and the
remaining seven were written before the end of June 1805, when his
friend Coleridge was in the island of Malta, for the restoration of
his health.
remaining seven were written before the end of June 1805, when his
friend Coleridge was in the island of Malta, for the restoration of
his health.
William Wordsworth
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.
* * * * *
THE PRELUDE,
OR, GROWTH OF A POET'S MIND;
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL POEM
Composed 1799-1805. --Published 1850
ADVERTISEMENT
The following Poem was commenced in the beginning of the year 1799, and
completed in the summer of 1805.
The design and occasion of the work are described by the Author in his
Preface to the EXCURSION, first published in 1814, where he thus speaks:
"Several years ago, when the Author retired to his native mountains
with the hope of being enabled to construct a literary work that might
live, it was a reasonable thing that he should take a review of his
own mind, and examine how far Nature and Education had qualified him
for such an employment.
"As subsidiary to this preparation, he undertook to record, in verse,
the origin and progress of his own powers, as far as he was acquainted
with them.
"That work, addressed to a dear friend, most distinguished for his
knowledge and genius, and to whom the author's intellect is deeply
indebted, has been long finished; and the result of the investigation
which gave rise to it, was a determination to compose a philosophical
Poem, containing views of Man, Nature, and Society, and to be entitled
'The Recluse;' as having for its principal subject the sensations and
opinions of a poet living in retirement.
"The preparatory poem is biographical, and conducts the history of the
Author's mind to the point when he was emboldened to hope that his
faculties were sufficiently matured for entering upon the arduous
labour which he had proposed to himself; and the two works have the
same kind of relation to each other, if he may so express himself, as
the Ante-chapel has to the body of a Gothic Church. Continuing this
allusion, he may be permitted to add, that his minor pieces, which
have been long before the public, when they shall be properly
arranged, will be found by the attentive reader to have such
connection with the main work as may give them claim to be likened to
the little cells, oratories, and sepulchral recesses, ordinarily
included in those edifices. "
Such was the Author's language in the year 1814.
It will thence be seen, that the present Poem was intended to be
introductory to the RECLUSE, and that the RECLUSE, if completed, would
have consisted of Three Parts. Of these, the Second Part alone, viz. the
EXCURSION, was finished, and given to the world by the Author.
The First Book of the First Part of the RECLUSE still remains in
manuscript; but the Third Part was only planned. The materials of which
it would have been formed have, however, been incorporated, for the most
part, in the Author's other Publications, written subsequently to the
EXCURSION.
The Friend, to whom the present Poem is addressed, was the late SAMUEL
TAYLOR COLERIDGE, who was resident in Malta, for the restoration of his
health, when the greater part of it was composed.
Mr. Coleridge read a considerable portion of the Poem while he was
abroad; and his feelings, on hearing it recited by the Author (after his
return to his own country) are recorded in his Verses, addressed to Mr.
Wordsworth, which will be found in the 'Sibylline Leaves,' p. 197,
edition 1817, or 'Poetical Works, by S. T. Coleridge,' vol. i. p. 206.
RYDAL MOUNT, _July 13th_, 1850.
This "advertisement" to the first edition of 'The Prelude,' published in
1850--the year of Wordsworth's death--was written by Mr. Carter, who
edited the volume. Mr. Carter was for many years the poet's secretary,
and afterwards one of his literary executors. The poem was not only kept
back from publication during Wordsworth's life-time, but it remained
without a title; being alluded to by himself, when he spoke or wrote of
it, as "the poem on my own poetical education," the "poem on my own
life," etc.
As 'The Prelude' is autobiographical, a large part of Wordsworth's life
might be written in the notes appended to it; but, besides breaking up
the text of the poem unduly, this plan has many disadvantages, and would
render a subsequent and detailed life of the poet either unnecessary or
repetitive. The notes which follow will therefore be limited to the
explanation of local, historical, and chronological allusions, or to
references to Wordsworth's own career that are not obvious without them.
It has been occasionally difficult to decide whether some of the
allusions, to minute points in ancient history, mediaeval mythology, and
contemporary politics, should be explained or left alone; but I have
preferred to err on the side of giving a brief clue to details, with
which every scholar is familiar.
'The Prelude' was begun as Wordsworth left the imperial city of Goslar,
in Lower Saxony, where he spent part of the last winter of last century,
and which he left on the 10th of February 1799. Only lines 1 to 45,
however, were composed at that time; and the poem was continued at
desultory intervals after the settlement at Grasmere, during 1800, and
following years. Large portions of it were dictated to his devoted
amanuenses as he walked, or sat, on the terraces of Lancrigg. Six books
were finished by 1805.
"The seventh was begun in the opening of that year; . . .
and the
remaining seven were written before the end of June 1805, when his
friend Coleridge was in the island of Malta, for the restoration of
his health. "
(The late Bishop of Lincoln. )
There is no uncertainty as to the year in which the later books were
written; but there is considerable difficulty in fixing the precise date
of the earlier ones. Writing from Grasmere to his friend Francis
Wrangham--the letter is undated--Wordsworth says,
"I am engaged in writing a poem on my own earlier life, which will
take five parts or books to complete, three of which are nearly
finished. "
The late Bishop of Lincoln supposed that this letter to Wrangham was
written "at the close of 1803, or beginning of 1804. " (See 'Memoirs of
Wordsworth,' vol. i. p. 303. ) There is evidence that it belongs to 1804.
At the commencement of the seventh book, p. 247, he says:
_Six changeful years_ have vanished since I first
Poured out (saluted by that quickening breeze
Which met me issuing from the City's walls)
_A glad preamble to this Verse:_ I sang
Aloud, with fervour irresistible
Of short-lived transport, like a torrent bursting,
From a black thunder-cloud, down Scafell's side
To rush and disappear. But soon broke forth
(So willed the Muse) _a less impetuous stream,
That flowed awhile with unabating strength,
Then stopped for years; not audible again
Before last primrose-time. _
I have _italicised_ the clauses which give some clue to the dates of
composition. From these it would appear that the "glad preamble,"
written on leaving Goslar in 1799 (which, I think, included only the
first two paragraphs of book first), was a "short-lived transport"; but
that "soon" afterwards "a less impetuous stream" broke forth, which,
after the settlement at Grasmere, "flowed awhile with unabating
strength," and then "stopped for years. " Now the above passage,
recording these things, was written in 1805, and in the late autumn of
that year; (as is evident from the reference which immediately follows
to the "choir of redbreasts" and the approach of winter). We must
therefore assign the flowing of the "less impetuous stream," to 1802; in
order to leave room for the intervening "years," in which it ceased to
flow, till it was audible again in the spring of 1804, "last
primrose-time. "
A second reference to date occurs in the sixth book, p. 224, entitled
"Cambridge and the Alps," in which he says,
_Four years and thirty, told, this very week,_
Have I been now a sojourner on earth.
This fixes definitely enough the date of the composition of _that_ part
of the work, _viz. _ April 1804, which corresponds exactly to the "last
primrose-time" of the previous extract from the seventh book, in which
he tells us that after its long silence, his Muse was heard again. So
far Wordsworth's own allusions to the date of 'The Prelude. '
But there are others supplied by his own, and his sister's letters, and
also by the Grasmere Journal. In the Dove Cottage household it was
known, and talked of, as "the Poem to Coleridge;" and Dorothy records,
on 11th January 1803, that her brother was working at it. On 13th
February 1804, she writes to Mrs. Clarkson that her brother was engaged
on a poem on his own life, and was "going on with great rapidity. " On
the 6th of March 1804, Wordsworth wrote from Grasmere to De Quincey,
"I am now writing a poem on my own earlier life: I have just finished
that part of it in which I speak of my residence at the University. "
. . . It is "better than half complete, viz. four books, amounting to
about 2500 lines. "[A]
On the 24th of March, Dorothy wrote to Mrs. Clarkson, that since
Coleridge left them (which was in January 1804), her brother had added
1500 lines to the poem on his own life. On the 29th of April 1804,
Wordsworth wrote to Richard Sharpe,
"I have been very busy these last ten weeks: having written between
two and three thousand lines--accurately near three thousand--in that
time; namely, four books, and a third of another. I am at present at
the Seventh Book. "
On the 25th December 1804, he wrote to Sir George Beaumont,
"I have written upwards of 2000 verses during the last ten weeks. "
We thus find that Books I. to IV. had been written by the 6th of March
1804, that from the 19th February to the 29th of April nearly 3000 lines
were written, that March and April were specially productive months, for
by the 29th April he had reached Book VII. while from 16th October to
25th December he wrote over 2000 lines.
Dorothy and Mary Wordsworth transcribed the earlier books more than
once, and a copy of some of them was given to Coleridge to take with him
to Malta.
It is certain that the remaining books of 'The Prelude' were all written
in the spring and early summer of 1805; the seventh, eighth, ninth,
tenth, eleventh, and part of the twelfth being finished about the middle
of April; the last 300 lines of book twelfth in the last week of April;
and the two remaining books--the thirteenth and fourteenth--before the
20th of May. The following extracts from letters of Wordsworth to Sir
George Beaumont make this clear, and also cast light on matters much
more important than the mere dates of composition.
GRASMERE, Dec. 25, 1804.
"My dear Sir George,--You will be pleased to hear that I have been
advancing with my work: I have written upwards of 2000 verses during
the last ten weeks. I do not know if you are exactly acquainted with
the plan of my poetical labour: It is twofold; first, a Poem, to be
called 'The Recluse;' in which it will be my object to express in
verse my most interesting feelings concerning man, nature, and
society; and next, a poem (in which I am at present chiefly engaged)
on _my earlier life, or the growth of my own mind,_ taken up upon a
large scale. This latter work I expect to have finished before the
month of May; and then I purpose to fall with all my might on the
former, which is the chief object upon which my thoughts have been
fixed these many years. Of this poem, that of 'The Pedlar,' which
Coleridge read to you, is part; and I may have written of it
altogether about 2000 lines. It will consist, I hope, of about ten or
twelve thousand. "
GRASMERE, May 1, 1805.
"Unable to proceed with this work, [B] I turned my thoughts again to
the 'Poem on my own Life', and you will be glad to hear that I have
added 300 lines to it in the course of last week. Two books more will
conclude it. It will not be much less than 9000 lines,--not hundred
but thousand lines long,--an alarming length! and a thing
unprecedented in literary history that a man should talk so much about
himself. It is not self-conceit, as you will know well, that has
induced me to do this, but real humility. I began the work because I
was _unprepared_ to treat _any more arduous subject_, and _diffident
of my own powers_. Here, at least, I hoped that to a certain degree I
should be sure of succeeding, as I had nothing to do but describe what
I had felt and thought, and therefore could not easily be bewildered.
This might have been done in narrower compass by a man of more
address; but I have done my best. If, when the work shall be finished,
it appears to the judicious to have redundancies, they shall be lopped
off, if possible; but this is very difficult to do, when a man has
written with thought; and this defect, whenever I have suspected it or
found it to exist in any writings of mine, I have always found it
incurable. The fault lies too deep, and is in the first conception. "
GRASMERE, June 3, 1805.
"I have the pleasure to say that I _finished my poem_ about a
fortnight ago. I had looked forward to the day as a most happy one;
. . . But it was not a happy day for me; I was dejected on many
accounts: when I looked back upon the performance, it seemed to have a
dead weight about it,--the reality so far short of the expectation. It
was the first long labour that I had finished; and the doubt whether I
should ever live to write 'The Recluse', and the sense which I had of
this poem being so far below what I seemed capable of executing,
depressed me much; above all, many heavy thoughts of my poor departed
brother hung upon me, the joy which I should have had in showing him
the manuscript, and a thousand other vain fancies and dreams. I have
spoken of this, because it was a state of feeling new to me, the
occasion being new. This work may be considered as a sort of _portico_
to 'The Recluse', part of the same building, which I hope to be able,
ere long, to begin with in earnest; and if I am permitted to bring it
to a conclusion, and to write, further, a narrative poem of the epic
kind, I shall consider the task of my life as over. I ought to add,
that I have the satisfaction of finding the present poem not quite of
so alarming a length as I apprehended. "
These letters explain the delay in the publication of 'The Prelude'.
They show that what led Wordsworth to write so much about himself was
not self-conceit, but self-diffidence. He felt unprepared as yet for the
more arduous task he had set before himself. He saw its faults as
clearly, or more clearly, than the critics who condemned him. He knew
that its length was excessive. He tried to condense it; he kept it
beside him unpublished, and occasionally revised it, with a view to
condensation, in vain. The text received his final corrections in the
year 1832.
Wordsworth's reluctance to publish these portions of his great poem,
'The Recluse', other than 'The Excursion', during his lifetime, was a
matter of surprise to his friends; to whom he, or the ladies of his
household, had read portions of it. In the year 1819, Charles Lamb wrote
to him,
"If, as you say, 'The Waggoner', in some sort, came at my call, oh for
a potent voice to call forth 'The Recluse' from his profound
dormitory, where he sleeps forgetful of his foolish charge--the
world! "
('The Letters of Charles Lamb', edited by Alfred Ainger, vol. ii. p.
26. )
The admission made in the letter of May 1st, 1805, is note-worthy:
"This defect" (of redundancy) "whenever I have suspected it or found
it to exist in any writings of mine, _I have always found incurable.
The fault lies too deep, and is in the first conception_. "
The actual result--in the Poem he had at length committed to
writing--was so far inferior to the ideal he had tried to realise, that
he could never be induced to publish it. He spoke of the MS. as forming
a sort of _portico_ to his larger work--the poem on Man, Nature, and
Society--which he meant to call 'The Recluse', and of which one portion
only, _viz. _ 'The Excursion', was finished. It is clear that throughout
the composition of 'The Prelude', he felt that he was experimenting with
his powers. He wished to find out whether he could construct "a literary
work that might live," on a larger scale than his Lyrics; and it was on
the writing of a "philosophical poem," dealing with Man and Nature, in
their deepest aspects, that his thoughts had been fixed for many years.
From the letter to Sir George Beaumont, December 25, 1804, it is evident
that he regarded the autobiographical poem as a mere prologue to this
larger work, to which he hoped to turn "with all his might" after 'The
Prelude' was finished, and of which he had already written about a fifth
or a sixth (see 'Memoirs', vol. i. p. 304). This was the part known in
the Grasmere household as "The Pedlar," a title given to it from the
character of the Wanderer, but afterwards happily set aside. He did not
devote himself, however, to the completion of his wider purpose,
immediately after 'The Prelude' was finished. He wrote one book of 'The
Recluse' which he called "Home at Grasmere"; and, though detached from
'The Prelude', it is a continuation of the narrative of his own life at
the point where it is left off in the latter poem. It consists of 733
lines. Two extracts from it were published in the 'Memoirs of
Wordsworth' in 1851 (vol. i. pp. 151 and 155), beginning,
'On Nature's invitation do I come,'
and
'Bleak season was it, turbulent and bleak. '
These will be found in vol. ii. of this edition, pp. 118 and 121
respectively.
The autobiographical poem remained, as already stated, during
Wordsworth's lifetime without a title. The name finally adopted--'The
Prelude'--was suggested by Mrs. Wordsworth, both to indicate its
relation to the larger work, and the fact of its having been written
comparatively early.
As the poem was addressed to Coleridge, it may be desirable to add in
this place his critical verdict upon it; along with the poem which he
wrote, on hearing Wordsworth read a portion of it to him, in the winter
of 1806, at Coleorton.
In his 'Table Talk' (London, 1835, vol. ii. p. 70), Coleridge's opinion
is recorded thus:
"I cannot help regretting that Wordsworth did not first publish his
thirteen (fourteen) books on the growth of an individual
mind--superior, as I used to think, upon the whole to 'The Excursion'.
You may judge how I felt about them by my own Poem upon the occasion.
Then the plan laid out, and, I believe, partly suggested by me, was,
that Wordsworth should assume the station of a man in mental repose,
one whose principles were made up, and so prepared to deliver upon
authority a system of philosophy. He was to treat man as man,--a
subject of eye, ear, touch, and taste in contact with external nature,
and informing the senses from the mind, and not compounding a mind out
of the senses; then he was to describe the pastoral and other states
of society, assuming something of the Juvenalian spirit as he
approached the high civilisation of cities and towns, and opening a
melancholy picture of the present state of degeneracy and vice; thence
he was to infer and reveal the proof of, and necessity for, the whole
state of man and society being subject to, and illustrative of a
redemptive process in operation, showing how this idea reconciled all
the anomalies, and promised future glory and restoration. Something of
this sort was, I think, agreed on. It is, in substance, what I have
been all my life doing in my system of philosophy.
"I think Wordsworth possessed more of the genius of a great
Philosopher than any man I ever knew, or, as I believe, has existed in
England since Milton; but it seems to me that he ought never to have
abandoned the contemplative position which is peculiarly--perhaps, I
might say exclusively--fitted for him. His proper title is 'Spectator
ab extra'. "
The following are Coleridge's Lines addressed to Wordsworth:
TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
COMPOSED ON THE NIGHT AFTER HIS RECITATION OF A POEM ON THE GROWTH OF
AN INDIVIDUAL MIND
Friend of the wise! and teacher of the good!
Into my heart have I received that lay
More than historic, that prophetic lay
Wherein (high theme by thee first sung aright)
Of the foundations and the building up
Of a Human Spirit thou hast dared to tell
What may be told, to the understanding mind
Revealable; and what within the mind
By vital breathings secret as the soul
Of vernal growth, oft quickens in the heart
Thoughts all too deep for words! --
Theme hard as high,
Of smiles spontaneous, and mysterious fears
(The first-born they of Reason and twin-birth),
Of tides obedient to external force,
And currents self-determined, as might seem,
Or by some inner power; of moments awful,
Now in thy inner life, and now abroad,
When power streamed from thee, and thy soul received
The Light reflected, as a light bestowed--
Of fancies fair, and milder hours of youth,
Hyblean murmurs of poetic thought
Industrious in its joy, in vales and glens,
Native or outland, lakes and famous hills!
Or on the lonely high-road, when the stars
Were rising; or by secret mountain-streams,
The guides and the companions of thy way!
Of more than Fancy, of the Social Sense
Distending wide, and man beloved as man,
Where France in all her towns lay vibrating
Like some becalmed bark beneath the burst
Of Heaven's immediate thunder, when no cloud
Is visible, or shadow on the main.
For thou wert there, thine own brows garlanded,
Amid the tremor of a realm aglow,
Amid a mighty nation jubilant,
When from the general heart of humankind
Hope sprang forth like a full-born Deity!
--Of that dear Hope afflicted and struck down,
So summoned homeward, thenceforth calm and sure,
From the dread watch-tower of man's absolute self,
With light unwaning on her eyes, to look
Far on--herself a glory to behold.
The Angel of the vision! Then (last strain)
Of Duty, chosen laws controlling choice,
Action and joy! --An Orphic song indeed,
A song divine of high and passionate thoughts
To their own music chanted!
O great Bard!
Ere yet that last strain dying awed the air,
With stedfast eye I viewed thee in the choir
Of ever-enduring men. The truly great
Have all one age, and from one visible space
Shed influence! They, both in power and act,
Are permanent, and Time is not with them,
Save as it worketh for them, they in it.
Nor less a sacred roll, than those of old,
And to be placed, as they, with gradual fame
Among the archives of mankind, thy work
Makes audible a linked lay of Truth,
Of Truth profound a sweet continuous lay,
Not learnt, but native, her own natural notes!
Ah! as I listened with a heart forlorn,
The pulses of my being beat anew:
And even as life returns upon the drowned,
Life's joy rekindling roused a throng of pains--
Keen pangs of Love, awakening as a babe
Turbulent, with an outcry in the heart;
And fears self-willed, that shunned the eye of hope;
And hope that scarce would know itself from fear;
Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain,
And genius given, and knowledge won in vain;
And all which I had culled in wood-walks wild,
And all which patient toil had reared, and all,
Commune with thee had opened out--but flowers
Strewed on my corse, and borne upon my bier,
In the same coffin, for the self-same grave!
. . . Eve following eve,
Dear tranquil time, when the sweet sense of Home
Is sweetest! moments for their own sake hailed,
And more desired, more precious for thy song,
In silence listening, like a devout child,
My soul lay passive, by thy various strain
Driven as in surges now beneath the stars,
With momentary stars of my own birth,
Fair constellated foam, [C] still darting off
Into the darkness; now a tranquil sea,
Outspread and bright, yet swelling to the moon.
And when--O Friend! my comforter and guide!
Strong in thyself, and powerful to give strength! --
Thy long-sustained Song finally closed,
And thy deep voice had ceased--yet thou thyself
Wert still before my eyes, and round us both
That happy vision of beloved faces--
Scarce conscious, and yet conscious of its close
I sate, my being blended in one thought
(Thought was it? or aspiration? or resolve? )
Absorbed, yet hanging still upon the sound--
And when I rose I found myself in prayer.
It was at Coleorton, in Leicestershire,--where the Wordsworths lived
during the winter of 1806-7, in a farm-house belonging to Sir George
Beaumont, and where Coleridge visited them,--that 'The Prelude' was read
aloud by its author, on the occasion which gave birth to these
lines. --Ed.
[Footnote A: See the 'De Quincey Memorials,' vol. i. p. 125. --Ed. ]
[Footnote B: A poem on his brother John. --Ed. ]
[Footnote C: Compare
"A beautiful white cloud of foam at momentary intervals, coursed by
the side of the vessel with a roar, and little stars of flame danced
and sparkled and went out in it: and every now and then light
detachments of this white cloud-like foam darted off from the vessel's
side, each with its own small constellation, over the sea, and scoured
out of sight like a Tartar troop over a wilderness. "
S. T. C. in 'Biographia Literaria', Satyrane's Letters, letter i. p. 196
(edition 1817). --Ed. ]
* * * * *
BOOK FIRST
INTRODUCTION. --CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-TIME
O there is blessing in this gentle breeze,
A visitant that while it fans my cheek
Doth seem half-conscious of the joy it brings
From the green fields, and from yon azure sky.
Whate'er its mission, the soft breeze can come 5
To none more grateful than to me; escaped
From the vast city, [A] where I long had pined
A discontented sojourner: now free,
Free as a bird to settle where I will.
What dwelling shall receive me? in what vale 10
Shall be my harbour? underneath what grove
Shall I take up my home? and what clear stream
Shall with its murmur lull me into rest?
The earth is all before me. [B] With a heart
Joyous, nor scared at its own liberty, 15
I look about; and should the chosen guide
Be nothing better than a wandering cloud,
I cannot miss my way. I breathe again!
Trances of thought and mountings of the mind
Come fast upon me: it is shaken off, 20
That burthen of my own unnatural self,
The heavy weight of many a weary day [C]
Not mine, and such as were not made for me.
Long months of peace (if such bold word accord
With any promises of human life), 25
Long months of ease and undisturbed delight
Are mine in prospect; whither shall I turn,
By road or pathway, or through trackless field,
Up hill or down, or shall some floating thing
Upon the river point me out my course? 30
Dear Liberty! Yet what would it avail
But for a gift that consecrates the joy?
For I, methought, while the sweet breath of heaven
Was blowing on my body, felt within
A correspondent breeze, that gently moved 35
With quickening virtue, but is now become
A tempest, a redundant energy,
Vexing its own creation. Thanks to both,
And their congenial powers, that, while they join
In breaking up a long-continued frost, 40
Bring with them vernal promises, the hope
Of active days urged on by flying hours,--
Days of sweet leisure, taxed with patient thought
Abstruse, nor wanting punctual service high,
Matins and vespers of harmonious verse! 45
Thus far, O Friend! [D] did I, not used to make
A present joy the matter of a song,
Pour forth that day my soul in measured strains
That would not be forgotten, and are here
Recorded: to the open fields I told 50
A prophecy: poetic numbers came
Spontaneously to clothe in priestly robe
A renovated spirit singled out,
Such hope was mine, for holy services.
My own voice cheered me, and, far more, the mind's 55
Internal echo of the imperfect sound;
To both I listened, drawing from them both
A cheerful confidence in things to come.
Content and not unwilling now to give
A respite to this passion, I paced on 60
With brisk and eager steps; and came, at length,
To a green shady place, [E] where down I sate
Beneath a tree, slackening my thoughts by choice,
And settling into gentler happiness.
'Twas autumn, and a clear and placid day, 65
With warmth, as much as needed, from a sun
Two hours declined towards the west; a day
With silver clouds, and sunshine on the grass,
And in the sheltered and the sheltering grove
A perfect stillness. Many were the thoughts 70
Encouraged and dismissed, till choice was made
Of a known Vale, [F] whither my feet should turn,
Nor rest till they had reached the very door
Of the one cottage [G] which methought I saw.
No picture of mere memory ever looked 75
So fair; and while upon the fancied scene
I gazed with growing love, a higher power
Than Fancy gave assurance of some work
Of glory there forthwith to be begun,
Perhaps too there performed. Thus long I mused, 80
Nor e'er lost sight of what I mused upon,
Save when, amid the stately groves of oaks,
Now here, now there, an acorn, from its cup
Dislodged, through sere leaves rustled, or at once
To the bare earth dropped with a startling sound. 85
From that soft couch I rose not, till the sun
Had almost touched the horizon; casting then
A backward glance upon the curling cloud
Of city smoke, by distance ruralised;
Keen as a Truant or a Fugitive, 90
But as a Pilgrim resolute, I took,
Even with the chance equipment of that hour,
The road that pointed toward the chosen Vale. [F]
It was a splendid evening, and my soul
Once more made trial of her strength, nor lacked 95
AEolian visitations; but the harp
Was soon defrauded, and the banded host
Of harmony dispersed in straggling sounds,
And lastly utter silence! "Be it so;
Why think of any thing but present good? " [H] 100
So, like a home-bound labourer I pursued
My way beneath the mellowing sun, that shed
Mild influence; nor left in me one wish
Again to bend the Sabbath of that time
To a servile yoke. What need of many words? 105
A pleasant loitering journey, through three days
Continued, brought me to my hermitage, [I]
I spare to tell of what ensued, the life
In common things--the endless store of things,
Rare, or at least so seeming, every day 110
Found all about me in one neighbourhood--
The self-congratulation, and, from morn
To night, unbroken cheerfulness serene.
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.
* * * * *
THE PRELUDE,
OR, GROWTH OF A POET'S MIND;
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL POEM
Composed 1799-1805. --Published 1850
ADVERTISEMENT
The following Poem was commenced in the beginning of the year 1799, and
completed in the summer of 1805.
The design and occasion of the work are described by the Author in his
Preface to the EXCURSION, first published in 1814, where he thus speaks:
"Several years ago, when the Author retired to his native mountains
with the hope of being enabled to construct a literary work that might
live, it was a reasonable thing that he should take a review of his
own mind, and examine how far Nature and Education had qualified him
for such an employment.
"As subsidiary to this preparation, he undertook to record, in verse,
the origin and progress of his own powers, as far as he was acquainted
with them.
"That work, addressed to a dear friend, most distinguished for his
knowledge and genius, and to whom the author's intellect is deeply
indebted, has been long finished; and the result of the investigation
which gave rise to it, was a determination to compose a philosophical
Poem, containing views of Man, Nature, and Society, and to be entitled
'The Recluse;' as having for its principal subject the sensations and
opinions of a poet living in retirement.
"The preparatory poem is biographical, and conducts the history of the
Author's mind to the point when he was emboldened to hope that his
faculties were sufficiently matured for entering upon the arduous
labour which he had proposed to himself; and the two works have the
same kind of relation to each other, if he may so express himself, as
the Ante-chapel has to the body of a Gothic Church. Continuing this
allusion, he may be permitted to add, that his minor pieces, which
have been long before the public, when they shall be properly
arranged, will be found by the attentive reader to have such
connection with the main work as may give them claim to be likened to
the little cells, oratories, and sepulchral recesses, ordinarily
included in those edifices. "
Such was the Author's language in the year 1814.
It will thence be seen, that the present Poem was intended to be
introductory to the RECLUSE, and that the RECLUSE, if completed, would
have consisted of Three Parts. Of these, the Second Part alone, viz. the
EXCURSION, was finished, and given to the world by the Author.
The First Book of the First Part of the RECLUSE still remains in
manuscript; but the Third Part was only planned. The materials of which
it would have been formed have, however, been incorporated, for the most
part, in the Author's other Publications, written subsequently to the
EXCURSION.
The Friend, to whom the present Poem is addressed, was the late SAMUEL
TAYLOR COLERIDGE, who was resident in Malta, for the restoration of his
health, when the greater part of it was composed.
Mr. Coleridge read a considerable portion of the Poem while he was
abroad; and his feelings, on hearing it recited by the Author (after his
return to his own country) are recorded in his Verses, addressed to Mr.
Wordsworth, which will be found in the 'Sibylline Leaves,' p. 197,
edition 1817, or 'Poetical Works, by S. T. Coleridge,' vol. i. p. 206.
RYDAL MOUNT, _July 13th_, 1850.
This "advertisement" to the first edition of 'The Prelude,' published in
1850--the year of Wordsworth's death--was written by Mr. Carter, who
edited the volume. Mr. Carter was for many years the poet's secretary,
and afterwards one of his literary executors. The poem was not only kept
back from publication during Wordsworth's life-time, but it remained
without a title; being alluded to by himself, when he spoke or wrote of
it, as "the poem on my own poetical education," the "poem on my own
life," etc.
As 'The Prelude' is autobiographical, a large part of Wordsworth's life
might be written in the notes appended to it; but, besides breaking up
the text of the poem unduly, this plan has many disadvantages, and would
render a subsequent and detailed life of the poet either unnecessary or
repetitive. The notes which follow will therefore be limited to the
explanation of local, historical, and chronological allusions, or to
references to Wordsworth's own career that are not obvious without them.
It has been occasionally difficult to decide whether some of the
allusions, to minute points in ancient history, mediaeval mythology, and
contemporary politics, should be explained or left alone; but I have
preferred to err on the side of giving a brief clue to details, with
which every scholar is familiar.
'The Prelude' was begun as Wordsworth left the imperial city of Goslar,
in Lower Saxony, where he spent part of the last winter of last century,
and which he left on the 10th of February 1799. Only lines 1 to 45,
however, were composed at that time; and the poem was continued at
desultory intervals after the settlement at Grasmere, during 1800, and
following years. Large portions of it were dictated to his devoted
amanuenses as he walked, or sat, on the terraces of Lancrigg. Six books
were finished by 1805.
"The seventh was begun in the opening of that year; . . .
and the
remaining seven were written before the end of June 1805, when his
friend Coleridge was in the island of Malta, for the restoration of
his health. "
(The late Bishop of Lincoln. )
There is no uncertainty as to the year in which the later books were
written; but there is considerable difficulty in fixing the precise date
of the earlier ones. Writing from Grasmere to his friend Francis
Wrangham--the letter is undated--Wordsworth says,
"I am engaged in writing a poem on my own earlier life, which will
take five parts or books to complete, three of which are nearly
finished. "
The late Bishop of Lincoln supposed that this letter to Wrangham was
written "at the close of 1803, or beginning of 1804. " (See 'Memoirs of
Wordsworth,' vol. i. p. 303. ) There is evidence that it belongs to 1804.
At the commencement of the seventh book, p. 247, he says:
_Six changeful years_ have vanished since I first
Poured out (saluted by that quickening breeze
Which met me issuing from the City's walls)
_A glad preamble to this Verse:_ I sang
Aloud, with fervour irresistible
Of short-lived transport, like a torrent bursting,
From a black thunder-cloud, down Scafell's side
To rush and disappear. But soon broke forth
(So willed the Muse) _a less impetuous stream,
That flowed awhile with unabating strength,
Then stopped for years; not audible again
Before last primrose-time. _
I have _italicised_ the clauses which give some clue to the dates of
composition. From these it would appear that the "glad preamble,"
written on leaving Goslar in 1799 (which, I think, included only the
first two paragraphs of book first), was a "short-lived transport"; but
that "soon" afterwards "a less impetuous stream" broke forth, which,
after the settlement at Grasmere, "flowed awhile with unabating
strength," and then "stopped for years. " Now the above passage,
recording these things, was written in 1805, and in the late autumn of
that year; (as is evident from the reference which immediately follows
to the "choir of redbreasts" and the approach of winter). We must
therefore assign the flowing of the "less impetuous stream," to 1802; in
order to leave room for the intervening "years," in which it ceased to
flow, till it was audible again in the spring of 1804, "last
primrose-time. "
A second reference to date occurs in the sixth book, p. 224, entitled
"Cambridge and the Alps," in which he says,
_Four years and thirty, told, this very week,_
Have I been now a sojourner on earth.
This fixes definitely enough the date of the composition of _that_ part
of the work, _viz. _ April 1804, which corresponds exactly to the "last
primrose-time" of the previous extract from the seventh book, in which
he tells us that after its long silence, his Muse was heard again. So
far Wordsworth's own allusions to the date of 'The Prelude. '
But there are others supplied by his own, and his sister's letters, and
also by the Grasmere Journal. In the Dove Cottage household it was
known, and talked of, as "the Poem to Coleridge;" and Dorothy records,
on 11th January 1803, that her brother was working at it. On 13th
February 1804, she writes to Mrs. Clarkson that her brother was engaged
on a poem on his own life, and was "going on with great rapidity. " On
the 6th of March 1804, Wordsworth wrote from Grasmere to De Quincey,
"I am now writing a poem on my own earlier life: I have just finished
that part of it in which I speak of my residence at the University. "
. . . It is "better than half complete, viz. four books, amounting to
about 2500 lines. "[A]
On the 24th of March, Dorothy wrote to Mrs. Clarkson, that since
Coleridge left them (which was in January 1804), her brother had added
1500 lines to the poem on his own life. On the 29th of April 1804,
Wordsworth wrote to Richard Sharpe,
"I have been very busy these last ten weeks: having written between
two and three thousand lines--accurately near three thousand--in that
time; namely, four books, and a third of another. I am at present at
the Seventh Book. "
On the 25th December 1804, he wrote to Sir George Beaumont,
"I have written upwards of 2000 verses during the last ten weeks. "
We thus find that Books I. to IV. had been written by the 6th of March
1804, that from the 19th February to the 29th of April nearly 3000 lines
were written, that March and April were specially productive months, for
by the 29th April he had reached Book VII. while from 16th October to
25th December he wrote over 2000 lines.
Dorothy and Mary Wordsworth transcribed the earlier books more than
once, and a copy of some of them was given to Coleridge to take with him
to Malta.
It is certain that the remaining books of 'The Prelude' were all written
in the spring and early summer of 1805; the seventh, eighth, ninth,
tenth, eleventh, and part of the twelfth being finished about the middle
of April; the last 300 lines of book twelfth in the last week of April;
and the two remaining books--the thirteenth and fourteenth--before the
20th of May. The following extracts from letters of Wordsworth to Sir
George Beaumont make this clear, and also cast light on matters much
more important than the mere dates of composition.
GRASMERE, Dec. 25, 1804.
"My dear Sir George,--You will be pleased to hear that I have been
advancing with my work: I have written upwards of 2000 verses during
the last ten weeks. I do not know if you are exactly acquainted with
the plan of my poetical labour: It is twofold; first, a Poem, to be
called 'The Recluse;' in which it will be my object to express in
verse my most interesting feelings concerning man, nature, and
society; and next, a poem (in which I am at present chiefly engaged)
on _my earlier life, or the growth of my own mind,_ taken up upon a
large scale. This latter work I expect to have finished before the
month of May; and then I purpose to fall with all my might on the
former, which is the chief object upon which my thoughts have been
fixed these many years. Of this poem, that of 'The Pedlar,' which
Coleridge read to you, is part; and I may have written of it
altogether about 2000 lines. It will consist, I hope, of about ten or
twelve thousand. "
GRASMERE, May 1, 1805.
"Unable to proceed with this work, [B] I turned my thoughts again to
the 'Poem on my own Life', and you will be glad to hear that I have
added 300 lines to it in the course of last week. Two books more will
conclude it. It will not be much less than 9000 lines,--not hundred
but thousand lines long,--an alarming length! and a thing
unprecedented in literary history that a man should talk so much about
himself. It is not self-conceit, as you will know well, that has
induced me to do this, but real humility. I began the work because I
was _unprepared_ to treat _any more arduous subject_, and _diffident
of my own powers_. Here, at least, I hoped that to a certain degree I
should be sure of succeeding, as I had nothing to do but describe what
I had felt and thought, and therefore could not easily be bewildered.
This might have been done in narrower compass by a man of more
address; but I have done my best. If, when the work shall be finished,
it appears to the judicious to have redundancies, they shall be lopped
off, if possible; but this is very difficult to do, when a man has
written with thought; and this defect, whenever I have suspected it or
found it to exist in any writings of mine, I have always found it
incurable. The fault lies too deep, and is in the first conception. "
GRASMERE, June 3, 1805.
"I have the pleasure to say that I _finished my poem_ about a
fortnight ago. I had looked forward to the day as a most happy one;
. . . But it was not a happy day for me; I was dejected on many
accounts: when I looked back upon the performance, it seemed to have a
dead weight about it,--the reality so far short of the expectation. It
was the first long labour that I had finished; and the doubt whether I
should ever live to write 'The Recluse', and the sense which I had of
this poem being so far below what I seemed capable of executing,
depressed me much; above all, many heavy thoughts of my poor departed
brother hung upon me, the joy which I should have had in showing him
the manuscript, and a thousand other vain fancies and dreams. I have
spoken of this, because it was a state of feeling new to me, the
occasion being new. This work may be considered as a sort of _portico_
to 'The Recluse', part of the same building, which I hope to be able,
ere long, to begin with in earnest; and if I am permitted to bring it
to a conclusion, and to write, further, a narrative poem of the epic
kind, I shall consider the task of my life as over. I ought to add,
that I have the satisfaction of finding the present poem not quite of
so alarming a length as I apprehended. "
These letters explain the delay in the publication of 'The Prelude'.
They show that what led Wordsworth to write so much about himself was
not self-conceit, but self-diffidence. He felt unprepared as yet for the
more arduous task he had set before himself. He saw its faults as
clearly, or more clearly, than the critics who condemned him. He knew
that its length was excessive. He tried to condense it; he kept it
beside him unpublished, and occasionally revised it, with a view to
condensation, in vain. The text received his final corrections in the
year 1832.
Wordsworth's reluctance to publish these portions of his great poem,
'The Recluse', other than 'The Excursion', during his lifetime, was a
matter of surprise to his friends; to whom he, or the ladies of his
household, had read portions of it. In the year 1819, Charles Lamb wrote
to him,
"If, as you say, 'The Waggoner', in some sort, came at my call, oh for
a potent voice to call forth 'The Recluse' from his profound
dormitory, where he sleeps forgetful of his foolish charge--the
world! "
('The Letters of Charles Lamb', edited by Alfred Ainger, vol. ii. p.
26. )
The admission made in the letter of May 1st, 1805, is note-worthy:
"This defect" (of redundancy) "whenever I have suspected it or found
it to exist in any writings of mine, _I have always found incurable.
The fault lies too deep, and is in the first conception_. "
The actual result--in the Poem he had at length committed to
writing--was so far inferior to the ideal he had tried to realise, that
he could never be induced to publish it. He spoke of the MS. as forming
a sort of _portico_ to his larger work--the poem on Man, Nature, and
Society--which he meant to call 'The Recluse', and of which one portion
only, _viz. _ 'The Excursion', was finished. It is clear that throughout
the composition of 'The Prelude', he felt that he was experimenting with
his powers. He wished to find out whether he could construct "a literary
work that might live," on a larger scale than his Lyrics; and it was on
the writing of a "philosophical poem," dealing with Man and Nature, in
their deepest aspects, that his thoughts had been fixed for many years.
From the letter to Sir George Beaumont, December 25, 1804, it is evident
that he regarded the autobiographical poem as a mere prologue to this
larger work, to which he hoped to turn "with all his might" after 'The
Prelude' was finished, and of which he had already written about a fifth
or a sixth (see 'Memoirs', vol. i. p. 304). This was the part known in
the Grasmere household as "The Pedlar," a title given to it from the
character of the Wanderer, but afterwards happily set aside. He did not
devote himself, however, to the completion of his wider purpose,
immediately after 'The Prelude' was finished. He wrote one book of 'The
Recluse' which he called "Home at Grasmere"; and, though detached from
'The Prelude', it is a continuation of the narrative of his own life at
the point where it is left off in the latter poem. It consists of 733
lines. Two extracts from it were published in the 'Memoirs of
Wordsworth' in 1851 (vol. i. pp. 151 and 155), beginning,
'On Nature's invitation do I come,'
and
'Bleak season was it, turbulent and bleak. '
These will be found in vol. ii. of this edition, pp. 118 and 121
respectively.
The autobiographical poem remained, as already stated, during
Wordsworth's lifetime without a title. The name finally adopted--'The
Prelude'--was suggested by Mrs. Wordsworth, both to indicate its
relation to the larger work, and the fact of its having been written
comparatively early.
As the poem was addressed to Coleridge, it may be desirable to add in
this place his critical verdict upon it; along with the poem which he
wrote, on hearing Wordsworth read a portion of it to him, in the winter
of 1806, at Coleorton.
In his 'Table Talk' (London, 1835, vol. ii. p. 70), Coleridge's opinion
is recorded thus:
"I cannot help regretting that Wordsworth did not first publish his
thirteen (fourteen) books on the growth of an individual
mind--superior, as I used to think, upon the whole to 'The Excursion'.
You may judge how I felt about them by my own Poem upon the occasion.
Then the plan laid out, and, I believe, partly suggested by me, was,
that Wordsworth should assume the station of a man in mental repose,
one whose principles were made up, and so prepared to deliver upon
authority a system of philosophy. He was to treat man as man,--a
subject of eye, ear, touch, and taste in contact with external nature,
and informing the senses from the mind, and not compounding a mind out
of the senses; then he was to describe the pastoral and other states
of society, assuming something of the Juvenalian spirit as he
approached the high civilisation of cities and towns, and opening a
melancholy picture of the present state of degeneracy and vice; thence
he was to infer and reveal the proof of, and necessity for, the whole
state of man and society being subject to, and illustrative of a
redemptive process in operation, showing how this idea reconciled all
the anomalies, and promised future glory and restoration. Something of
this sort was, I think, agreed on. It is, in substance, what I have
been all my life doing in my system of philosophy.
"I think Wordsworth possessed more of the genius of a great
Philosopher than any man I ever knew, or, as I believe, has existed in
England since Milton; but it seems to me that he ought never to have
abandoned the contemplative position which is peculiarly--perhaps, I
might say exclusively--fitted for him. His proper title is 'Spectator
ab extra'. "
The following are Coleridge's Lines addressed to Wordsworth:
TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
COMPOSED ON THE NIGHT AFTER HIS RECITATION OF A POEM ON THE GROWTH OF
AN INDIVIDUAL MIND
Friend of the wise! and teacher of the good!
Into my heart have I received that lay
More than historic, that prophetic lay
Wherein (high theme by thee first sung aright)
Of the foundations and the building up
Of a Human Spirit thou hast dared to tell
What may be told, to the understanding mind
Revealable; and what within the mind
By vital breathings secret as the soul
Of vernal growth, oft quickens in the heart
Thoughts all too deep for words! --
Theme hard as high,
Of smiles spontaneous, and mysterious fears
(The first-born they of Reason and twin-birth),
Of tides obedient to external force,
And currents self-determined, as might seem,
Or by some inner power; of moments awful,
Now in thy inner life, and now abroad,
When power streamed from thee, and thy soul received
The Light reflected, as a light bestowed--
Of fancies fair, and milder hours of youth,
Hyblean murmurs of poetic thought
Industrious in its joy, in vales and glens,
Native or outland, lakes and famous hills!
Or on the lonely high-road, when the stars
Were rising; or by secret mountain-streams,
The guides and the companions of thy way!
Of more than Fancy, of the Social Sense
Distending wide, and man beloved as man,
Where France in all her towns lay vibrating
Like some becalmed bark beneath the burst
Of Heaven's immediate thunder, when no cloud
Is visible, or shadow on the main.
For thou wert there, thine own brows garlanded,
Amid the tremor of a realm aglow,
Amid a mighty nation jubilant,
When from the general heart of humankind
Hope sprang forth like a full-born Deity!
--Of that dear Hope afflicted and struck down,
So summoned homeward, thenceforth calm and sure,
From the dread watch-tower of man's absolute self,
With light unwaning on her eyes, to look
Far on--herself a glory to behold.
The Angel of the vision! Then (last strain)
Of Duty, chosen laws controlling choice,
Action and joy! --An Orphic song indeed,
A song divine of high and passionate thoughts
To their own music chanted!
O great Bard!
Ere yet that last strain dying awed the air,
With stedfast eye I viewed thee in the choir
Of ever-enduring men. The truly great
Have all one age, and from one visible space
Shed influence! They, both in power and act,
Are permanent, and Time is not with them,
Save as it worketh for them, they in it.
Nor less a sacred roll, than those of old,
And to be placed, as they, with gradual fame
Among the archives of mankind, thy work
Makes audible a linked lay of Truth,
Of Truth profound a sweet continuous lay,
Not learnt, but native, her own natural notes!
Ah! as I listened with a heart forlorn,
The pulses of my being beat anew:
And even as life returns upon the drowned,
Life's joy rekindling roused a throng of pains--
Keen pangs of Love, awakening as a babe
Turbulent, with an outcry in the heart;
And fears self-willed, that shunned the eye of hope;
And hope that scarce would know itself from fear;
Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain,
And genius given, and knowledge won in vain;
And all which I had culled in wood-walks wild,
And all which patient toil had reared, and all,
Commune with thee had opened out--but flowers
Strewed on my corse, and borne upon my bier,
In the same coffin, for the self-same grave!
. . . Eve following eve,
Dear tranquil time, when the sweet sense of Home
Is sweetest! moments for their own sake hailed,
And more desired, more precious for thy song,
In silence listening, like a devout child,
My soul lay passive, by thy various strain
Driven as in surges now beneath the stars,
With momentary stars of my own birth,
Fair constellated foam, [C] still darting off
Into the darkness; now a tranquil sea,
Outspread and bright, yet swelling to the moon.
And when--O Friend! my comforter and guide!
Strong in thyself, and powerful to give strength! --
Thy long-sustained Song finally closed,
And thy deep voice had ceased--yet thou thyself
Wert still before my eyes, and round us both
That happy vision of beloved faces--
Scarce conscious, and yet conscious of its close
I sate, my being blended in one thought
(Thought was it? or aspiration? or resolve? )
Absorbed, yet hanging still upon the sound--
And when I rose I found myself in prayer.
It was at Coleorton, in Leicestershire,--where the Wordsworths lived
during the winter of 1806-7, in a farm-house belonging to Sir George
Beaumont, and where Coleridge visited them,--that 'The Prelude' was read
aloud by its author, on the occasion which gave birth to these
lines. --Ed.
[Footnote A: See the 'De Quincey Memorials,' vol. i. p. 125. --Ed. ]
[Footnote B: A poem on his brother John. --Ed. ]
[Footnote C: Compare
"A beautiful white cloud of foam at momentary intervals, coursed by
the side of the vessel with a roar, and little stars of flame danced
and sparkled and went out in it: and every now and then light
detachments of this white cloud-like foam darted off from the vessel's
side, each with its own small constellation, over the sea, and scoured
out of sight like a Tartar troop over a wilderness. "
S. T. C. in 'Biographia Literaria', Satyrane's Letters, letter i. p. 196
(edition 1817). --Ed. ]
* * * * *
BOOK FIRST
INTRODUCTION. --CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-TIME
O there is blessing in this gentle breeze,
A visitant that while it fans my cheek
Doth seem half-conscious of the joy it brings
From the green fields, and from yon azure sky.
Whate'er its mission, the soft breeze can come 5
To none more grateful than to me; escaped
From the vast city, [A] where I long had pined
A discontented sojourner: now free,
Free as a bird to settle where I will.
What dwelling shall receive me? in what vale 10
Shall be my harbour? underneath what grove
Shall I take up my home? and what clear stream
Shall with its murmur lull me into rest?
The earth is all before me. [B] With a heart
Joyous, nor scared at its own liberty, 15
I look about; and should the chosen guide
Be nothing better than a wandering cloud,
I cannot miss my way. I breathe again!
Trances of thought and mountings of the mind
Come fast upon me: it is shaken off, 20
That burthen of my own unnatural self,
The heavy weight of many a weary day [C]
Not mine, and such as were not made for me.
Long months of peace (if such bold word accord
With any promises of human life), 25
Long months of ease and undisturbed delight
Are mine in prospect; whither shall I turn,
By road or pathway, or through trackless field,
Up hill or down, or shall some floating thing
Upon the river point me out my course? 30
Dear Liberty! Yet what would it avail
But for a gift that consecrates the joy?
For I, methought, while the sweet breath of heaven
Was blowing on my body, felt within
A correspondent breeze, that gently moved 35
With quickening virtue, but is now become
A tempest, a redundant energy,
Vexing its own creation. Thanks to both,
And their congenial powers, that, while they join
In breaking up a long-continued frost, 40
Bring with them vernal promises, the hope
Of active days urged on by flying hours,--
Days of sweet leisure, taxed with patient thought
Abstruse, nor wanting punctual service high,
Matins and vespers of harmonious verse! 45
Thus far, O Friend! [D] did I, not used to make
A present joy the matter of a song,
Pour forth that day my soul in measured strains
That would not be forgotten, and are here
Recorded: to the open fields I told 50
A prophecy: poetic numbers came
Spontaneously to clothe in priestly robe
A renovated spirit singled out,
Such hope was mine, for holy services.
My own voice cheered me, and, far more, the mind's 55
Internal echo of the imperfect sound;
To both I listened, drawing from them both
A cheerful confidence in things to come.
Content and not unwilling now to give
A respite to this passion, I paced on 60
With brisk and eager steps; and came, at length,
To a green shady place, [E] where down I sate
Beneath a tree, slackening my thoughts by choice,
And settling into gentler happiness.
'Twas autumn, and a clear and placid day, 65
With warmth, as much as needed, from a sun
Two hours declined towards the west; a day
With silver clouds, and sunshine on the grass,
And in the sheltered and the sheltering grove
A perfect stillness. Many were the thoughts 70
Encouraged and dismissed, till choice was made
Of a known Vale, [F] whither my feet should turn,
Nor rest till they had reached the very door
Of the one cottage [G] which methought I saw.
No picture of mere memory ever looked 75
So fair; and while upon the fancied scene
I gazed with growing love, a higher power
Than Fancy gave assurance of some work
Of glory there forthwith to be begun,
Perhaps too there performed. Thus long I mused, 80
Nor e'er lost sight of what I mused upon,
Save when, amid the stately groves of oaks,
Now here, now there, an acorn, from its cup
Dislodged, through sere leaves rustled, or at once
To the bare earth dropped with a startling sound. 85
From that soft couch I rose not, till the sun
Had almost touched the horizon; casting then
A backward glance upon the curling cloud
Of city smoke, by distance ruralised;
Keen as a Truant or a Fugitive, 90
But as a Pilgrim resolute, I took,
Even with the chance equipment of that hour,
The road that pointed toward the chosen Vale. [F]
It was a splendid evening, and my soul
Once more made trial of her strength, nor lacked 95
AEolian visitations; but the harp
Was soon defrauded, and the banded host
Of harmony dispersed in straggling sounds,
And lastly utter silence! "Be it so;
Why think of any thing but present good? " [H] 100
So, like a home-bound labourer I pursued
My way beneath the mellowing sun, that shed
Mild influence; nor left in me one wish
Again to bend the Sabbath of that time
To a servile yoke. What need of many words? 105
A pleasant loitering journey, through three days
Continued, brought me to my hermitage, [I]
I spare to tell of what ensued, the life
In common things--the endless store of things,
Rare, or at least so seeming, every day 110
Found all about me in one neighbourhood--
The self-congratulation, and, from morn
To night, unbroken cheerfulness serene.
