The tag that has always been hung round Wordsworth’s neck is one that reads ‘Nature Poet’. Generations of schoolchildren have been brought up on his poem ‘The Daffodils’, and indeed I suppose it’s his best-known poem. I think people tend to imagine that most of Wordsworth is to do with flowers and hills and lakes, a sort of Lake District of the mind, full of the beauties of inanimate nature, with actual human beings rather thin on the ground – just a scattering of gnarled old peasants and idiot boys. The fact that Wordsworth is thought of in this way is partly attributable to Wordsworth himself: after all, he did call himself a ‘Worshipper of Nature’. But the real force, and I think the powerful strangeness, of his poetry at its best comes through because we are made aware of the human side of this: of human nature as well as inanimate nature, and of man as an instrument through which nature transmits its messages.
ANTHONY THWAITE: The English Poets (1974)
How thankful we ought to feel that Wordsworth was only a poet and not a musician. Fancy a symphony by Wordsworth! Fancy having to sit it out! And fancy what it would have been if he had written fugues!
SAMUEL BUTLER: Note-Books (1912)
Wordsworth gives the following account of his early years in his (here edited) dictated biography:
I was born at Cockermouth, in Cumberland, on April 7th, 1770, the second son of John Wordsworth, attorney-at-law, as lawyers of this class were then called […] My mother was Anne, only daughter of William Cookson, mercer, of Penrith, and of Dorothy, born Crackanthorp, of the ancient family of that name […] The time of my infancy and early boyhood was passed partly at Cockermouth, and partly with my mother’s parents at Penrith, where my mother, in the year 1778, died of a decline, brought on by a cold […] My father never recovered his usual cheerfulness of mind after this loss, and died when I was in my fourteenth year, a schoolboy, just returned from Hawkshead, whither I had been sent with my elder brother Richard, in my ninth year. […] I remember my mother only in some few situations, one of which was her pinning a nosegay to my breast, when I was going to say the catechism in the church, as was customary before Easter. An intimate friend of hers told me that she once said to her, that the only one of her five children about whose future life she was anxious was William; and he, she said, would be remarkable, either for good or for evil. The cause of this was, that I was of a stiff, moody, and violent temper […]. Of my earliest days at school I have little to say, but that they were very happy ones, chiefly because I was left at liberty then, and in the vacations, to read whatever books I liked. For example, I read all Fielding’s works, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and any part of Swift that I liked – Gulliver’s Travels, and the Tale of the Tub being both much to my taste. It may be, perhaps, as well to mention, that the first verses which I wrote were a task imposed by my master; the subject, ‘The Summer Vacation’; and of my own accord I added others upon Return to School. There was nothing remarkable in either poem; but I was called upon, among other scholars, to write verses upon the completion of the second centenary from the foundation of the school in 1585 by Archbishop Sandys. These verses were much admired – far more than they deserved, for they were but a tame imitation of Pope’s versification, and a little in his style.
Before his final term at St John’s College, Cambridge, Wordsworth set out on a walking tour of Europe which brought him into contact with the French Revolution, whose revolutionary optimism he shared. From November 1791 to December 1792 he lived in France, fell in love with Annette Vallon and fathered their daughter, Caroline. He returned to England without them, and spent the next five years devoured by guilt. (‘Vaudracour and Julia’ (published in 1820) tells the story of their affair and featured in Book IX of The Prelude, until it was removed.) A sense of existential crisis was caused by political events: he still believed in France’s revolutionary experiment, but when France declared war against Britain in 1793, he was close to suffering a nervous breakdown. His sister Dorothy helped him recover from this crisis, and on the death of his Penrith friend Raisley Calvert he inherited a legacy of £900. But the real trigger for his recovery, and development as a poet, was Coleridge, whom he met in early 1795. By 1797 they were seeing each other almost daily, and their combined volume, Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems, was published anonymously in 1798. Poems such as ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ and ‘Tintern Abbey’ ushered in a new era of English poetry – poetry that dealt with the inner self. As a broad generalization it can be said that poetry, before Wordsworth, almost always had a subject; after him, poetry’s most prevalent subject was the poet’s own self. As Hazlitt put it: ‘He sees all things in himself’; his mind was ‘conversant only with itself and nature’. In the Preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth penned what can be regarded as his art poétique: poets should endeavour to express the relation between man and nature, and the language of poetry should never become elaborate or stylized.
Dorothy, Coleridge and Wordsworth travelled together to Germany in the autumn of 1798, and Dorothy and William spent the winter in Goslar, where he wrote the ‘Lucy’ poems and started The Prelude. On their return to England in May 1799, they eventually moved into Dove Cottage, Grasmere. This was a fertile time for his poetry, and many of his new poems were included in the second edition of Lyrical Ballads (1800). In 1802 he began ‘Intimations of Mortality from Recollections of Early Childhood’, which appeared in Poems in Two Volumes (1807). It was also in 1802 that he married Mary Hutchinson, whom he had known since childhood. The Prelude was completed in its thirteen-book form in 1805. Wordsworth’s middle age was blighted by the deaths of two of his children, and that of his brother John; and in 1810 he became estranged from Coleridge. He was appointed Distributor for Stamps for Westmorland in 1813 and with his new-found wealth (he was paid £400 a year) he moved to Rydal Mount, where he lived until his death. The Excursion was published in 1814 and Poems, Including Lyrical Ballads in 1815. By the time he was appointed Poet Laureate in 1843, his poetic powers had declined.
I travelled among unknown men,
In lands beyond the sea;2
Nor, England! did I know till then
What love I bore to thee.
’Tis past, that melancholy dream!
Nor will I quit thy shore
A second time; for still I seem
To love thee more and more.
Among thy mountains did I feel
The joy of my desire;
And she I cherished turned her wheel
Beside an English fire.
Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed,
The bowers where Lucy played;
And thine too is the last green field
That Lucy’s eyes surveyed.3
(Lutyens)
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils –
Along the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced, but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee;
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company.
I gazed and gazed, but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft when on my couch I lie,
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.
(Tovey)
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore; –
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
The Rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the Rose,
The Moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare,
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where’er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth.
Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor’s sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the Echoes through the mountain throng,
The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every Beast keep holiday; –
Thou Child of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy
Shepherd-boy!
Ye blessèd Creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel – I feel it all.
Oh evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning,
And the Children are culling
On every side
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the Babe leaps up on his Mother’s arm: –
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
But there’s a tree, of many one,1
A single Field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The Pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature’s Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a Mother’s mind,
And no unworthy aim,
The homely Nurse doth all she can
To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.
[Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six years’ Darling of a pigmy size!
See, where ’mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother’s kisses,
With light upon him from his father’s eyes!
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learned art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral;
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little Actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his ‘humorous stage’
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,
That Life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.
Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy Soul’s immensity;
Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read’st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind, –
Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a Master o’er a Slave,
A Presence which is not to be put by;
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being’s height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!]
O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest;
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast: –
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
To perish never;
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the Children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young Lambs bound
As to the tabor’s sound!
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts today
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
(Dyson, Somervell)
But that night,1
When on my bed I lay, I was most mov’d
And felt most deeply in what world I was;
[My room was high and lonely near the roof
Of a large Mansion or Hotel, a spot
That would have pleas’d me in more quiet times,
Nor was it wholly without pleasure then.]
With unextinguish’d taper I kept watch,
Reading at intervals; the fear gone by
Press’d on me almost like a fear to come;
I thought of those September Massacres,2
Divided from me by a little month,
And felt and touch’d them, a substantial dread;
The rest was conjured up from tragic fictions,
And mournful Calendars of true history,
Remembrances and dim admonishments.
The horse is taught his manage,3 and the wind
Of heaven wheels round and treads in his own steps,
Year follows year, the tide returns again,
Day follows day, all things have second birth;
The earthquake is not satisfied at once.
And in such a way I wrought upon myself,
Until I seem’d to hear a voice that cried,
To the whole City, ‘Sleep no more.’4
Glide gently, thus for ever glide,
O Thames! that other bards may see
As lovely visions by thy side
As now, fair river! come to me.
O glide, fair stream! for ever so,
Thy quiet soul on all bestowing,
Till all our minds for ever flow
As thy deep waters now are flowing.
[Vain thought! – Yet be as now thou art,
That in thy waters may be seen
The image of a poet’s heart,
How bright, how solemn, how serene!
Such as did once the Poet bless,
Who, murmuring here a later ditty,2
Could find no refuge from distress
But in the milder grief of pity.
Now let us, as we float along,
For him suspend the dashing oar;
And pray that never child of song
May know the Poet’s sorrows more.
How calm! how still! the only sound,
The dripping of the oar suspended!
– The evening darkness gathers round
By virtue’s holiest Powers attended.]
(Argento, Corp)
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
(Castelnuovo-Tedesco)