terrier. Scott and Wordsworth climbed Helvellyn together in that year, and each, without knowing that the other had taken up the subject, wrote a poem on the dog's fidelity. Scott's poem named " Helvellyn" is that beginning with the line "I climbed the dark brow of the mighty Helvellyn." Wordsworth said to Crabb Robinson that he "purposely made the narrative as prosaic as possible, in order that no discredit might be thrown on the truth of the incident." 7, 8. Less prosaic than in 1807, which edition read : From which immediately leaps out A Dog, and yelping runs about. The change was made in 1815, with "from" for "through" in 1. 8; "through," 1820. 20. A silent tarn, the Red Tarn (tarn, a small mountain lake), which lies at a great height between Striding Edge and Catchedecam. 25. Doth in 1820 replaced "does," probably to avoid the repeated final "s" in "sometimes does." 26. Cheer, enlivenment or solace. 33. Holds before 1837, "binds," less appropriate to a barrier than "holds." 34. In 1807 (only): "Not knowing what to think, a while." 36. Before 1837: "Towards the Dog, o'er rocks and stones"; altered to avoid the dissyllabic "towards." 40. In 1807 (only): "Sad sight! the shepherd with a sigh." Sad sight!" was a feeble exclamation. 50, 51. In 1807 (only), with a clumsy division of "for sake of which": But hear a wonder now, for sake Of which this mournful Tale I tell! 59. Before 1827: "On which the Traveller thus had died"; altered to avoid repeating from 11. 48, 49. 61. His master's side. Scott, more exact to the fact in this particular, makes the faithful dog female. ELEGIAC STANZAS, SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE OF PEELE CASTLE. Written in 1805 and published in 1807. The poet's brother, Capt. John Wordsworth, went down with his ship, an East Indiaman, off the Bill of Portland, Feb. 5, 1805. This poem should be read in connection with "To the Daisy" ("Sweet Flower! belike one day to have”), "Elegiac Verses in Memory of my Brother," When to the attractions of the busy world," "The Brothers," and "The Happy Warrior." The Wordsworth Society in 1881 erected a small memorial to John Wordsworth at the spot close to Grisedale Tarn, where he last parted from William Wordsworth on Michaelmas Day, 1800. Wordsworth's friend Sir George H. Beaumont, the landscape painter, painted two pictures of Peele Castle, one of which was intended for Mrs. Wordsworth. An engraving is given in Wordsworth's Poems, ed. 1815, vol. II, and again in 1820, vol. IV. There are two Peele Castles, one in the Isle of Man, the other, the subject of Sir G. Beaumont's picture, in Lancashire, just south of Barrow-in-Furness. The opening lines of the poem refer to a visit of four weeks paid during a college summer vacation by Wordsworth to his cousin Mrs. Barker, who lived at Rampside, the nearest village on the mainland to Peele Castle. There is no evidence to connect picture or poem with the castle in the Isle of Man. 14-16. In an unhappy moment Wordsworth altered this - the original reading, to which he reverted in 1832- for the 1820 edition, which has ९९ which was retained in 1827 with the change," the gleam," "The lustre." The reader should not overlook the comma after was" in 1. 15; the ideal light never existed, except as conferred by the imagination. 21, 22. In 1807 and 1815 the reading was a treasure-house, a mine Of peaceful years." It seems as if Wordsworth thought it forced to call the castle "a mine of peaceful years," for he omitted the stanza (11. 21-24) from the ed. of 1820, and only restored it, with the present altered reading, in 1845. 29. Illusion: in 1807, "delusion." 32. : Before 1837 "A faith, a trust that could not be betray'd." 33-36. Compare this stanza with the close of the " Ode: Intimations of Immortality." 54. The Kind, our human species. THE HAPPY WARRIOR. Written early in 1806 and published in 1807. Some of the features of "The Happy Warrior" were derived from the character of Nelson, and with Nelson the poem was connected in a note of 1807; but Nelson's relations with Lady Hamilton prevented Wordsworth from " thinking of him with satisfaction in reference to the idea of what a warrior ought to be." Other features were taken from Wordsworth's brother John, who in 1805 was drowned when the ship which he commanded, an East Indiaman, sank off the Bill of Portland. Observe the evolution of the idea. The poem begins with boyhood, and that continuity of life, from childhood unto maturity, on which Wordsworth so often dwells; it closes with perseverance and progress to the end, and a death of faith, -faith in good and in heaven. The characteristics insisted on are high aims, cultivation of the intellect, moral rectitude, the power to educe good from evil, tenderness, placability, purity, fortitude, obedience to the law of reason, the choice of right means as well as right ends, fidelity, joy in domestic pleasures, heroism in great crises of life. "This short poem," says Myers, "is in itself a manual of greatness; there is a Roman majesty in its simple and weighty speech." ee When Harriet Martineau told Wordsworth that it was Channing's favourite among his poems, he replied: Ay, that was not on account of the poetic conditions being best fulfilled in that poem, but because it is (solemnly) a chain of extremely valooable thoughts." 5. Boyish thought in 1845 replaced "childish thought," childish" having an ambiguous meaning. 33. Until 1837: "He fixes good on good alone, and owes.” To fix good on good alone may not always be possible, Wordsworth felt, still the effort should be made. 75, 76. In 1807 Wordsworth quoted as Chaucer's lines from The Flowre and the Leafe: For Knightes ever should be persevering To seek honour without feintise or slouth 79. In 1807: "Or he must go to dust without his fame"; in 1837: 'Or he must fall and sleep without his fame." The present reading dates from 1840. A COMPLAINT. Written at Town-end, Grasmere, in 1806; published in 1807. The text is unchanged, except 1. 9 where "that" in 1836 replaced "this." "Suggested," Wordsworth says, "by a change in the manner of a friend." Perhaps the friend was S. T. Coleridge. STRAY PLEASURES. Dated by Wordsworth 1806; first published in 1807. In the Fenwick note Wordsworth says: "Suggested on the Thames by the sight of one of those floating mills that used to be seen there. This I noticed on the Surrey side between Somerset House and Blackfriars' Bridge. Charles Lamb was with me at the time; and I thought it remarkable that I should have to point out to him, an idolatrous Londoner, a sight so interesting as the happy group dancing on the platform." The changes of text are so unimportant as not to need recording. The London surroundings are excluded from the poem, or are reduced to the one particular of "the spires," illumined by the setting sun; the imagination is concentrated on the three dancing figures. The idea of freedom in a voluntary captivity (ll. 3, 17) is a favourite one with Wordsworth; compare the sonnet "Nuns fret not" (p. 322). De Quincey (" On Wordsworth's Poetry ") says he had heard a complaint that in this poem, which has for its very subject the universal and gratuitous diffusion of joy, occurs a picture of overpowering melancholy "In sight of the spires," etc. "Undoubtedly," he writes, "there is (and without ground for complaint there is) even here, where the spirit of gaiety is professedly invoked, an oblique though evanescent image flashed upon us of a sadness that lies deep behind the laughing figures, and of a solitude that is the real possessor in fee of all things, but is waiting an hour or so for the dispossession of the dancing men and maidens who for that transitory hour are the true, but alas! the fugitive tenants." The kissing leaves of 1. 34 were perhaps suggested by lines in Drayton's "The Muse's Elysium." POWER OF MUSIC. Written in 1806 and published in 1807. "Taken from life," says Wordsworth. In April, 1806, he went to London, and there spent two months. 3. The stately Pantheon, a building in Oxford Street, formerly a concert hall, theatre, bazaar. 15. Dusky-browed replaced in 1815 dusky-faced," "face" also occurring in the line. 37. Mark that Cripple: before 1827, "There's a Cripple," and, at the same time, in l. 39, "That Mother" replaced "A Mother." It may be noted that Wordsworth, though his ear was most finely organised for apprehending the sounds of nature, was himself deficient See notes on Star-Gazers." in a feeling for music. er STAR-GAZERS. Written in 1806 and published in 1807. Observed by me in Leicester Square [London] as here described," says Wordsworth. This poem may be viewed as a companion piece to "Power of Music "; both poems are derived from London street-gatherings; one, a poem of the art of the people, and inspired by joy; the other, of popular science, and touched with the sadness of knowledge. Both poems, as well as "Stray Pleasures," doubtless belong to Wordsworth's visit to London in the spring of 1806. A MS. copy of "Star-Gazers," sent by Dorothy Wordsworth to Lady Beaumont, Nov. 14, 1806, is printed in ee Memorials of Coleorton,” vol. I, pp. 178-180. The variations shown by this MS. copy are unimportant, except that the sixth and seventh stanzas, as printed in the text, appear in a reverse order in the MS., and that 1. 21 runs "Or is it last unwelcome thought! — that these spectators rude," and 1. 24, Not to be lifted up at once to power and majesty?" 8. And envies him that's looking. In 1840 this reading was restored from editions before 1827. From 1827-36: "Impatient till his moment comes ["come," 1836]. 16. Before 1827: "Do they betray us when they're seen? and are they but a dream?" The moon, being personified, rightly becomes the betrayer. ee YES, IT WAS THE MOUNTAIN ECHO." Written at Town-end, Grasmere, in 1806; published in 1807. "The echo came from Nab-Scar," says Wordsworth, "when I was walking on the opposite side of Rydal Mere. . . . On my return from my walk I recited these verses to Mrs. Wordsworth." I-4. Before 1827: ... Yes! full surely 't was the Echo Solitary, clear, profound, Answering to Thee, shouting Cuckoo, Giving to thee Sound for Sound. |