NOTES.

1785-1797.

Extract from the Conclusion of a Poem.

Written at Hawkshead during Wordsworth's school-days. The image with which the poem concludes suggested itself to the Poet while he was resting in a boat on Coniston Lake under the shadow of the sycamores which stood on the promontory near Coniston Hall.

"The first verses I wrote were a task imposed by my master. I was called upon to write verses upon the completion of the second centenary of the school (1785). These 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." Cf. Prelude, v. 553-577. The Poet was thy nursling; here he drank His first boy thoughts of Nature and her will: How often fresh from school he clomb this hill, And stretched in sun upon the heathy bank, Endowed with life the mountains, rank on rank, Or, in the time of earliest daffodil,

Watched April storm the valley fill.

From Sonnet on Hawkshead by H. D. Rawnsley.

Lines left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree.

Written in part as a school exercise at Hawkshead.-W. W. Wordsworth and his sister began house-keeping at Racedown Lodge, near Crewkerne, Dorsetshire, in the autumn of 1795. Coleridge, then living at Nether Stowey in Somersetshire, first met Wordsworth at Racedown in June, 1797. The pleasure of this meeting and succeeding ones made the poets desirous of being nearer each other; and in July the Wordsworths removed to Alfoxden, within a few miles of Nether Stowey. Here was formed the idea of a joint literary production, which gave us the Ancient Marinère and the Lyrical Ballads. See Prelude, Prefatory Note, and xiv. 388-407.

Alfoxden was a large mansion, beautifully located on a slope of the Quantock Hills, in sight of Bristol Channel. Woods of old oaks and large hollies, with abundant fern and foxglove, stretch in every direction, broken here and there by pleasant downs and valleys through which the brooks run singing to the sea. Dorothy wrote: "The deer dwell here, and the sheep, so that we have a lively prospect; walks extend for miles over the hill-tops." This was the Poet's spring-time of energy and imaginative insight.

1. The yew-tree stood on the eastern side of the lake about ten minutes' walk from Hawkshead. At the present time a yew-tree misnamed "Wordsworth's yew" stands near the spot.

12. The individual spoken of was educated at the University and was a man of talent and learning.-W. W.

31, 32. Wordsworth never finds the gloom of Nature a reflection of his own. She is never to him,

"Calm as if to suit a calmer grief."

She exerts herself to cure the chronic disease of egotism, despondency, and misanthropy. Cf. Tintern Abbey and Prelude, xii. 88-151.

50-64. Wordsworth's sympathy for men was so deep and sincere that while he had an uncompromising hatred of evil, he did not extend the hatred to the doer of evil; he could see the "soul of goodness in all things," and thus distinguish between weakness and wickedness. The moral teaching of this poem would seem to be the voice of age, and yet the Poet was but twenty-five at this time. Aubrey De Vere says that the passion of the poem is not personal, but intellectual and imaginative, and thence derives its power to arouse emotion; the moral was not thought out beforehand, but was produced by the quickening of thought during composition. In few poets do we find such tenderness and delicacy of feeling united with such strength and independence.

For an exceedingly interesting account of the Alfoxden and Stowey days, see Mrs. Sandford's Thomas Poole and His Friends.

1798.

We are Seven.

Composed while walking in the grove at Alfoxden in the spring of 1798. Five years before, Wordsworth had met the little girl in the area of Goodrich Castle. When the poem was completed, with the exception of the introductory stanza, and the fact mentioned to Coleridge, he immediately threw off,

"A simple child, dear brother Jem,"

and this verse stood at the head of the poem until 1815. Popular as this little poem has become in virtue of its unwithering beauty, it cannot be fully appreciated until it is placed in its proper relation to the great Ode.

Wherever Wordsworth deals with the subject of Death it is with calmness and childlike simplicity. Wisely does he rest the solution of the great question of Immortality, not upon the dicta of the wise and prudent, but upon the heaven-taught wisdom of the child, before its ideas are corrupted by the senses, and the "trailing clouds of glory" disappear. The necessity of possessing the child-spirit in order to enter the kingdom of truth lies at the root of Wordsworth's philosophy, while its revelations constitute for him the Intimations of Immortality. In this ballad we have, in the simplest language, the "contemplative contrast between the buoyant health, the joyous beauty of the child-life, and what we call Death; this contrast is maintained by that form of art the perfection of which is selfconcealment.

"

Simon Lee.

The incident which suggested this poem occurred at Alfoxden; the old man had been huntsman to the squires of Alfoxden.-W. W. 24. The expression, "I dearly love their voice," was word for word from the old man's lips.-W. W.

Wordsworth's lack of dramatic power has often been insisted upon, and not without reason, for he frequently fails when dealing with a variety of incidents; hence he uses for the most part the simplest narratives, as in this poem, and treats them "with a plain, firsthand, almost austere naturalness." This peculiarity is eminently characteristic of him, whether he is dealing with landscape or anecdote.

65, 66. The result of such "silent thought" is to stimulate our sympathy so that it may be called forth by every common incident of pleasure or of pain, and thus build up our moral being.

93-96. In this power of opening up rich veins of feeling by the simplest incident, Wordsworth is unsurpassed. This is what Matthew Arnold means when he says: "The greatness of Wordsworth lies in his powerful and beautiful application of ideas to life.”

Lines Written in Early Spring.

A chosen resort of the two poets and Dorothy, while at Alfoxden, was a grove, and a pool made by a brook which ran down from the Comb.

8. Cf. Prelude, xi. 206–209.

9, 10. Across the pool a tree had fallen; and the leaves, for want of sun-light, were almost white, while from this sylvan bridge depended beautiful tresses of ivy.-W. W.

13-24. Wordsworth has shown us in the Prelude the steps by which he rose to the idea of Divine Life in Nature. While viewing Nature as a personality, having thoughts, plans, emotions, and pleasures, he avoids the extreme of idealism, for he never robs Nature of her qualities by making them depend upon the thought of man; nor, on the other hand, does he give aid to the materialist by making man a creature of necessity. This view of Nature, as ever expressing the joy and pleasure of God in his own work, fills his poetry with sweetness and light, and gives it the power to heal and cleanse.

It was through this little poem that Wordsworth won the love and admiration of the late Dr. Hudson.

To My Sister.

Composed in front of the house at Alfoxden, where, between two large elms overlooking the park and the sea, the Poet used to read and compose.

9-16. This picture of happy rural life does one good. The Poet, sauntering on the lawn while the "gladsome choristers" are singing, is thrilled with the life and the joy of Nature, but cannot enjoy it to the full except the Sister be sharer, and so he sends her these lines ere her morning task be done.

Of the relation of Wordsworth to his sister much will be said in connection with the poems descriptive of her.

The following is from Mr. E. Paxton Hood: "Not Laura with Petrarch, nor Beatrice with Dante, nor the fair Geraldine with Surrey, are more really connected than is Wordsworth with his sister Dorothy."

25-28. Nature refuses to reveal her secrets to those who "pore and dwindle as they pore," lacking the spirit of reverence. To those who approach her in the spirit of humility she reveals her beauty and her majesty; of all our seeing this is the Master Light.

It seems the duty of the naturalist to be a poet in his severest analysis to make the naturalist subordinate to the man. - EMERSON.

Expostulation and Reply.

This poem and the following were composed in front of the house at Alfoxden.

15. The "Matthew" of this poem and other poems was William Taylor, Wordsworth's schoolmaster at Hawkshead.

21-32. Wordsworth, when making "rigorous inquisition" to ascertain his qualifications for a poet, found that he possessed the first great gift, a vital soul: this he can develop in us so that by it the products of the senses and the intellect will be transmuted into moral and spiritual power. In the periods of "wise passiveness," those thoughts and emotions which in our busy hours have almost escaped from our consciousness, are collected, brought home, and become truths which perish never.

To a mind fretted with analysis and a heart breaking against the hard problems of existence, this "divine philosophy" comes with healing power.

The Tables Turned.

21-28. The Poet does not here teach a life of emotion rather than a life of action, but he insists upon a truth which all moral teachers inculcate, that the mind requires periods of repose in which to gather up the crumbs of thought which otherwise in the whirl of our life would be lost.

Though his poetry reads so transcendental, and is so meditative, there never was a poet so little of a dreamer as Wordsworth. HUTTON.

28-32. If a narrow interpretation finds here a hatred of science, it is of that form of science which insists that the intellect is the only organ of truth the Poet has no words of condemnation for that larger science represented by Newton, Faraday, and Agassiz, -a science which recognized the truths of the imagination as well as those of experiment. He everywhere condemns the tendency to consider animal comforts the end of being.

Mr. Myers says: "It is hardly too much to say that if these two poems, to the careless eye so slight and trifling, were all that had remained from Wordsworth's hand, they would have spoken to the comprehending' of a new individuality as distinct and unmistakable in its way as that which Sappho has left engraven on the world forever in words even fewer than these."

Tintern Abbey.

No poem of mine was composed under circumstances 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 during the evening, after a ramble of four or five days with my sister.