The Prose Works of William Wordsworth Part 60

Rydal Mount, 1824. Also on M. W.

60. *_To_ ----. [XIX]

Rydal Mount, 1824. To M. W., Rydal Mount.

61. *_Lament of Mary Queen of Scots_. [XX.]

This arose out of a flash of Moonlight that struck the ground when I was approaching the steps that lead from the garden at Rydal Mount to the front of the house. 'From her sunk eye a stagnant tear stole forth,' is taken, with some loss, from a discarded poem, 'The Convict,' in which occurred, when he was discovered lying in the cell, these lines:

'But now he upraises the deep-sunken eye; The motion unsettles a tear; The silence of sorrow it seems to supply, And asks of me, why I am here.'

62. _The Complaint of a forsaken Indian Woman_. [XXI.]

When a Northern Indian, from sickness, is unable to continue his journey with his companions, he is left behind, covered over with deer-skins, and is supplied with water, food, and fuel, if the situation of the place will afford it. He is informed of the track which his companions intend to pursue, and if he be unable to follow, or overtake them, he perishes alone in the desert; unless he should have the good fortune to fall in with some other tribes of Indians. The females are equally, or still more, exposed to the same fate. See that very interesting work, Hearne's _Journey from Hudson's Bay to the Northern Ocean_. In the high northern lat.i.tudes, as the same writer informs us, when the northern lights vary their position in the air, they make a rustling and a crackling noise, as alluded to in the following poem.

63. *_Ibid._

At Alfoxden, in 1798, where I read Hearne's _Journey_ with great interest. It was composed for the volume of 'Lyrical Ballads.'

64. *_The Last of the Flock_. [XXII.]

Produced at the same time [as 'The Complaint,' No. 62] and for the same purpose. The incident occurred in the village of Holford, close by Alfoxden.

65. *_Repentance_ [XXIII.]

Town-End, 1804. Suggested by the conversation of our next neighbour, Margaret Ashburner.

66. *_The Affliction of Margaret_ ----. [XXIV.]

Town-End, 1804. This was taken from the case of a poor widow who lived in the town of Penrith. Her sorrow was well known to Mary, to my sister, and I believe to the whole town. She kept a shop, and when she saw a stranger pa.s.sing by, she was in the habit of going out into the street to inquire of him after her son.

67. *_The Cottager to her Infant_. [XXV.]

By my sister. Suggested to her while beside my sleeping children.

68. *_Maternal Grief_.

This was in part an overflow from the Solitary's description of his own and his wife's feelings upon the decease of their children; and I will venture to add, for private notice solely, is faithfully set forth from my wife's feelings and habits after the loss of our two children, within half a year of each other.

69. *_The Sailor's Mother_. [XXVII.]

Town-End, 1800. I met this woman near the Wis.h.i.+ng-Gate, on the high-road that then led from Grasmere to Ambleside. Her appearance was exactly as here described, and such was her account, nearly to the letter.

70. *_The Childless Father_. [XXVIII.]

Town-End, 1800. When I was a child at c.o.c.kermouth, no funeral took place without a basin filled with sprigs of boxwood being placed upon a table covered with a white cloth in front of the house. The huntings (on foot) which the Old Man is suffered to join as here described were of common, almost habitual, occurrence in our vales when I was a boy; and the people took much delight in them. They are now less frequent.

71. _Funeral Basin_.

'Filled the funeral basin at Timothy's door.'

In several parts of the North of England, when a funeral takes place, a basin full of sprigs of boxwood is placed at the door of the house from which the coffin is taken up, and each person who attends the funeral ordinarily takes a sprig of this boxwood, and throws it into the grave of the deceased.

72. *_The Emigrant Mother_. [XXIX.]

1802. Suggested by what I have noticed in more than one French fugitive during the time of the French Revolution. If I am not mistaken, the lines were composed at Sockburn when I was on a visit to Mary and her brothers.

73. _Vaudracour and Julia_. [x.x.x.]

The following tale was written as an Episode, in a work from which its length may perhaps exclude it. The facts are true; no invention as to these has been exercised, as none was needed.

74. *_Ibid._

Town-End, 1805. Faithfully narrated, though with the omission of many pathetic circ.u.mstances, from the mouth of a French lady, who had been an eye and ear-witness of all that was done and said. Many long years after I was told that Dupligne was then a monk in the Convent of La Trappe.

75. _The Idiot Boy_.

Alfoxden, 1798. The last stanza, 'The c.o.c.ks did crow, and the sun did s.h.i.+ne so cold,' was the foundation of the whole. The words were reported to me by my dear friend Thomas Poole; but I have since heard the same reported of other idiots. Let me add, that this long poem was composed in the groves of Alfoxden, almost extempore; not a word, I believe, being corrected, though one stanza was omitted. I mention this in grat.i.tude to those happy moments, for, in truth, I never wrote anything with so much glee.

76. *_Michael_. [x.x.xII.]

Town-End, 1807. Written about the same time as 'The Brothers.' The sheepfold on which so much of the poem turns, remains, or rather the ruins of it. The character and circ.u.mstances of Luke were taken from a family to whom had belonged, many years before, the house we lived in at Town-End, along with some fields and woodlands on the eastern sh.o.r.e of Grasmere. The name of the Evening Star was not in fact given to this house, but to another on the same side of the valley more to the north.

[On opposite page in pencil--' Greenhead Ghyll.']

77. _Clipping_.

'The Clipping Tree, a name which yet it bears' (foot-note on 1.

169).

Clipping is the word used in the North of England for shearing.