. Weeds have been called flowers out of place. I fear the place most people would assign to them is too limited. Let them come near to our abodes, as surely they may, without impropriety or disorder.—I.F.]
One of the “Miscellaneous Poems.”—Ed.
[214] The small wild Geranium known by that name.—W.W. 1842.
[215] These things remain comparatively unaltered. Rydal Mount has suffered little in picturesqueness since Wordsworth’s death; while the house, and the grounds, have gained in many ways by what the present tenant has done for them. It is impossible to keep such a place exactly as it was left by its greatest tenant; and Mr. Crewdson has certainly not injured, but wisely improved the place.—Ed.
[216] Compare what is said of it in the Memoirs of Wordsworth, by his nephew, vol. i. p. 20.—Ed.
[217] 1849.
[218] 1845.
Composed August 31, 1840.—Published 1842
[This was composed while I was ascending Helvellyn in company with my daughter and her husband. She was on horseback, and rode to the top of the hill without once dismounting, a feat which it was scarcely possible to perform except during a season of dry weather; and a guide, with whom we fell in on the mountain, told us he believed it had never been accomplished before by any one.—I.F.]
One of the “Miscellaneous Sonnets”; but first published in the “Poems chiefly of Early and Late Years.”—Ed.
[219] Haydon worked at this picture of Wellington from June to November, 1839. (See his Autobiography, vol. iii. pp. 108-131.) He writes under date, Sept. 4, 1840:—“Hard at work. I heard from dear Wordsworth, with a glorious sonnet on the Duke, and Copenhagen.† It is very fine, and I began a new journal directly, and put in the sonnet. God bless him.” The following is part of Wordsworth’s letter:—
“My dear Haydon,—We are all charmed with your etching. It is both poetically and pictorially conceived, and finely executed. I should have written immediately to thank you for it, and for your letter and the enclosed one, which is interesting, but I wished to gratify you by writing a sonnet. I now send it, but with an earnest request that it may not be put into circulation for some little time, as it is warm from the brain, and may require, in consequence, some little retouching. It has this, at least, remarkable attached to it, which will add to its value in your eyes, that it was actually composed while I was climbing Helvellyn last Monday.”—Ed.
† Wellington’s war-horse.—Ed.
[220] 1842.
Composed 1841.—Published 1842
[Owen Lloyd, the subject of this epitaph, was born at Old Brathay, near Ambleside, and was the son of Charles Lloyd and his wife Sophia (née Pemberton), both of Birmingham, who came to reside in this part of the country, soon after their marriage. They had many children, both sons and daughters, of whom the most remarkable was the subject of this epitaph. He was educated under Mr. Dawes, at Ambleside, Dr. Butler, of Shrewsbury, and lastly at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he would have been greatly distinguished as a scholar but for inherited infirmities of bodily constitution, which, from early childhood, affected his mind. His love for the neighbourhood in which he was born, and his sympathy with the habits and characters of the mountain yeomanry, in conjunction with irregular spirits, that unfitted him for facing duties in situations to which he was unaccustomed, induced him to accept the retired curacy of Langdale. How much he was beloved and honoured there, and with what feelings he discharged his duty under the oppression of severe malady, is set forth, though imperfectly, in the epitaph.—I.F.]
One of the “Epitaphs and Elegiac Pieces.”—Ed.
This commemorative epitaph to the Rev. Owen Lloyd—the friend of Hartley Coleridge and of Faber—is carved on the headstone over his grave in the churchyard at the small hamlet of Chapel Stile, Great Langdale, Westmoreland. The stone also carries the inscription, “To the memory of Owen Lloyd, M.A., nearly twelve years incumbent of this chapel. Born at Old Brathay, March 31, 1803, died at Manchester, April 18, 1841, aged 38.” See a letter of Wordsworth’s referring to Lloyd amongst his letters in a subsequent volume. In a previous edition I erred by giving this poem an earlier date. Professor Dowden has shown the true one conclusively.
Writing from Rydal on 11th August 1841, to his brother Christopher, Wordsworth said, “I send you with the last corrections an epitaph which I have just written for poor Owen Lloyd. His brother Edward forwarded for my perusal some verses which he had composed with a view to that object; but he expressed a wish that I would compose something myself. Not approving Edward’s lines altogether, though the sentiments were sufficiently appropriate, I sent him what I now forward to you, or rather the substance of it, for something has been added, and some change of expression introduced. I hope you will approve of it. I find no fault with it myself, the circumstances considered, except that it is too long for an Epitaph, but this was inevitable if the memorial was to be as conspicuous as the subject required, at least according to the light in which it offered itself to my mind.”—Ed.
The poems of 1842 include The Floating Island, The Norman Boy, The Poet’s Dream, Airey-Force Valley, the lines To the Clouds, and a number of miscellaneous sonnets.—Ed.
Composed 8th March 1842.—Published 1842
[Suggested by a conversation with Miss Fenwick, who along with her sister had, during their childhood, found much delight in such gatherings for the purposes here alluded to.—I.F.]
One of the “Miscellaneous Sonnets.”—Ed.
[221] 1845.
Composed March 26, 1842.—Published 1842
[These verses were begun while I was on a visit to my son John at Brigham, and were finished at Rydal. As the contents of the volume, to which they are now prefixed, will be assigned to their respective classes when my poems shall be collected in one volume, I should be at a loss where with propriety to place this prelude, being too restricted in its bearing to serve for a preface for the whole. The lines towards the conclusion allude to the discontents then fomented through the country by the agitators of the Anti-Corn-Law League: the particular causes of such troubles are transitory, but disposition to excite and liability to be excited are nevertheless permanent, and therefore proper objects for the poet’s regard.—I.F.]
One of the “Miscellaneous Poems.”—Ed.
Published 1842
These lines are by the Author of the Address to the Wind, etc., published heretofore along with my Poems. Those to a Redbreast are by a deceased female Relative.—W.W. 1842.
[My poor sister takes a pleasure in repeating these verses, which she composed not long before the beginning of her sad illness.—I.F.]
One of the “Miscellaneous Poems.”—Ed.
There is one of these floating islands in Loch Lomond in Argyll, another in Loch Dochart in Perthshire, and another in Loch Treig in Inverness. Their origin is probably due to a mass of peat being detached from the shore, and floated out into the lake. A mass of vegetable matter, however, has sometimes risen from the bottom of the water, and assumed for a time all the appearance of an island. This has been probably due to an accumulation of gas, within or under the detached portion, produced by the decay of vegetation in extremely hot weather.
Southey, in an unpublished letter to Sir George Beaumont (10th July 1824), thus describes the Island at Derwentwater: “You will have seen by the papers that the Floating Island has made its appearance. It sank again last week, when some heavy rains had raised the lake four feet. By good fortune Professor Sedgewick happened to be in Keswick, and examined it in time. Where he probed it a thin layer of mud lies upon a bed of peat, which is six feet thick, and this rests upon a stratum of fine white clay,—the same I believe which Miss Barker found in Borrowdale when building her unlucky house. Where the gas is generated remains yet to be discovered, but when the peat is filled with this gas, it separates from the clay and becomes buoyant. There must have been a considerable convulsion when this took place, for a rent was made in the bottom of the lake, several feet in depth, and not less than fifty yards long, on each side of which the bottom rose and floated. It was a pretty sight to see the small fry exploring this new made strait and darting at the bubbles which rose as the Professor was probing the bank. The discharge of air was considerable here, when a pole was thrust down. But at some distance where the rent did not extend, the bottom had been heaved up in a slight convexity, sloping equally in an inclined plane all round: and there, when the pole was introduced, a rush like a jet followed, as it was withdrawn. The thing is the more curious, because as yet no example of it is known to have been observed in any other place.”
Another of these detached islands used to float about in Esthwaite Water, and was carried from side to side of the pool at the north end of the lake—the same pool which the swans, described in The Prelude, used to frequent. This island had a few bushes on it: but it became stranded some time ago. One of the old natives of Hawkeshead described the process of trying to float it off again, by tying ropes to the bushes on its surface,—an experiment which was unsuccessful. Compare the reference to the Floating or “Buoyant” Island of Derwentwater, and to the “mossy islet” of Esthwaite, in Wordsworth’s Guide through the District of the Lakes.—Ed.
Published 1842
One of the “Evening Voluntaries.”—Ed.
Published 1842
[I was impelled to write this Sonnet by the disgusting frequency with which the word artistical, imported with other impertinences from the Germans, is employed by writers of the present day: for artistical let them substitute artificial, and the poetry written on this system, both at home and abroad, will be for the most part much better characterised.—I.F.]
One of the “Miscellaneous Sonnets.”—Ed.
[222] Compare A Poet’s Epitaph (vol. ii. p. 75).—Ed.
Published 1842
[Hundreds of times have I seen, hanging about and above the vale of Rydal, clouds that might have given birth to this sonnet, which was thrown off on the impulse of the moment one evening when I was returning from the favourite walk of ours, along the Rotha, under Loughrigg.—I.F.]
One of the “Miscellaneous Sonnets.”—Ed.