To the Planet Venus. Upon its approximation (as an Evening Star) to Composed at Rydal on May Morning, 1838 Composed on a May Morning, 1838 A Poet to his Grandchild. (Sequel to the foregoing.) "Blest Statesman He, whose Mind's unselfish will " Valedictory Sonnet. Closing the Volume of Sonnets published in 1838 "Lyre! though such power do in thy magic live" "Wansfell! this Household has a favoured lot " The Eagle and the Dove [published in "La Petite Chouannerie"] "While beams of orient light shoot wide and high To the Rev. Christopher Wordsworth, D. D., Master of Harrow School. After the perusal of his Theophilus Anglicanus, recently published Inscription for a Monument in Crosthwaite Church, in the Vale of Kes- "Yes! thou art fair, yet be not moved " "What heavenly smiles! O Lady mine" To a Lady, in answer to a request that I would write her a Poem upon some Drawings that she had made of flowers in the Island of Madeira. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH NOTWITHSTANDING the fact that the notes to this edition are biographical and critical, - an attempt to reveal how Wordsworth became the poet of plain living and high thinking, it may be well to review the main events of his life and the distinctive achievement of his art. It will help us to understand what Emerson wrote of him in 1854: "It is very easy to see that to act so powerfully in this practical age, he needed, with all his Oriental abstraction, the indomitable vigour rooted in animal constitution, for which his countrymen are marked, otherwise he could not have resisted the deluge streams of their opinion with success. One would say he is the only man among them who has not in any point succumbed to their way of thinking, and has prevailed." William Wordsworth was born at Cockermouth, Cumberland, April 7, 1770. The house in which he was born, a large substantial mansion, still stands, and is of interest because of the garden and terrace-walk in the rear associated with events related in "The Sparrow's Nest" and "The Prelude." His father, John Wordsworth, a solicitor, and law agent of the Earl of Lonsdale, was a descendant of an old family which belonged to the middle class and had settled in Penistone, Yorkshire, in the reign of Edward the Third. An interesting old oak chest or almery, now in the possession of the poet's grandchildren at The Stepping Stones, Ambleside, bears the pedigree carved by one of the family in the reign of Henry the Eighth. The poet's mother (Anne Cookson) was the daughter of William Cookson, mercer, of Penrith. She was descended on her mother's side from an ancient family of Crackanthorp, which, from the time of Edward the Third, had lived at Newbiggen Hall, Westmoreland. She married John Wordsworth at Penrith, February 5, 1766. Besides William, who was the second son, there were born at Cockermouth three sons, Richard, John, and Christopher, and one daughter, Dorothy. Wordsworth's infancy and early boyhood were passed at Cockermouth, and with maternal relatives at Penrith. His teachers at this time were his mother, to whom he has paid a touching tribute in "The Prelude," and his father, who early taught him to commit to memory portions of the great English poets, the Rev. Mr. Gilbanks, of Cockermouth, and Dame Birkett, of Penrith. There was nothing in his character during these years that distinguished him in any way from other children in the family, unless it was the manifestation of that "indomitable vigour" which characterized him as a man. This manifested itself in such forms of will and temper as to cause his mother to remark that the only one of her five children about whose future she was anxious was William: “He will be remarkable either for good or for evil." Yet there were influences of Nature and his own home acting silently upon him thus early which later became his most cherished memories, and revealed how favored he had been in his birthplace and training. Wordsworth's mother, the heart and hinge of all his learning and his loves, died in 1778, and the family was broken up. William and Richard, the eldest boys, were sent to the old school at Hawkshead. It is hardly necessary to review in detail the events of Wordsworth's life from this time until he meets Coleridge in 1795, as it is given with serupulous regard for truth and with entire freedom from vanity in "The Prelude," by the only man who could describe them with certainty. All who would read his poetry as he |