The Prose Works of William Wordsworth Part 65

145. *_Resolution and Independence_. [XXII.]

Town-End, 1807. This old man I met a few hundred yards from my cottage at Town-End, Grasmere; and the account of him is taken from his own mouth. I was in the state of feeling described in the beginning of the poem, while crossing over Barton Fell from Mr. Clarkson's at the foot of Ullswater, towards Askham. The image of the hare I then observed on the ridge of the Fell.

146. *_The Thorn_. [XXIII.]

Alfoxden, 1798. Arose out of my observing on the ridge of Quantock Hill, on a stormy day, a thorn, which I had often past in calm and bright weather without noticing it. I said to myself, cannot I by some invention do as much to make this Thorn permanently an impressive object as the storm has made it to my eyes at this moment? I began the poem accordingly, and composed it with great rapidity. Sir George Beaumont painted a picture from it, which Wilkie thought his best. He gave it to me; though, when he saw it several times at Rydal Mount afterwards, he said, 'I could make a better, and would like to paint the same subject over again.' The sky in this picture is n.o.bly done, but it reminds one too much of Wilson. The only fault however, of any consequence, is the female figure, which is too old and decrepit for one likely to frequent an eminence on such a call.

147. _Hart-Leap Well_. [XXIV.]

Hart-Leap Well is a small spring of water, about five miles from Richmond in Yorks.h.i.+re, and near the side of the road that leads from Richmond to Askrigg. Its name is derived from a remarkable Chase, the memory of which is preserved by the monuments spoken of in the second Part of the following Poem, which monuments do now exist as I have there described them.

148. _Ibid._

Town-End, 1800. The first eight stanzas were composed extempore one winter evening in the cottage; when, after having tired and disgusted myself with labouring at an awkward pa.s.sage in 'The Brothers,' I started with a sudden impulse to this, to get rid of the other, and finished it in a day or two. My sister and I had past the place a few weeks before in our wild winter journey from Sockburn on the banks of the Tees to Grasmere. A peasant whom we met near the spot told us the story, so far as concerned the name of the well, and the hart, and pointed out the stones. Both the stones and the well are objects that may easily be missed: the tradition by this time may be extinct in the neighbourhood: the man who related it to us was very old.

[In pencil on opposite page--See Dryden's dog and hare in _Annus Mirabilis_.]

149. _Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle_. [XXV.]

Henry Lord Clifford, &c. &c., who is the subject of this Poem, was the son of John Lord Clifford, who was slain at Towton Field, which John Lord Clifford, as is known to the reader of English history, was the person who after the battle of Wakefield slew, in the pursuit, the young Earl of Rutland, son of the Duke of York, who had fallen in the battle, 'in part of revenge' (say the Authors of the _History of c.u.mberland and Westmoreland_); 'for the Earl's father had slain his.' A deed which worthily blemished the author (saith Speed); but who, as he adds, 'dare promise anything temperate of himself in the heat of martial fury?

chiefly, when it was resolved not to leave any branch of the York line standing; for so one maketh this Lord to speak.' This, no doubt, I would observe by the bye, was an action sufficiently in the vindictive spirit of the times, and yet not altogether so bad as represented; 'for the Earl was no child, as some writers would have him, but able to bear arms, being sixteen or seventeen years of age, as is evident from this, (say the _Memoirs of the Countess of Pembroke_, who was laudably anxious to wipe away, as far as could be, this stigma from the ill.u.s.trious name to which she was born,) that he was the next child to King Edward the Fourth, which his mother had by Richard Duke of York, and that King was then eighteen years of age: and for the small distance betwixt her children, see Austin Vincent, in his _Book of n.o.bility_, p. 622, where he writes of them all. It may further he observed, that Lord Clifford, who was then himself only 25 years of age, had been a leading man and commander, two or three years together in the army of Lancaster, before this time; and, therefore, would be less likely to think that the Earl of Rutland might be ent.i.tled to mercy from his youth.--But, independent of this act, at best a cruel and savage one, the Family of Clifford had done enough to draw upon them the vehement hatred of the House of York: so that after the battle of Towton there was no hope for them but in flight and concealment. Henry, the subject of the poem, was deprived of his estate and honours during the s.p.a.ce of twenty-four years; all which time he lived as a shepherd in Yorks.h.i.+re, or in c.u.mberland, where the estate of his father-in-law (Sir Lancelot Threlkeld) lay. He was restored to his estate and honours in the first year of Henry the Seventh. It is recorded that, 'when called to Parliament, he behaved n.o.bly and wisely; but otherwise came seldom to London or the Court; and rather delighted to live in the country, where he repaired several of his castles, which had gone to decay during the late troubles.' Thus far is chiefly collected from Nicholson and Burn; and I can add, from my own knowledge, that there is a tradition current in the village of Threlkeld and its neighbourhood, his princ.i.p.al retreat, that, in the course of his shepherd-life, he had acquired great astronomical knowledge. I cannot conclude this note without adding a word upon the subject of those numerous and n.o.ble feudal Edifices, spoken of in the Poem, the ruins of some of which are, at this day, so great an ornament to that interesting country. The Cliffords had always been distinguished for an honourable pride in these Castles; and we have seen that after the wars of York and Lancaster they were rebuilt; in the civil wars of Charles the First they were again laid waste, and again restored almost to their former magnificence by the celebrated Mary Anne Clifford, Countess of Pembroke, &c. &c. Not more than twenty-five years after this was done, when the estates of Clifford had pa.s.sed into the family of Tufton, three of these castles, namely, Brough, Brougham, and Pendragon, were demolished, and the timber and other materials sold by Thomas Earl of Thanet. We will hope that, when this order was issued, the Earl had not consulted the text of Isaiah, 58th chap. 12th verse, to which the inscription placed over the gate of Pendragon Castle, by the Countess of Pembroke (I believe his grandmother), at the time she repaired that structure, refers the reader:--'_And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in_.' The Earl of Thanet, the present possessor of the estates, with a due respect for the memory of his ancestors, and a proper sense of the value and beauty of these remains of antiquity, has (I am told) given orders that they shall be preserved from all depredations.

150. *_Ibid._

See the note attached. This poem was composed at Coleorton, while I was walking to and fro along the path that led from Sir George Beaumont's farm-house, where we resided, to the Hall, which was building at that time.

151. _Sir John Beaumont_.

'Earth helped him with the cry of blood' (l. 27).

This line is from 'The Battle of Bosworth Field,' by Sir John Beaumont (brother to the dramatist), whose poems are written with much spirit, elegance, and harmony; and have deservedly been reprinted in Chalmers'

_Collection of English Poets_.

152. _The undying Fish of Bowscale Tarn_ (l. 122).

It is believed by the people of the country that there are two immortal fish, inhabitants of this Tarn, which lies in the mountains not far from Threlkeld--Blencathara, mentioned before, is the old and proper name of the mountain vulgarly called Saddle-back.

153. _The Cliffords_.

'Armour rusting in his Halls On the blood of Clifford calls' (ll. 142-3).

The martial character of the Cliffords is well known to the readers of English history; but it may not be improper here to say, by way of comment on these lines and what follows, that besides several others who perished in the same manner, the four immediate Progenitors of the Person in whose hearing this is supposed to be spoken all died on the Field.

154. *_Tintern Abbey_. [XXVI.]

July 1798. No poem of mine was composed under circ.u.mstances more pleasant for me to remember than this. I began it upon leaving Tintern, after crossing the Wye, and concluded it just as I was entering Bristol in the evening, after a ramble of four or five days with my sister. Not a line of it was altered, and not any part of it written down till I reached Bristol. It was published almost immediately after in the little volume of which so much has been said in these notes, the 'Lyrical Ballads,' as first published at Bristol by Cottle.

155. *_It is no Spirit, &c._ [XXVII.]

1803. Town-End. I remember the instant my sister Sarah Hutchinson called me to the window of our cottage saying, 'Look, how beautiful is yon star! It has the sky all to itself.' I composed the verses immediately.

156. _French Revolution_. [XXVIII.]

An extract from the long poem on my own poetical education. It was first published by Coleridge in his _Friend_, which is the reason of its having had a place in every edition of my poems since.

157. *_Yes, it was the Mountain Echo_. [XXIX.]

Town-End, 1806. The Echo came from Nabscar, when I was walking on the opposite side of Rydal Mere. I will here mention, for my dear sister's sake, that while she was sitting alone one day, high up on this part of Loughrigg Fell, she was so affected by the voice of the cuckoo, heard from the crags at some distance, that she could not suppress a wish to have a stone inscribed with her name among the rocks from which the sound proceeded. On my return from my walk I recited those verses to Mary, who was then confined with her son Thomas, who died in his seventh year, as recorded on his headstone in Grasmere Churchyard.

158. _To a Skylark_. [x.x.x.]

Rydal Mount, 1825. [In pencil--Where there are no skylarks; but the poet is everywhere.]

159. *_Laodamia_. [x.x.xI.]

Rydal Mount, 1814. Written at the same time as 'Dion,' and 'Artegal,'

and 'Elidure.' The incident of the trees growing and withering put the subject into my thoughts, and I wrote with the hope of giving it a loftier tone than, so far as I know, has been given it by any of the ancients who have treated of it. It cost me more trouble than almost anything of equal length I have ever written.

160. _Withered Trees_ (foot-note).

'The trees' tall summits withered at the sight' (l. 73).

For the account of long-lived trees, see King's [_Natural_] _History_, lib. xvi. cap. 44; and for the features in the character of Protesilaus, see the _Iphigenia in Aulis_ of Euripides.

161. *_Dion_. [x.x.xII.]

This poem was first introduced by a stanza that I have since transferred to the notes, for reasons there given; and I cannot comply with the request expressed by some of my friends, that the rejected stanza should be restored. I hope they will be content if it be hereafter immediately attached to the poem, instead of its being degraded to a place in the notes.

The 'reasons' (_supra_) are thus given: This poem began with the following stanza, which has been displaced on account of its detaining the reader too long from the subject, and as rather precluding, than preparing for, the due effect of the allusion to the genius of Plato.