WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770– 1850) was born at the country-town of Cockermouth, Cumberland, as the son of an attorney. After attending Hawkshead Grammar School and St. John's College, Cambridge, he spent a year in France (1792), where he heartily embraced the ideas of the French Revolution, though, later in his life, he became a sturdy conservative. The puzzling question of a profession was solved for him by a small legacy from a friend, which enabled him to devote his life to poetry, and to settle with his sister Dorothy at Racedown, in Dorsetshire (1795). About the same time he made the acquaintance of a kindred spirit, the poet Coleridge, with whom he soon became so intimate, that, in order to be nearer to his friend's residence at Nether Stowey, he moved to the neighbouring estate of Alfoxden, Somersetshire (1797). The daily intercourse between the two poets and their long discussions on the principles of their art resulted in the joint production of a volume of poetry, in which Wordsworth should try by imaginative treatment to give the charm of novelty to characters and incidents of ordinary life, while Coleridge was to make the supernatural real by the dramatic truth of the emotions aroused. This volume, entitled Lyrical Ballads, and published anonymously at Bristol in September 1798, was the first manifestation of English Romanticism and the turning-point of the new movement, though at the time it made no impression. After a visit to Germany, in which he had joined Coleridge, Wordsworth settled down in the beautiful Lake District of Cumberland (1799), where he remained till the end of his life, residing first at Dove Cottage, near Grasmere, and during the last 37 years at Rydal Mount, near Ambleside. Herrig-Förster, British Authors. The subsequent settlement of Southey and Coleridge at Keswick originated the name of the 'Lake School', which the Edinburgh Review inflicted upon the three poets. Wordsworth's marriage (1802) to Mary Hutchinson, his sister's friend, whom he had known from his boyhood, completed the happiness of his domestic circle. From this time the quiet retirement of his long life in the Lakes was only interrupted by frequent journeys, such as the tours to Scotland (1803 and 1814), to the Rhine and Switzerland (1820), and to Italy (1837), each of which produced a series of memorial poems. He was slow in winning the ear of the public with his poetry, and it was not till after the death of Scott and Byron that he met with general recognition, which found its public expression in the offer of honorary degrees from Durham and Oxford, a crown pension (1842), and the poet-laureateship (1843). As early as 1793 Wordsworth published two descriptive poems, which, however, still savoured of the 18th century. A new individual note he first struck in the Lyrical Ballads (1798), which, together with a second volume added in 1800 and the Poems in Two Volumes of 1807, include most of his finest poetry. Impressed at a remarkably early age by the beauty of natural scenery, Wordsworth was eminently a poet of Nature, and had studied and could matchlessly delineate her, especially in her solitary and silent moods. He looked on Nature as the supreme teacher of Man, and, in many of his works, enforces the lesson that the calming and elevating influences of Nature are the chief agencies in the formation of personal character. In other poems he attempted to trace the great primary affections of human nature in the humbler stages of mankind and to invest the poor dalesman of his Cumbrian 22 12 Lakes with the halo of simple pathos. His love of liberty inspired a series of fine sonnets on Europe's struggle against Napoleonic oppression. The chief work of his life was to be a vast poem on man, nature, and society, of which only two long fragments have been published, The Prelude (publ. 1850) which gives us the history of his mind's growth and therefore is of singular autobiographical interest, and The Excursion (1814), in which many scenes of magnificent description are submerged in a diffuse mass of didactic dialogue. Under the influence of Scott, with whom he had contracted a cordial friendship, he tried his hand, though not very successfully, at romantic stories, A simple Child, such as the Song of the Feast of Brougham Castle (1807) and The White Doe of Rylstone (1807). A reperusal of Virgil suggested a few poems on classical subjects, Laodamia (1814), Dion, and Licoris (1817). And to his fondness for the sonnetform we owe the two sonnet-sequences of The River Duddon (1820) and the Ecclesiastical Sonnets (1822). In many of his earlier poems, such as Peter Bell (1798, publ. 1819), his opposition to artificial poetic diction was certainly carried too far, and led to triviality. When attacked on these grounds, he not very successfully defended his theory by maintaining that there was not 'any essential difference between the language of Prose and Verse.' WE ARE SEVEN. [From Lyrical Ballads (1798)] She had a rustic, woodland air, Her beauty made me glad. 'Sisters and brothers, little Maid, How many may you be?' 'How many? Seven in all,' she said, 16 And wondering looked at me. 'And where are they? I pray you tell.' She answered, 'Seven are we; And two of us at Conway dwell, 20 And two are gone to sea. "Two of us in the church-yard lie, My sister and my brother; And, in the church-yard cottage, I 24 Dwell near them with my mother.' "The first that died was sister Jane; In bed she moaning lay, Till God released her of her pain; 52 And then she went away. 'So in the church-yard she was laid; And, when the grass was dry, Together round her grave we played, 56 My brother John and L 'And when the ground was white And I could run and slide, 'How many are you, then,' said I, 'But they are dead; those two are dead! "Twas throwing words away; for still LINES WRITTEN IN EARLY SPRING. I heard a thousand blended notes, 4 Bring sad thoughts to the mind. To her fair works did Nature link The human soul that through me ran; And much it grieved my heart to think 8 What man has made of man. Through primrose tufts, in that green bower, The periwinkle trailed its wreaths; And 'tis my faith that every flower 12 Enjoys the air it breathes. The birds around me hopped and Their thoughts I cannot measure: The budding twigs spread out their If this belief from heaven be sent, 60 64 16 20 24 LINES COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE Tintern ABBEY, ON REVISITING THE BANKS [From Lyrical Ballads (1798)] Five years have past; five summers, with the length Of five long winters! and again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a soft inland murmur. Once again Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, That on a wild secluded scene impress Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect The day is come when I again repose 10 Here, under this dark sycamore, and view These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts, Which at this season, with their unripe fruits, Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves 'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see 15 These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms, Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke Sent up, in silence, from among the trees! With some uncertain notice, as might seem 20 Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire The Hermit sits alone. These beauteous forms, Through a long absence, have not been to me Is lightened: that serene and blessed mood, 45 Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul: While with an eye made quiet by the power If this 50 Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods, And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought, With many recognitions dim and faint, 60 And somewhat of a sad perplexity, The picture of the mind revives again: Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first 70 Wherever nature led: more like a man Flying from something that he dreads, than one 80 An appetite; a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye. That time is past, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power Of something far more deeply interfused, All thinking things, all objects of all thought, A lover of the meadows and the woods, And mountains; and of all that we behold |