The Prose Works of William Wordsworth Part 63

112. *_The Danish Boy_. [XXII.]

Written in Germany, 1799. It was entirely a fancy; but intended as a prelude to a ballad poem never written.

113. *_Song for the Wandering Jew_. [XXIII.] 1800.

114. *_Stray Pleasures_. [XXIV.]

Suggested on the Thames by the sight of one of those floating mills that used to be seen there. This I noticed on the Surrey side, between Somerset House and Blackfriars Bridge. Charles Lamb was with me at the time; and I thought it remarkable that I should have to point out to _him_, an idolatrous Londoner, a sight so interesting as the happy group dancing on the platform. Mills of this kind used to he, and perhaps still are, not uncommon on the Continent. I noticed several upon the river Saone in the year 1799; particularly near the town of Chalons, where my friend Jones and I halted a day when we crossed France, so far on foot. There we embarked and floated down to Lyons.

115. *_The Pilgrim's Dream; or the Star and the Glowworm_. [XXV.]

I distinctly recollect the evening when these verses were suggested in 1818. It was on the road between Rydal and Grasmere, where glow-worms abound. A star was s.h.i.+ning above the ridge of Loughrigg Fell just opposite. I remember a blockhead of a critic in some Review or other crying out against this piece. 'What so monstrous,' said he, 'as to make a star talk to a glowworm!' Poor fellow, we know well from this sage observation what the 'primrose on the river's brim was to him.'

Further--In writing to Coleridge he says: 'I parted from M---- on Monday afternoon, about six o'clock, a little on this side Rushyford. Soon after I missed my road in the midst of the storm.... Between the beginning of Lord Darlington's park at Raby, and two or three miles beyond Staindrop, I composed the poem on the opposite page ['The Pilgrim's Dream,' &c.]. I reached Barnard Castle about half-past ten.

Between eight and nine evening I reached Eusemere.' [_Memoirs_, i. pp.

181-2.]

116. *_The Poet and the caged Turtle-dove_. [XXVI.]

Rydal Mount, 1830. This dove was one of a pair that had been given to my daughter by our excellent friend Miss Jewsbury, who went to India with her husband Mr. Fletcher, where she died of cholera. The dove survived its mate many years, and was killed, to our great sorrow, by a neighbour's cat that got in at the window and dragged it partly out of the cage. These verses were composed extempore, to the letter, in the Terrace Summer-house before spoken of. It was the habit of the bird to begin cooing and murmuring whenever it heard me making my verses. [In pencil on opposite page--Dora.]

117. *_A Wren's Nest_. [XXVII.]

In Dora's Field, 1833: Rydal Mount. This nest was built as described, in a tree that grows near the pool in Dora's field next the Rydal Mount Garden.

118. *_Love lies bleeding_. [XXVIII.]

It has been said that the English, though their country has produced so many great poets, is now the most unpoetical nation in Europe. It is probably true; for they have more temptation to become so than any other European people. Trade, commerce, and manufactures, physical science and mechanic arts, out of which so much wealth has arisen, have made our countrymen infinitely less sensible to movements of imagination and fancy than were our forefathers in their simple state of society. How touching and beautiful were in most instances the names they gave to our indigenous flowers, or any other they were familiarly acquainted with!

Every month for many years have we been importing plants and flowers from all quarters of the globe, many of which are spread through our gardens, and some, perhaps, likely to be met with on the few commons which we have left. Will their botanical names ever be displaced by plain English appellations which will bring them home to our hearts by connection with our joys and sorrows? It can never be, unless society treads back her steps towards those simplicities which have been banished by the undue influence of towns spreading and spreading in every direction, so that city life with every generation takes more and more the lead of rural. Among the ancients, villages were reckoned the seats of barbarism. Refinement, for the most part false, increases the desire to acc.u.mulate wealth; and, while theories of political economy are boastfully pleading for the practice, inhumanity pervades all our dealings in buying and selling. This selfishness wars against disinterested imagination in all directions, and, evils coming round in a circle, barbarism spreads in every quarter of our island. Oh, for the reign of justice! and then the humblest man among us would have more peace and dignity in and about him than the highest have now.

119. *_Rural Illusions_. [XXV.]

Rydal Mount, 1832. Observed a hundred times in the grounds at Rydal Mount.

120. *_The Kitten and the falling Leaves_. [x.x.xI.]

1805. Seen at Town-End, Grasmere. The elder bush has long since disappeared; it hung over the wall near the cottage, and the kitten continued to leap up, catching the leaves as here described. The infant was Dora.

121. _The Waggoner_. [x.x.xIII.]

DEDICATION.

'In Cairo's crowded streets The impatient Merchant, wondering, waits in vain, And Mecca saddens at the long delay.'

THOMSON.

To CHARLES LAMB, ESQ.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

When I sent you, a few weeks ago, 'The Tale of Peter Bell,' you asked 'why "The Waggoner" was not added?'--To say the truth,--from the higher tone of imagination, and the deeper touches of pa.s.sion aimed at in the former, I apprehended, this little Piece could not accompany it without disadvantage. In the year 1806, if I am not mistaken, 'The Waggoner' was read to you in ma.n.u.script, and, as you have remembered it for so long a time, I am the more encouraged to hope that, since the localities on which the Poem partly depends did not prevent its being interesting to you, it may prove acceptable to others. Being therefore in some measure the cause of its present appearance, you must allow me the gratification of inscribing it to you; in acknowledgment of the pleasure I have derived from your Writings, and of the high esteem with which I am very truly yours,

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

Rydal Mount, May 20, 1819.

122. *_The Waggoner_.

Town-End, 1805. The character and story from fact.

123. _Benjamin 'the Waggoner.'_

Several years after the event that forms the subject of the Poem, in company with my friend, the late Mr. Coleridge, I happened to fall in with the person to whom the name of Benjamin is given. Upon our expressing regret that we had not, for a long time, seen upon the road either him or his waggon, he said:--'They could not do without me; and as to the man who was put in my place, no good could come out of him; he was a man of no _ideas_.'

The fact of my discarded hero's getting the horses out of a difficulty with a word, as related in the poem, was told me by an eye-witness.

124. _The Dor-Hawk_.

'The buzzing Dor-hawk round and round is wheeling' (c. i. l. 3).

When the Poem was first written the note of the bird was thus described:--

'The Night-hawk is singing his frog-like tune, Twirling his watchman's rattle about'--

but from unwillingness to startle the reader at the outset by so bold a mode of expression, the pa.s.sage was altered as it now stands.

125. _Helmcrag_ (c. i. l. 168).

A mountain of Grasmere, the broken summit of which presents two figures, full as distinctly shaped as that of the famous Cobbler near Arroquhar in Scotland.

126. _Merrynight_ (c. ii. l. 30).

A term well known in the North of England, and applied to rural festivals where young persons meet in the evening for the purpose of dancing.

'The fiddles squeak--that call to bliss' (c. ii. l. 97).