The Prose Works of William Wordsworth Part 84

XVI. EVENING VOLUNTARIES.

380. _Lines composed on a high part of the coast of c.u.mberland, Easter Sunday, April 7th, the Author's sixty-third birthday_. [II.]

The lines were composed on the road between Moresby and Whitehaven, while I was on a visit to my son, then rector of Moresby. This succession of Voluntaries, with the exception of the 8th and 9th, originated in the concluding lines of the last paragraph of this poem.

With this coast I have been familiar from my earliest childhood, and remember being struck for the first time by the town and port of Whitehaven, and the white waves breaking against its quays and piers, as the whole came into view from the top of the high ground down which the road,--which has since been altered,--then descended abruptly. My sister, when she first heard the voice of the sea from this point, and beheld the scene spread before her, burst into tears. Our family then lived at c.o.c.kermouth, and this fact was often mentioned among us as indicating the sensibility for which she was so remarkable.

381. *_By the Sea-side_. [III.]

These lines were suggested during my residence under my son's roof at Moresby on the coast near Whitehaven, at the time when I was composing those verses among the Evening Voluntaries that have reference to the Sea. In some future edition I purpose to place it among that cla.s.s of poems. It was in that neighbourhood I first became acquainted with the ocean and its appearances and movements. My infancy and early childhood were pa.s.sed at c.o.c.kermouth, about eight miles from the coast, and I well remember that mysterious awe with which I used to listen to anything said about storms and s.h.i.+pwrecks. Sea-sh.e.l.ls of many descriptions were common in the town, and I was not a little surprised when I heard Mr.

Landor had denounced me as a Plagiarist from himself for having described a boy applying a sea-sh.e.l.l to his ear, and listening to it for intimation of what was going on in its native element. This I had done myself scores of times, and it was a belief among us that we could know from the sound whether the tide was ebbing or flowing.

382. _Not in the lucid intervals of life_. [IV.]

The lines following, 'Nor do words,' &c., were written with Lord Byron's character as a poet before me, and that of others among his contemporaries, who wrote under like influences.

383. _The leaves that rustled on this oak-crowned hill_. [VII.]

Composed by the side of Grasmere Lake. The mountains that enclose the vale, especially towards Easedale, are most favourable to the reverberation of sound: there is a pa.s.sage in 'The Excursion,' towards the close of the 4th book, where the voice of the raven in flight is traced through the modifications it undergoes, as I have often heard it in that vale and others of this district.

384. _Impromptu_. [VIII.]

This Impromptu appeared, many years ago, among the Author's Poems, from which, in subsequent editions, it was excluded. It is reprinted at the request of the Friend in whose presence the lines were thrown off.

384a. *_Ibid._

Reprinted at the request of my Sister, in whose presence the lines were thrown off.

385. *_Composed upon an Evening of extraordinary Splendour and Beauty_ [IX.]

Felt, and in a great measure composed, upon the little mount in front of our abode at Rydal. In concluding my notices of this cla.s.s of poems it may be as well to observe, that among the Miscellaneous Sonnets are a few alluding to morning impressions, which might be read with mutual benefit in connection with these Evening Voluntaries. See for example that one on Westminster Bridge, that on May 2d, on the song of the Thrush, and the one beginning 'While beams of orient light.'

386. _Alston: American Painter_.

'Wings at my shoulder seem to play' (IX. iii. l. 9).

In these lines I am under obligation to the exquisite picture of 'Jacob's Dream,' by Mr. Alston, now in America. It is pleasant to make this public acknowledgment to a man of genius, whom I have the honour to rank among my friends.

387. _Mountain-ridges_. [_Ibid._ IV. l. 20.]

The multiplication of mountain-ridges, described at the commencement of the third stanza of this Ode as a kind of Jacob's Ladder, leading to Heaven, is produced either by watery vapours or sunny haze; in the present instance by the latter cause. Allusions to the Ode, ent.i.tled 'Intimations of Immortality,' pervade the last stanza of the foregoing Poem.

XVII. POEMS COMPOSED OR SUGGESTED DURING A TOUR IN THE SUMMER OF 1833.

388. _Advertis.e.m.e.nt_.

Having been prevented by the lateness of the season, in 1831, from visiting Staffa and Iona, the author made these the princ.i.p.al objects of a short tour in the summer of 1833, of which the following series of poems is a Memorial. The course pursued was down the c.u.mberland river Derwent, and to Whitehaven; thence (by the Isle of Man, where a few days were pa.s.sed,) up the Frith of Clyde to Greenock, then to Oban, Staffa, Iona, and back towards England by Loch Awe, Inverary, Loch Goil-head, Greenock, and through parts of Renfrews.h.i.+re, Ayrs.h.i.+re, and Dumfriess.h.i.+re to Carlisle, and thence up the River Eden, and homeward by Ullswater.

389. _The Greta_.

'But if thou, like Cocytus,' &c. (IV. l. 5).

Many years ago, when I was at Greta Bridge, in Yorks.h.i.+re, the hostess of the inn, proud of her skill in etymology, said, that 'the name of the river was taken from the _bridge_, the form of which, as every one must notice, exactly resembled a great A.' Dr. Whitaker has derived it from the word of common occurrence in the north of England, '_to greet_;'

signifying to lament aloud, mostly with weeping; a conjecture rendered more probable from the stony and rocky channel of both the c.u.mberland and Yorks.h.i.+re rivers. The c.u.mberland Greta, though it does not, among the country people, take up _that_ name till within three miles of its disappearance in the river Derwent, may be considered as having its source in the mountain cove of Wythburn, and flowing through Thirlmere, the beautiful features of which lake are known only to those who, travelling between Grasmere and Keswick, have quitted the main road in the vale of Wythburn, and, crossing over to the opposite side of the lake, have proceeded with it on the right hand.

The channel of the Greta, immediately above Keswick, has, for the purposes of building, been in a great measure cleared of the immense stones which, by their concussion in high floods, produced the loud and awful noises described in the sonnet.

'The scenery upon this river,' says Mr. Southey in his Colloquies, 'where it pa.s.ses under the woody side of Latrigg, is of the finest and most rememberable kind:

----"ambiguo lapsu refluitque fluitque, Occurrensque sibi venturas aspicit undas."'

390. _Brigham Church_.

'By hooded votaresses,' &c. (VIII. l. 11).

Attached to the church of Brigham was formerly a chantry, which held a moiety of the manor; and in the decayed parsonage some vestiges of monastic architecture are still to be seen.

391. *_Nun's Well, Brigham_. [VIII.]

So named from the Religious House which stood close by. I have rather an odd anecdote to relate of the Nun's Well. One day the landlady of a public house, a field's length from it, on the road-side, said to me, 'You have been to see the Nun's Well, sir.' 'The Nun's Well! What is that?' said the postman, who in his royal livery stopt his mail-car at the door. The landlady and I explained to him what the name meant, and what sort of people the nuns were. A countryman who was standing by rather tipsy stammered out, 'Ay, those Nuns were good people; they are gone, but we shall soon have them back again.' The Reform mania was just then at its height.

392. *_To a Friend_. [IX.]

'Pastor and Patriot.'

My son John, who was then building a parsonage on his small living at Brigham.