Page images
PDF
EPUB

spring or early summer of 1806 Wordsworth had passed two days with Wilkinson at his home, The Grotto, on the banks of the Eamont, when the two had wrought together at a walk in the grounds. In November following Wordsworth enclosed these verses to Wilkinson in a letter from Coleorton farmhouse (Thomas Wilkinson, by Mary Carr, pp. 23, 24). Some pretty lines by Wilkinson, To my Thrushes and Blackbirds, with a conclusion written by Coleridge in May, 1809, are given in Rawnsley's English Lakes, ii., 36, 37.

In

In 1827 the rhythm of line 9 was improved: "Health, meekness, ardour, quietness secure." 1815 the ugly clash of the dental spirants in "Death hath" (1. 17) was escaped by substituting 'has' for 'hath,' and the hyperbole of 1. 20 was modified by reading: "A trophy nobler than a conqueror's sword." Lines 25-28 were refashioned in 1837:

"He will not dread with Thee a toilsome day-
Thee his loved servant, his inspiring mate!
And, when thou art passed service, worn away,
No dull oblivious nook shall hide thy fate."

The last line was probably adopted to get rid of the word 'consecrate,' over which the critic of the Simpliciad had made merry. The evident misprint ' usefulness' (1. 29) recurs in ed. 1832; 'uselessness' is found in edd. 1815, 1820, 1827; also in edd. 1837 -1849-50. The prosodic weakness of 1. 31 was, in 1837, remedied by reading :

"High will he hang thee up, well pleased to adorn”

etc.

Song at the Feast, etc. (page 128).-Composed 1807 (W.-1836). The textual changes are few and of little importance. "Sorrows" (1. 14) be

66

came troubles" in 1815, and in 1827 “hath" (1. 30) became "has" (cf. note on 1. 17 of preceding poem).

Line 37 became in 1845: 66 'Though lonely, a deserted Tower;" and in the same year ll. 38, 39 were struck out. 'Or'-'or' in 1. 40 is replaced by 'and'-' and' in 1836. Lines 118-121 were compressed into a couplet in 1845:

“Yet lacks not friends for simple glee,

Nor yet for higher sympathy."

Lines 130-1 were in 1836 recast (cf. II. 133, 135, 139,

140, 141), apparently with the object of retarding, or rather, controlling, the movement of the verse until the turning-point (1. 142, "Now another day is come: etc.):

"And glancing, gleaming, dark or bright,

Moved to and fro, for his delight."

66

[ocr errors]

So, too, "On the" (1. 133) became "Upon the"; "And the Caves" (1. 135) "And into Caves"; "Face of" (1. 139) "The face of"; "And, if Men" (1. 140) “ And, if that Men"; "He could whisper (1. 141) "His tongue could whisper "-all in 1836, save the last, which was effected in 1840. Lines 161-163 were retouched in 1845 thus:

"Alas! the impassioned Minstrel did not know How, by Heaven's grace, this Clifford's heart was framed:

How he, long forced in humble walks to go," etc.

Hartley Coleridge, in a note on his Sonnet, "When we were idlers with the loitering rills," quotes 1. 168 thus: "The peace that sleeps upon the dewy hills." Is this a lapsus memoriæ merely, or else a genuine variant of Wordsworth's? It does not appear in any

of the edd. from 1807 to 1849-50. Lines 9, 10, strange to say, Wordsworth got from Hudibras, Pt. II., canto i., ll. 567-8:

“That shall infuse Eternal Spring,

And everlasting flourishing."

For the source of 1. 27 see Author's Note, p. 168 Beaumont's line is:

"The earth assists thee with the cry of blood."

Lines composed at Grasmere (page 139).—Composed September, 1806. Fox died September 13. For "The Mighty" (1. 19) more appropriate epithets were substituted in 1837: "But when the great and good depart," etc.

Elegiac Stanzas (page 141).—Composed 1805 (W.-1837). In 1820 Wordsworth, irata Minerva, discarded ll. 15, 16 to make room for the following quite undistinguished lines :

"and add a gleam

Of lustre, known to neither sea nor land,

But borrowed from the youthful Poet's dream."

These were retained (with the substitution of "the

gleam, the lustre," etc.) in 1827, but in 1832 the Poet luckily reverted to the original words. From 1820 to 1843 stanza vi. was omitted; in 1845 it was restored with the reading: "a treasure-house divine of peaceful years; " etc. "Delusion" (1. 29) became, in 1815, "illusion;" and in 1837 1. 32 was altered to:

"A stedfast peace that might not be betrayed."

The Peele Castle of these stanzas is the Piel at the southern extremity of Furness, opposite Walney Isle, and hard by the village of Rampside, where, says Bp. Christ. Wordsworth, "the Poet spent four weeks of a college vacation at the house of his cousin, Mrs. Barker." Prof. Knight (Eversley Wordsworth, iii., p. 57) assigns this visit to 1794, but gives no reason for so doing. Wordsworth's college vacations fell in the years 1788-1790; but several considerations indicate 1794 as the more likely year of the visit.

Ode (page 147). In ed. 1837 Wordsworth assigned this "famous, ambitious, and occasionally magnificent poem " to the years 1803-1806.

[blocks in formation]

It

« PreviousContinue »