CIHM Microfiche Series (Monographs) ICIMH Collection de microfiches (monographles) Canadian institute for Historicai Microreproductions / Institut Canadian de microreproductions historiques Technical and Bibliographic Notes / Notes techniques et bibllographiques The Institute has attempted to obtain the best original copy available for filming. Features of this copy which may be bibliographically unique, which may alter any of the images in the reproduction, or which may significantly change the usual method of filming are checked below. Coloured covers / Couverture de couleur □ Covers damaged / Couverture endommag6e □ Covers restored and/or laminated / Couverture restaur^e et/ou peilicul^e I I Cover title missing / Le titre de couverture manque I I Coloured maps / Cartes g6ographiques en couleur □ Coloured ink (i.e. other than blue or black) / Encre de couleur (i.e. autre que bleue ou noir que bleue ou noire) Planches et/ou illustrations en couleur Bound with other material / Reli6 avec d'autres documents I I Coloured plates and/or illustrations / I I Bound with other material / □ □ □ □ Only edition available / Seule edition disponible Tight binding may cause shadows or distortion along interior margin / La reliure serr6e peut causer de I'ombre ou de la distorsion le long de la marge int^rieure. Blank leaves added during restorations may appear within the text. Whenever possible, these have been omitted from filming / II se peut que certaines pages blanches ajout6es lors d'une restauration apparaissent dans le texte, mais, lorsque cela 6tait possible, ces pages n'ont pas 6t6 f ilm^es. Additional comments / Commentaires suppl6mentaires: L'Institut a microfilm^ le meilleur exemplaire qu'il lui a 6t6 possible de se procurer. Les details de cet exem- plaire qui sont peut-6tre uniques du point de vue bibli- ographique, qui peuvent modifier une image reproduite, ou qui peuvent exiger une modification dans la m6tho- de normale de filmage sont indiqu6s ci-dessous. I I Coloured pages / Pages de couleur I I Pages damaged / Pages endommag6es □ Pages restored and/or laminated / Pages restaur^es et/ou pelliculdes Pages discoloured, stained or foxed / Pages d6color6es, tachet6es ou piqu6bS I I Pages detached / Pages d6tachees I • I Showthrough / Transparence □ Quality of print varies / Quality in^gale de I'impression Includes supplementary material / Comprend du materiel suppl6mentaire Pages wholly or partially obscured by en-ata slips, 111 -ues, etc., have been refilmed to ensure the best possible image / Les pages totalement ou partiellement obscurcies par un feuillet d'errata, une pelure, etc., ont et6 film6es k nouveau de fafon k obtenir la meilleure image possible. Opposing pages with varying colouration or discolourations are filmed twice to ensure the best possible image / Les pages s'opposant ayant des colorations variables ou des decolorations sont film6es deux fois afin d'obtenir la meilleure Image possible. n □ This item is filmed at the reduction ratio checked beiow / Ce document est film6 au taux de riduction indiqus ci-dessous. lOx 14x 18x 22x 26x 30x y 12x 16x 20x 24x 9fly J 32x The copy filmad hare has been reproduced thanks to the generosity of: National Library of Canada L'exemplaire iilmi fut reproduit grace i la ginirositi de: Bibliotheque nationale du Canada The imeges appearing here are the best quality possible considering the condition and legibility of the original copy and in keeping with the filming contract specifications. Les images suivantes ont iti reproduites avec le plus grand soin. compte tenu de la condition et de la nettetA de l'exemplaire film6. et en conformity avec les conditions du contrat de filmage. Original copies in printed paper covers arc filmed beginning with the front cover and ending on the last page with a printed or illustrated impres- sion, or the back cover when appropriate. All other original copies are filmed beginning on the first psge with a printed or illustrated impres- sion, and ending on the last page with a printed or illustrated impression. Les exemplaires origineux dent la couverture en pepier est imprimte sont film^s en commenpant par le premier plat et en terminant soit par la derniire page qui comporte une empreinte d'impression ou d'illustration, soit par te second plat, salon le cas. Tous les autres exemplaires origineux sont filmAs en commenpant par la premiere pege qui comporte une empreinte d'impression ou d'illustration et en terminant par la derniire page qui comporte une telle empreinte. The last recorded framr on eech microfiche shall contain the symbol — •> (meaning "CON- TINUED"), or the symbol V (meaning "END"), whichever applies. Un des symboles suivants apparaitra sur la derniire imege de cheque microfiche, selon le cas: le symbols — »> signifie "A SUIVRE ', le symbols V signifie "FIN". Maps, plates, charts, etc., may be filmed at different reduction ratios. Those too large to be entirely included in one exposure are filmed beginning in the upper left hend corner, left to right and top to bottom, as many frames as required. The following diagrams illustrate the method: Les cartes, planches, tableeux, etc., peuvent etre filmAs i des taux de reduction diffArents. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour etre reproduit en un seul clichi, il est filmi A partir de Tangle supirieur gauche, de gauche d droite. et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images nicessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mAthode. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 MICROCOPY RESOLUTION TEST CHART (ANSI ond ISO 'SST CHART No. 2) .r 13.2 " 1^ •^ 14.0 2.2 2.0 1.8 _J /1PPLIED IM/1GE Inc ^S". 1653 East Mam Street ^S Rochester. Me* York 14609 USA .^S (716) 482 - 0300 - Phone ^S (716) 288 - 5989 - Tax m €[6ucationaI Series ENGLISH CLASSICS \L Coleridge and wordsworth 1903 EDGAR SAMrnr. t. coi.khiimje. AfORANG'S EDUCATIONAL SERIES COLERIDGE AND WORDSWORTH SELECT POEMS PRESCRIBED FOR THE MATRICULATION ASD DEPARTMENTAL EXAMINATIONS FOR /oKJj. EDITKD WITH IM ^>l CTION AND NOTES BY PELHAM EDGAR, ph.d. TORONTO GEORGE N. MORANG & COMPANY, LIMITED 1902 Eatcred aecordinr to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in tb« year Nineteen Hundred and Two, by Gaoiioi N. Morano & Company, Limited, at the Department of Agriculture. CONTENTS Thh Lifk of Samiel Tavlor Ci>leriim;k Chronouh;ical Table of the Chief Events .. Biblkh:raphical References Brief Si rvev of Eighteenth Centiry Poetry TaBI LAR STATKMENT OF THE TeNI'ENCIES Brief Accoint of Ballad Poetrv The " Lyrical Ballads," their Valie in English Literatire Coleridge, the Poet Coleridge, the Philosopher Coleridge, the Critic Contemporary Opin?ons of the "Ancient Mariner " The Rime of the Ancient Mariner " The Text, Accoint of The Motto Circumstances of Composition The Metre The AiTHORizED Text with Explanatory Foot notes The Life and Writings of William Wordsworth Chronological Table of the Chief Events . . Bibliographical References The Poetry of William Wordsworth . . Select Poems of Wordsworth with Explanatory FlXlTNOTES Appended Notes on the Text of Coleridge , Appended Xotes on the Text of Wordsworth (With a Brief Account of the Sonnet in English Literature). PACK I 29 2P 3« i* 35 43 46 54 57 59 61 61 63 68 71 101 124 «2S 126 •93 214 ILLUSTRATIONS Portrait op Coleridub, facing Title Pagb Portrait of Wordsworth, facincj Pace km Map of Lake Colntry, facing Pack 193 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF COLERIDGE BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Samiel Taylor Coleridge, born at Ottery St. Mary, October 21 , 1772; died at Highgate, July 25, 1834. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born at Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire, on the 21st of October, 1772. His father, the Rev. John Coleridge, the and youth, vicar and schoolmaster of the place, had conquered his small position in the world by dint of hard and faithful work. He had been twice married, and the poet was the youngest of a family of thirteen children. The only characteristic trait which Coleridge can be said to have inherited from his father was a certain intellectual pedantry, which manifested itself in later years by the outlandish titles which he assigned to works not destined to advance in many instances beyond the title-page.* So we find in the worthy vicar's Critical Latin Grammar a proposed change in the nomenclature of the cases, whereby the ablative was to receive the expressive name of the quippe- quare-quale-quia-qtiidditive case. It is also told of him that he was wont to harangue his simple congregation in the original Hebrew, as being the "immediate lan- guage of the Holy Ghost." They considered his suc- cessor as wanting in piety for abandoning this practice. *For example, "Consolations and Comforts from the exercise and riKht application of the Reason, the Imajfinafion.and the Moral Feelings, addressed especially to those in Sickness, Adversity, or Distress of Mind, from Speculative Gloom, etc." THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER The poet's mother, Anne Bowdon, was a practical- minded woman, of no marked ability of any kind, but thorouiii^hly determined that ail her sons should receive the education of f^^'entlemen. The father had frequently announced his intention of apprenticing;' them to various trades; so Mrs. Coleridife perhaps conferred upon the world a poet, and saved it from an incompetent blacksmith. Our knowledge of Coleridge's childhood is derived entirely from his autobiographical letters to Thomas Poole, written in 1797.* That he was unlike other boys need scarcely be said. From his earliest years he was an omnivorous reader, and led captive by an imagina- tion which seized upon and magnified wha.tever he read. "My father's sister kept an everything shop at Crediton, and there I read through all the gilt-cover little books that could be had at that time, and likewf^e all the un- covered tales of Tom Hickathrift, Jack the Giant-killer, etc. And I used to lie by the wall and mope, and my spirits used to come upon me suddenly; and in a flood of them I was accustomed to race up and down the church-yard and act over all I had been reading, on the docks, the nettles, and the rank grass," cutting them down, as he elsewhere says, "like one of the Seven Champions of Christendom." "So I became a dreamer, and acquired an indisposition to all bodily activity; and I was fretful and inordinately passionate, and as I could not play at anything and was slothful, I was despised and hated by the boys ; and because I could read and .spell, and had, I may truly say, a memory and under- • Poems referring- to his boyhood are the following: Sonnet to thf Rn''"'^ ^"^ ^^^y romantic scheme of pantisocracy was spontaneously hatched. Much has been written of this curious episode in their lives. Briefly the plan was as follows, quoting in part Pantiso- from a letter of Thomas Poole:* "Twelve cpacy. ., . . ivvci\c gentlemen of good education and liberal principles are to embark with twelve ladies in April next " for some " delightful part of the new back settle- ments " of America. The labor of each man for two or three hours a day was to suffice for the support of the colony. The produce was to be common property; there was to be a good library ; and the frequent leisure hours were to be employed in study, discussion, and in the education of the children after a settled system. The women were to devote themselves to taking care of the infant children and other suitable occupations, not neglecti.g the cultivation of their minds. It was not yet determined "whether the marriage contract shall •Thomas Poole and his Friends, I. 96-99. BIOGRAPHICAL SKKTl H be dissolved, if agreeable to one or both parties." Kvery one was "to enjoy bis own relifrious and political opinions, provided they do not encroach on the rules previously made They calculate that every jfentle- man providing' ^,25 ^vill be sufficient to carry the scheme into execution." The banks of the Susquehanna were selected as a suitable locality, partly because .f the pretty name, and in part because of the security it afforded "from hostile Indians and bisons." They were assured that literary characters made money there, "and the mosquitoes are not so bad as our gnats." This sounds chimerical enough, as indeed it proved to be. Practical difficulties soon arose, not, however, in the matter of obtaining wives, for Coleridge and Southey had secured the amiable consent of two of the Misses Fricker, whilo Lovell, a fellow-pantisocrat, had disposed of the' third. The trouble from the outset was a pecuniary one; and when about a year later Southey showed 'his native common sense by withdrawing from the movement, it abruptly fizzled out and died. It certainly deserved to die ; and if there is something pathetic in this overthrow of early hopes, there is some- thing still more ironical in the reflection that as years went on Coleridge and Southey, the youthful hot-heads of revolt, should have settled into ruts of the most rigid conservatism. Let us remember, however, that at the period of which we write revolutionary ideas were in the very air men breathed. The conservative Wordsworth of middle life has told us eloquently enough in TAe Prelude how he too caught from France the universal contagion. Coleridge in after days saw the abundant folly of this visionary scheme, but in a passage from his lo THK KIMK 1>K THK WllKNT MAKINKK later writiiijrs* lio attaches a peculiar value to it in relation to his intellectual development. '*Stranj,'e fancies, and as vain as strange! Vet to the intense interest and impassioned zeal, which called forth and strained every faculty of my intellect for the organiza- tion and defense of this scheme, I owe much of whatever I at present possess, my clearest insight into the nature of individual man, and my most comprehensive views of his social relations, o( the true uses of trade and commerce, and how far the wealth and relative power of nations promote or impede their welfare and inherent strength. Nor were they less serviceable in securing myself, and perhaps some others, from the pitfalls of sedition ; and when we at length alighted on the firm ground of common sense from the gradually exhausted balloon of youthful enthusiasm, though the air-built castles which we had been pursuing had vanished with all their pageantry of shifting forms and glowing colors, we were yet free from the stains and impurities which might have remained upon us had we been travelling with a crowd of less imaginative malcontents, through the dark lanes and foul byroads of ordinary fanaticism." The first literary fruit of this revolutionary ardor was the Fall of Robespierre, a "-hetorical drama written conjointly by Southey and Coleridge, and published as Coleridge's at Cambridge in September, 1794. During the summer, as has been said, he became engaged to Miss Sarah Fricker, not a little to Southey's astonish- ment, "because he had talked of being deeply in love Ler.s with a certain Mary Evans." He returned Decembe??' ^"^^ Cambridge after the summer vacation, but 1794. irCj somewhat precipitately in the middle of )< mber, . /c)4, without taking a degree. * The Friend, Section I, Essay VI. BIOC.RAPHKAL SKETtll I I Ho did not, however, f,'o to his //V/«c/f or to Southey in Bristol, but to London, where he and his old school- fellow, Lamb, held royal cheer and converse at the sijjn of the "Cat and Salutation." "Coleridj^'e did not come back to Bristol," wrote Southey to the publisher Cottle, "till January, 1795, nor would he, I believe, have come back III all, if I had not jjone to London to look for liim. For, havinj,' ^^ot there from Cambridge at the beginning of winter, there he remained without writing to Miss Fricker or me." The runaway, to the misfortune of himself and his future wife, was restored by the ever-watchful Southey, and with Burnett, the pantisocrat, they established themselves in lodgings i^t Bristol. Coleridge endea'ored ineffectually to raise his share of the proposed expenses by a series of public lectures. He was not even able to pay his lodging bill, and the friendly Cottle, printer, bookseller, and poetaster, came to the rescue with a welcome five-pound note. By this time Southey had abandoned pantisocracy, thus incurring the stern dis- pleasure of Coleridge, who was still ostensibly faithful to the plan. However, when Cottle offered him a guinea and a half per hundred lines for his poetry, he seems to have found it unnecessary to retire to the backwoods for sustenance. In anticipation of marriage he had in Aug- ust secured a cottage in Clevedon, in Somer- Marriage, ^ , . ,.^ . ... Oct. 4. 1798. sct.shire (it is still standing), and on October 4. '795' Coleridge and Sarah Fricker were married at the church of St. Mary Redcliffe, in Bristol, famous even then for its association with Chatterton's career. The honeymoon began auspiciously enough at Cleve- don. He was certainly happy in his domestic life, if 12 IHK KIMK t>K INK AMIKM MAKINKR Clevedon, October, 1798. wc- accept the testimony of The yEolian J/urp, a sincere and beautiful poem wiitten in the Clevedon cottaf,'e. * His literary prospects were excep- lionallv bri^'ht, and his ambition and intel- lectual powers alike seemed to point forward to a bril- liant and unclouded career. With a laudable desire to increase his means, he determined to establish a weekly The Watch- .i^'"''"'^' ^^^ ^^ called The IViitchmun. With Mardh't?' ^^'^ object of solicitin},' subscriptions, Cole- "*y- rid),'e set out upon a journey throu),'h the north country, "preachinj,' by the way in most of the jfreat towns as an hireless volunteer, in a blue coat and white waistcoat, that not a rajf of the woman of Babylon mijfht be seen oi\ me."t The first number announced for February 5, appeared on March 1. It was pro- nounced dull, and the succeedinjjf numbers f»-ave increas- ing ofiense to the subscribers. On May 13, publication was suspended, and but for a timely subscription, which the poet's friend Poole orj^'anized, he would have been in desperate straits. Nothing socms to have prospered w ith him at this time. He was unsuccessful in a prospective editorship of the Morning Chronicle, and equally unfortunate, or .so he thou},dit, in failing to secure a lucrative tutorship of the sons of a wealthy Mrs. Evans.* However, a young man, Charles Lloyd, had come under the spell of Coleridge's conversation, and had gained the privilege for eighty pounds a year of living under the poet's roof on Redcliffe Hill, his new home near Bristol. With this sum and his meagre literary earnings life was possible. • Coinp.ire al>io Reflections on having lejt a Place of Retirement. + For Coleridge's account of this tour see Biograpliia Literaria, chap. N. i I'ncomu-cted with tho botort'-mentionoil Marv Kvaiis. HIOliKAIMilCAL SKEI\il »3 D»vl»- to his natural business, into a continual strain of eloquent dissertation, certainly the most novel, the most fmely illustrated, and traversinjf the most spacious fields of thouj,'ht, by transitions the most just and loj^ical that it was possible to conceive. . . . Coleridji'e, to many peo- ple, and often I have heard the complaint, seemed to wander; and he seemed then to wander the most when, in fact, his resistance to the wandering instinct was greatest — vi/. , when the compass and huge circuit, by which his illustrations moved, travelled farthest into re- mote regions before they began to revolve. Long before this coming round commenced most people had lost him, and naturally enough supposed that he had lost himself. They continued to admire the separate beauty of the thoughts, but did not see their relation to the dominant theme. . . . However, I can assert, upon my long and intimate knowledge of Coleridge's mind, that logic the most severe was as inalienable frorr, his modes of think- ing as grammar from his language." — De Quincey, Recollections of the Lake Poets. There is UvHliing further of importance to record of Coleridj4 j's declining years. In 1824 he was elected an associate of the new Royal Society of Literature with an annuity of one hundred guineas. This lapsing with the death of George W in 1830, it was made up for him by his friends. In 1828 he passed several weeks on the mOOKAPHICAL SKETCH 27 Rhine with Wordsworth ai.d his daujfhter. He revised in 1H21) the final editiitn d his poems issued during,' his lifetime. In 1H33, in anticipation of the end, he ap- pointed a younj,' friend and disciple, J. H. Green, as his literary executor, committing to his charj,'e his philo- sophical fraijments. Some years later Green embodied his master's teachings in a now forgotten Spiritual Philosophy. On July 25, 1834, Coleridge died. Personal Appearance, Temperament, etc. Coleridge thus describes himself in a letter to John Thehvall : " As to me, my face, unless when animated by imme- diate eloquence, expresses great sloth and great, indeed almost idiotic, good nature. 'Tis a mere carcass of a face — fat, flabby, and expressive chiefly of inexpression. ^'et 1 am told that my eyes, eyebrows, and forehead are physiognomically good ; but of this the deponent know- cth not. As to my shape, 'tis a good shape enough if measured, but my gait is awkward, and the walk of the whole man indicates /« Samuel Taylor Coleridge: A Xarrative of the Events of his Life. By James Dykes Campbell. London and .\ew York, .^L-lcmillan & e. Hy Hall Caine. /)ictionary of .Vational /iiography. Article Coleridge. By Leslie -Stephen. Hiographia Literaria. Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Kdited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge. Hou.i,'-hton, Mifllin & Co., 1895. Professor Dowden. Fortnightly Revie-.v. lii. Professor Dowden. The French Revolution and English Lit- erafure. Waiter I'ater. .Appreciations. J. R. Lmvi-ll. Collected Works, vol. \i. Stopl'ord Brooke TheColden Hook of Coleridge. J. M. Dent. Coleridge. B\ .\tidrew Lanj;. Lon^rmans & Co. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 31 Brief Sirvey of Eighteenth Century Poetry However unique its inspiration, The Ancient Mariner is not an isolated or abnormal growth. By abstract g- it entirely from the circurnstances of its production, we can doubtless appreciate, in some measure at least, the individual and united beauties of the poem. But a com- pleter realizationof its power and charm should be sought and attained by a consideration of the poet's life in rela- tion to his work, and by an effort to understand the poet- ical conditions from which that work arose. The neces- sarily meagre biographic detail has been presented, and it now remains briefly to indicate the main currents of Eng- lish poetic literature in the century of Coleridge's birth. The commanding figure of Dryden ( 1631- 1700) dom- inates the opening years of that century. His influence soon merges itself in the more powerful influence of Pope, and our classical Augustan epoch is born. It would carry us too far afield to assign the causes for this form of literature. In brief, we may say that people had tired of the extravagant excesses of the post-Elizabethan or metaphysical school, and desired above all things cor- rectness of form and moderateness in the sphere of the emotions. The classical movement upon its intellectual side, dramatic writing apart, is curiously akin to the earlier and contemporary school of literature in France ; and international influences doubtless played an impor- tant part in maintaining the vogue of classicism in Eng- land. But the most interesting thing for us to observe is that even in the midreign of classicism evidences are not wanting of a spirit of unrest and mild revolt against the established rule. The following diagram essays to present in clear outline the characteristics o^ (i) the classical period, (2) the transitional period, (3) the mod- ern romantic school. 32 THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MAHINER Cla*sical. I. Rostriction of views on relijfion and philosophy. Litora- ture is invpired hy mechanical deism 2. Restriction as to metrical form. Th heroic couplet is par excellence the classic al form of verse. Transitional I. Relijfious reviv- al. Wesley, etc. Modern. ^. Restriction as to the laiijf ua^e. I'oet- ical diction abstract, colorless, and conven- tional. 2. (n) Revival of blank verse — e. jf. . Thomson's Seasons, 1730; Young's Xiiflif Thoughts, 1745; Cow- per's Task, 1785. I (A) Imitations of of Pope Spenser — e.g., Thom- son's Castle of Indo- lence, 1748 ; Shen- stone's Schrolmis- tress, 1 742 ; Thomas Warton's Poems and his Observations on the Faerie Queene, '754- (r) Imitations of Milton — e. jj., blank verse (see a). Influ- ence of // PenseiQso onBlair,Younff,Grav, etc. The sonnet form revived bv (.>rav. {d) Odes. (Classic- ism had not discoun- tenanced this form). 3 Not much ad vaiice upon the clas sical ]ieriod. I. Extension of re- lig'iousand philosoph- ic thoujfht throug-h the influence of Ger- man transcendental- ism. Poetry deals withdeeperproblems. Element of mystery. 2. Extreme variety of metrical forms. Blank verse, sonnets, etc. Contrast Keats's or Swinburne's coup- lets with th-j couplets 3. It was with re- jfard toconventionali- ties of poetic diction, especially iij the prov- ince of descriptive poetry.that Coleridge and Wordsworth made their .severest attack upon the clas- sical school. See Wordsworth's over- harsh .-m.-ilvsis of Cirav's sonnet On the Death of Mr. West. BIOGRAPHICAL SKKTCH 32 Classical. 4. Tho motto "Fol- low Xatiiri- " implii'd till' study oltho mor- als and mannors of polite society. Nature poetry, as we under- stand the term, was miknowii. Observe the eonventional pas- torals whicli represent the only ertort to es tape town lite. Re- stricted theories of beauty, into which the outward world of the l>eauli(ul or the sub- lime does not enter. 5. I'suedo-classic- ism. .Scanty know-' led.^^e of dreek litera- ture Adoption of imitative Latin mod- els. Artificial rejiro- iluction of classical mytliolog-v. 6. E X c I u s i \- e I V modern— i. e. , elifh'-, teenth century, where not imitativel'y Latin. Liiiflish literature for the classicists bejfan with Waller and Dry-; den. Trahsitjonal. MODBKN. 4 Keturnto.Vaturo! 4. This is where Thomson^''' C "'"""'■ ' "'': '""'*'''■" •'^^hool has Ihomsons Seasons, fralncd its Greatest Macphe,-sonsO«/„„,|.riumphs. A^irttua ^;,d i', fl'""''' ^"'■"'*' P-n-"-ation into the and inHuence o(j world of Xaturc-a y/'e I ,lh,ge, , 78.5. I ize Xature as an influ- |ence towards beauty and morality. ot the old Teutonic of Greek literature— mvtholotry_e .. "^^rauire- Grays oi:.. ^■' /j/sh r • ' z^"^""- /o«, >>helieys //vw«j to Apol.'o and 'pan, jTeimyson's Ulysses, esf'i.f'^;:;:^"'"'""^'-''*^ Romantic medi- sptnser, .Milton. Kx- ation-e. a. Scott , traordtnary revival of Keats, Coleridlre jmedic-evai sm. The -.„m • "-"ii-najre, Gothic tastel-e. > Rot"u?'"T"" '"""' Thom.K w . f^ • '.'^"''^et'i. Tennvson, 1 nomas Warlon s Swinburne. Shellev H.story of KuglUh l^vron. and wll Pol ^^-^ p"""'." ""^ -iniplicity of the lope, i7:,6; Percys old ballads. Kehques, 1765; and the renewed interest ill our old national and i>opu!ar jioetrv Ossian (ajfain), \-jii\; Chatlertotis A-^W^y /, Progress,^ Poesy , 754 ; Or.y' PllardAVsl ^U,, Collmss a/,- „„ Popular Siiptrsi tions-, Horace Walpole s Castle of OtmnL Sunilar movement in Germany 34 TIIK UIME OF THE AXCIKNT MAKiNKR Cl.AS".ICAI.. Transitional. n 7. Roprossion of indiviilii.-i'ism. (Cf. the M'il'-rt'>ilraint ol" the FriMich c assical school.) Literature has a social basis. Achieves intellectual brilliancv, but at the costol'einotiona I cold- ness. Therefore, the forms most cultivated are satiric, didactic, and mock-heroic poe- try. Strantfe dearth of classical drama, for Prytlen here is the re- verse of c'assical,and the period of I'ope can only point to Ad- dison's Cti/u. 8. Respect of con stituted authority .Aristocratic tend encv. 7. Timidly lyrical forms oi' Cirav and Collins, hut inilividual emotions still held in check. Then follows MonRRN. 7. Outburst of lyr- ical poetry, especially Shelley, Coleridjje, Keats. E!motional qu.-ililies obtain full the influence of Rous-sway. Klizabethan seau and the outbreak'cxuberance of the French Revo ' lution. with 8. Timid bejjin- nings of the demo- cratic spirit — e jf.. Goldsmith. Hold ex- pression in Cowper, and especially Bums. (S) an assertion of individualism. A de- termination of poets to follow the bent of their own individual g'enius, and a realiza- tion of the force of the democratic spirit. Shelley and Bvronare revolutionary poets. It is not within the province of this book to expand the above material. Some comprehension of it is, how- ever, necessary before attainini;;- a just appreciation of the work performed by Coleridge and Wordsworth for Enijlish literature. What is especially important to ob- serve is that the path had been broken for them bv their predecessors, and that they were not absolutely pioneers of proi,'-ress in the poetic wilderness. Indeed, Words- worth is careful to acknowledge that Thomson's Seasons had given English poetry its true direction in diverting' men's attention from the artificial rhetoric of societv to BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 35 the invigoratinjr world of nature. The other transitional processes indicated in the tabular summary will be de- veloped by the instructor in more or less detail in pro- portion to the requirements of the class. The relation of these tendencies to Coleridge's poetical theories may easily be determined. English ballad literature, owing to its peculiar significance with reference to The An- cient Mariner, demands a special treatment, and an ac count of its characteristics will not be inappropriate here. Ballad Poetry The revived interest in our old national poetry, which dates from the publication of Percy s Reliques in 1765, led to some of the most important developments in Con- tinental literature. In England, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Scott, and Keats were strongly influenced by the ballad movement, and were not slow to acknowledge their debt to Bishop Percy's publication. Wordsworth confessed that English poetry had been absolutely re- deemed by them. " I do not think that there is a writer in verse of the present day who would not be proud to acknowledge his obligations to the Reliques. I know that it is so with my friends, and, for myself, I am happy in this occasion to make a public avowal of my own."* The influence of these old national ballads of England upon The Ancient Mariner is so obvious that a descrip- tion of the characteristics of the genuine ballad must precede any adequate investigation of the modern poem. How much Coleridge owed to the traditional form is a question which the student is recommended to examine on the basis of the information which follows. i ' Appendix to the Preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads. 36 THE HIME OK THE ANCIENT MAKINEK Tiw Ballad, its Nature and its Origin With rcifiird to tlnj dofiiiition ot tlio term "ballad" there lias been much needless contusion, :it least in the popular mind. The question of the ultimate origin of the ballad is likewise fraught with confusion ; but this arises from the necessary mystery which surrounds u creative process, and constitutes in itself one of the most diOicult of literary problems. Confusion as to the name The confusion with regard to the name makes it almost necessary to deline what the ba'.lad is not, before determining what it is. No one probably would con- found the artilicial ballade of the schools (the product of French imitation) with tiie native ballad of popular growth. Bui a great many people do persist in apply- ing the term to modern poems of the type oi Barbara Frietchic, The Wreck of the Hesperus, or the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. These narrative poems have all borrowed certain sur- face characteristics from the genuine b:Ulad, something of its simplicity and quaintness, perhaps, but with a dis- tant suggestion at the best oi the imafFected naivete and artless manner of the original type. This primitive form, as we must imagine it once to have existed, was essentially a narrative poem in lyrical stanzaic form, designed, in its earliest stages at least, to serve as an accompa!iiinent for the dance, bearing no traces of indi- vidual authorship, and preserved mainly by oral tradi- tion. . , is therefore imperative, for the sake of preci- sion, to discriminate absolutely between the artistic imitation of popular ballads and the genuine baiiad of the people. Vo make this distinction clearer, a short 37 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH account must be .riven cf the n.cre important theories connected with the or ,in of the ballad properly so Ongin of the Ballad We are here confronted with two rival theories. Th« quc.t,onrou,M.lydivides.tselfasfoIUnvs:--DidthehalIad m ke itself.-or was it producedlikeanypoem in n.odern m es b, some individual whose talents sin,.ed him c ut ..s the X ers.fier or bard of his rou^^h communitv? The ■rst theory .t will be observed, almost eliminates the •■Hi.vidual in favor of the primitive communitv. The second theory insists upon the positive intervention of K individual in the shaping, of the ballad, and holds t a the circumstances of oral transmission, by which all the ancient ballads were preserved, are sufficient to account for their popular characteristics. They were us subjected to constant variation, and all traces of "dividual authorship were swiftly obliterated. On the ^^rt ^"PPorters of the communal theory insisted that the ballad must be the outcome and the expression of the whole community, and that this communitv n ,st he .omogeneous-must belong to a time when,' in the common atmosphere of ignorance, so far as book-lore is concerned, one habit of thought and one standard of action animate every member from prince to ploughboy. Ballads ot the primitive type-of course we do nof know them in their original form-were the product of a people as yet undivided into a lettered and an unlettered ,7t ^^^^ '.'"'"■"'"^ '^'"^ ^^""8- the folk it drove he ba lad first nUo byways, and then altogether out of living hterature."* •Gunimere. Introduction to Old KnsHsh Ballads, xxvii. 3« THK KIMK OK THE AWrF.NT MAKINKR If? It will he reiidily seen that, even if wo jjfraiit the assumption of race authorship, it would he inipossihle to account for the words and melody of the hallads without presupposing that some one first said or sanj; them. We therefore find that the modern authorities on ballad literature abandon both of the above theories on their extreme side, and chiefly concern themselves with adjust inj,' tlie respective shares of poet and people in the makinj;- of the primitive ballad. Thus the late Professor Child, the supreine authority on this question, writes on the subject of ballad poetry as follows: "Thouj,'h they do not write themselves, as William Grimm has said, still the author counts for nothinjc, and it is not by rr.ere accident, but with the best reason, that they have come down to us anonymous." We must imai^-ine that some m'nstrel, skilled in music and sonj^-, has j;-athered the p xr ogfether on an occasion of great siffnificance. All his audience are thrill- inj^ with the excitement of some recent martial event, or stirred by the memory of some feat of warlike prowess. The deeds of the hero are familiar to all. His history, whether recent or leijendary, is common property ; and they are now j^athered together to celebrate him in dance and song. Some one suggests a well-known episode in his career, and forthwith the minstrel strikes a martial strain and chants the exploits of the hero in rude and broken verse, improvised for the occasion. He gives out the refrain, and the people repeat it in chorus while he meditates the verse which follows. Any one who thinks of a suitable verse may contribute it. The respective parts of poet and populace are here discernible. The actual words and melody must em.inate from the individual, but the sentiments are of the people. BIOORAPHIlAI. SKERH 39 The minstrel is keenly alive to the effect of his Stan/as upon his hearers, and when he carries his ballad wares to the neij^hborin^- castle he is careful to omit what has not jfiven pleasure. Meanwhile this same rude ballad, which we have seen in the makinjf, has also been carried hither and thither by ail who had sunj^ its easy melodies, and they too refashion it to their liking-, forgetting and changing, ad('ing and striking^ out. Finally, if the ballad has stood the wear and tear of time, it is, at last, in one or many of its forms, committed to manuscript, and per- petuated, perhaps, after many centuries, in printer's ink. General Characteristics of the Ballad Being thus the product of an unsophisticated and unreflecting^ age, the genuine ballad is necessarily naive, and marked by an utter absence of subjectivity and self- consciousness. Coming from the people as a whole, " from the compact body as yet undivided by lettered or unlettered taste, it represents the sentiment neither of individuals nor of a class. It inclines to the narrative, the concrete and the exterior, and it has no mark of the artist and his sentiment."* In view also of its spontaneous character, and because the episodes it pre- sents are intimately known to the audience, its narrative is extremely broken by frequent omissions and abrupt transitions, while repetitions and stock descriptive phrases are constantly resorted to in order to facilitate memory. As remarkable as the absence of reflection and senti- mentality in the substance is the lack of poetic adorn- ment in the style. Metaphors and similes are rare, and •Gummere. Introduction, p. xvi. 1 1 40 THK KIMK 1>F Till: ANtlKXT MAKINKK II : when found arc usually excecdinj^'ly simple — " rod as a rose," "as j^rcen as j^-^rass" — conventional phrases that all ballads share in common. There is never any inten- tion to produce a line poetic ctTect by their means. Iteration is the leading,' characteristic of ballad style, and the story is frequently told by "incremental repetition," which Professor Gummere describes as the repetition of a question with its answer. This may {jo on from stanza to stanza until the poem is completed. It is impossible to quote any short ballad which should exemplify all these qualities. The ballad of Sir Piitrick Spvns is ^iven here because of its undoubted excellence, and partly also because it was an acknowl- edged favorite with Coleridge. It lacks refrain, and its extreme brevity did not render repetition or reiteration essential (but notice lines 8 and 20). In other respects it adequately enough represents the general ballad characteristics. First, as to poetic treatment. It deals with a pathetic theme in a manly and straightforward way. There is a total absence of sentimentality and moralizing^. The theme is entered upon at once with no labored prepara- tory description. The events of the narrative were familiar, and superfluity of detail is therefore shunned. The sudden transition from description to dialogue is especially characteristic. Secondly, as to form. It is written in the usual ballad measure, like The Ancient Mariner, having four verses in each stanza, riming a, b, c, b, with four accents in the first and third verses and three each in the second and fourth. The general movement is iambic, bu., as in The Ancient Mariner, there are not infrequent variations from this type, e. g. : §k KIOiiKAt'HICAI. SKETCH 1. Omission of unstressed syllables, especially in the initial foot, e.^'-i stan/a 2, line i. 2. Anapa'stic movement, e. Walter Scott. " Of Coleridge's best verses I venture to affirm that the world has nothing like them, and can never have; that they are of the highest kind and their own. An age that should neglect or forget Coleridge might neglect or forget any poet that ever lived. That may be said of him which can hardly be said of any but the greatest among men, that come what may to the world in course of time, it will never see his place filled." — Algernon Charles Swinburne. "Yet Coleridge is, or may be reckoned a great poet, because every now and then he captures in verse that indefinable emotion which is less articulately expressed in music, and in some unutterable way he transports us into the world of dream and desire. This is a very vague fashion of saying what hardly permits itself to be said. We might put it that Coleridge has, on occasion, the power to move us, as we are moved by the most rarely beautiful cosmic effects of magic lights and shadows; by the silver on lakes for a chosen moment in the dawn of twilight; by the fragrant deeps of dewy forests ; by sudden, infrequent passions of heart and memory; and by unexpected potencies of imagination. What those things, and such things as these, can do in life, Coleridge can do in verse. His world becomes ' an unsubstantial fairy place,' and yet more real than the world of exper- ience ; it is a place which we may have remembered out of a previous life, or may have foreseen, in a glance of ML BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 47 the not-ourselves in which we mysteriously move and have our being. Coleridge has, in brief, 'the key of the happy golden land,' but he seldom opens the portals that unfold themselves to the sound of his music. ' He on honey dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of paradise, and therefore with music 'he builds that dome in air' of his pleasure-house. " It is his possession of this gift, the rarest gift, that makes Coleridge great; his own consciousness could not tell whence the gift came, nor why it came so seldom." — Andrew Lang. "His spiritualized nature teems with color and mel- ody and perfume ; and his early poetry contains several pieces from which all direct political and metaphysical contents falls away. The Songs of the Pixies (1793), the Lines on an Autumnal Evening, and Lewti (1794). are pervaded by this fine sensuousness in which no other English poet quite resembles Coleridge. His touch has at once the voluptuous quality of Keats, and the mystic quality of Shelley. He paints the russet-suited landscape of eighteenth century idyllists from the rich and varied palette which we are accustomed to call Celtic. The clouds are of amber and purple. The fragrance of furze and bean-flower haunts the page. Yet while all things retain their full value as sensation, they are invested with dreamy semblances of things beyond sensation ; they are not solid and opaque, but full of half lights and elusive suggestions. ..." Both Coleridge and Wordsworth were, "as Words- worth said, 'prophets of Nature,' though Coleridge's prophecy was far less continuous, many-sided, and serene, and both w ere romantic poets. . . • Both are the 48 THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER ir great English masters, as Goethe, who umtes and tran-^ Lnds their spheres, is the great European master o poetic realism; both possess, though not w.th equal slcuritv, the region in which ..omance and Nature meet, houg Coleridge reaches it by ' the ladder of the .mpos- :-hlc • Wordsworth by the steeper and more treacherous ladd^^r of the commonplace."-C. H. Herford. ..No doubt we have in Coleridge the most stnkmg example in literature of a great genius ^;-" '"/-J' ^^ a nerveless will and a fitful purpose. But I thmk the secret of his doing no more in poetry is to be tound m the fact that the judgment, so far from be.ng absent, grew to be there in excess. His critical sen.e rose hke a forbidding apparition in the path of his poet.c produc tion ... It is enough for us here that he has written some of the most poetical poetry in the language and one poem, The Ancient Mariner, not only unparalleled, but unapproached in its kind, and that kind of the rarest. It is marvelous in its mastery over that dehghtfully fortuitous inconsequence that is the adamantine logic of dreamland. "—>w"'^ ;?«55f // Lo-.oell. "Coleridge's poetical performance is like some exotic plant, just managing to blossom a little in the some- what un-English air of his southwestern birthplace, but neverquite well there. What shapes itself for criticism as the main phenomenon of Coleridge's poetic life is not, as with most true poets, the gradual development of a poetic gift, determined, enriched, retarded by the actual cir- cumstances of the poet's life, but the sudden blossoming, through one short season, of such a gift already perfect in its kind, which thereafter deteriorates as suddenly, with something like premature old ^^r— Walter Pater. 'What Coleridge did well was unique, but it was very little, and the volume we have from him influences BIOGRAPHKAI. SKETCH 49 us with ail the madness that a garden does in which two or three beautiful flowers rise and flower perfectly, but in which the rest are choked with weeds and run to seed. And to those who can compare the things of art with the things of soul and heart, the analogy has its own profound moral ksson Surely few men have ever loved mankind more than this large-hearted creature of the sunnv mist. And inasmuch as he loved much, n.s faults are forgiven. "-/?«'. Slopford Brooke. "His soul fared forth (as from the deep home-grove Tlie faUuT-songster plies the hour-long quest), To feed his soul-brood huiiKering in the nest ; But his warm Heart, the mother-bird, above Their callow fledgling progeny still hove With tented roof of wings and fostering;,breast Till the Soul fed the soul-brood. Richly blest From Heaven their growth, whose food was Human Love. " Yet ah' like desert pools that show the stars Once in long leagues.-even such the scarce-snatched hours Which d -epening pain left to his lordliest powers :- Heaven lost through spider-trammeled prison bars. Six years, from sixty saved I Yet kindling skies Own them, a beacon to our centuries.' Dante Gabriel Rossettt. "He has been admirably compared by Mr. Swin- burne to a footless bird of paradise. Another great poet, Mr Swinburne's friend, Dante Rossetti, has a tar differ- ent comparison, though here also to a bird, in his sonnet on Coleridge, and the lines are valuable, at least as containing a fragment of sound criticism. " (Here fol- lows the sonnet.) ... "'I conceive the leading pent about Coleridge's work,' wrote Dante Rossetti, 'is its human love' ; and yet Rossetti least of all men could be insensible to its romantic beauty or the incantation of its verse If we could express the whole truth about so THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER Colerids,'e, we must find some mode of reconciling- the conception of him as the footless bird of paradise with our knowledg-e of his affluent and sweet humanity." — Professor Dowdtn. ^'^Kubla Khan does not belong- to human life, and it stands alone for melody in English poetry. Whenever Coleridge rises into this exquisite melody in its perfec- tion, Lc also rises into that subtilized imaginative world of thought, half supernatural, half natural, which was special to him, and which pervades The Ancient Mariner and Christabel and a few other poems. The music and the sphere of the poem are partly beyond this world of ours. Yet in part they touch it." — Rev. Stopford Brooke. "In precisely the same way, I suppose, as the best journalists — i. e., those that give the most vivid impres- sions of what they have seen to their readers — are men who have apparently devoted a wonderfully short space of time to their observations, so it would seem that for the writing of real sea poetry an extended acquaintance with maritime conditions is not merely un- necessary but hampering. I have come to this conclu- sion reluctantly but inevitably, for in common with all reading seafarers I have noticed that we may look in vain for sea poetry from sailors. Sailors have written verse. Falconer's Shipwreck to wit, but between that peculiar poem and the marvelous majesty, profound insight, and truly amazing knowledge of deep sea secrets exhibited in The Ancient Mariner how great a gulf is fixed. " 'Only those who brave its dangers comprehend its mystery,' rings true, and yet it is no less true that Longfellow, very little more of a sailor than Colerid"-e, has also interpreted the mystery of the mighty ocean in BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 5» a manner (most sailors think) only second in true poetic power to that of Coleridge. To the well-read sailor— and there are far more of them than one would imagine, remembering the poverty of his literary output— Cole- ridge always stands easily highest, Longfellow next, and Byron next as the interpreters of the voices of the sea. . . ."—F. T. Bullen, Literature, April ij, igoi, page 281. It is only necessary to read Coleridge's poems atten- tively, and with some regard to the order of their pro- duction, to appreciate the value of the foregoing critical estimates. The early poems will be found extravagant in their sentiment, rhetorical and redundant in their expression. Occasionally, as in the Songs of the Pixies, and in that delicate fragrant Lewti, there occur lines and phrases that seem to anticipate the elfin melodies of his riper maturity; but, as a whole, these early poems only survive on the strength of his later reputation. They serve at the most to show the general direction of his intellectual opinions, and to illustrate the singular effervescence of his sympathies. Mr. Walter Pater has drawn attention to the sudden blossoming and the no less sudden decay of Coleridge's poetical powers. In swift succession upon his intimacy with Wordsworth, and, it is to be feared, in singular ac- cord with his addiction to the opium habit, we find him producing poems that are absolutely unique in their kind, unparalleled and unapproached in English litera- ture. With a like suddenness the flood of inspiration ebbed away, and for the thirty closing years of his life Coleridge's utterances in verse are fragmentary and un- equal. " The cause of this decline and fall was opium eating," writes Mr. Stopford Brooke; and we are even justified in assuming that the stimulus of opium before f- i JtoMi 5^ THE KIME OK THE AMTENT MAKINEK Ills faculties j^rew jaded from its excessive use hud not a little to do with the sudden and luxurious blossoming' of his brief poetic season. The poetry of the years 1797- 1798 stands markedly apart from and above the poetry which immediately preceded it, and its charm is pecul- iarly derived from its supernormal qualities. The years which follow are marked by desultory and despairinj^ efforts to regain this fugitive magic. "Opium gives and takes away," De Quincey said. "It defeats the steady habit of exertion ; but it creates spasms of irregular exertion. It ruins the natural power of life; but it creates preternatural paroxysms of intermitting power. . . . We are of opinion that it killed Coleridge as a poet. Poetry can flourish only in the atmosphere of h.ippiness. But subtle and perplexed investigations of difficult problems are among the commonest resources for beguiling the sense of misery." This creative period of Coleridge's genius produced three of the most remarkable poems in the language, Kublii Khan, The Ancient Mariner, and Christabel, where his weird imagination explores the unearthly realms of the supernatural ; and a number of only less remarkable poems, in which he gives expression to his ardent human sympathies, whether inspired by tranquil domestic incidents, as This Lime Tree Bower my Prison, The Nightingale, etc., or occasioned by the agitating po- litical conditions of those unsettled times, as France and Fears in Solitude. His peculiar place among English poets is undeniably held by virtue of the three first-named poems ; but Professor Dowden has done well to insist upon the excellence of those other poems which represent at once the human and the artistic side of his genius. The qualities which have gained Coleridge his dis- tinguished place among English poets are not difficult BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 53 perhaps to analyze, yet we may never hope to have them reproduced by another poet with a like subtleness of instinct and in so perfect a fusion. He commands the regions of the supernatural, but at the same tims he makes his appeal to us from the region of human sym- pathies. The readers of his poetry will be surprised by the grace and suggostiveness of his allusions to Nature when, as in This Lime Tree Bower ^ he seeks to repro- duce with delicate exactitude her subtler appearance of beauty, and will also be astonished to observe his power to evoke her grander attributes, as in the sublime ex- ordium to the Ode to France, and in the passages of The Ancient Mariner which reproduce the free untrammeled aspects of the sea and sky. It may be confidently said, in conclusion, that Cole- ridge fills an unique position among English poets. The verbal felicities of his diction, Jind the strangeness and beauty of his imagination, are his most distinctive claims to greatness. Yet his verse rarely rises from mere melody to the hsgher regions of poetic harmony. His instrument is a flute of incredible sweetness, but the organ roll of Milton gives forth a deeper and a richer sound. Again, his imaginative vision is unique, but it is at the same time abnormal and limited in range. He has not the emotional fervor which lyrical poetry de- mands, and his odes are the outcome rather of intellec- tual conviction than of passion. The Ode to Dejection, which draws its inspiration from the intensity of his despair, is the only poem in which we hear the gi i le lyrical cry. His dramas are not successful, for he lacked constructive ability, and his metaphysical views oi life disturbed his vision. But whatever deductions we may find it necessary to make, nothing can alter the fact that Coleridge was and 54 THE RIME OK THE ANCIENT MAKINEK J i will remain a force in English literature. A ier his short creative career it was impossible for linriish| • tr\ to relapse into the degenerate condition in which Coleridge found it, and from which Coleridge and Wordsworth labored successfully to set it free. To them we owe our advance from the cramping artificiality of the 'ij; i «enih century; and though our poetry may again bw or,n: over-cultivated and over-refined, the influence .1 ih(.'s; great poets will remain to point it permanei ry m its true direction. Coleridge the Philosopher The religious and political philosophy of Coleridge, and his metaphysical thoories in general, open up too wide a field for investigation here. A brief statement must therefore suffice. John Stuart Mill, the exponent of a very different philosophy, paid to Coleridge this tribute: "No one has contributed more to shape the opinions among young men, who cm be said to have any opinions at all." Although this generous estimate is not confined to his theologicaJ influence, it is never- theless within the domain of religious thought that his philosophical teaching has proved most stimulating. Coleridge as Political Philosopher Coleridge's political viovvs are represented by the Pantisocratic scheme in his revolutionary youth, and in his maturer years I>y his articles in the Afoniing Posi of 1 799- 1 802, and by the following works of a stil later period; Statesman's Manual (1816), Second my Sermon (1817), The Friend (1818), and Church and Stall ( i8joj. BICKiKAPHK AL ^KK 1 1 M 55 Colerjd^'i ipproached the Fren h Revolution upnn the intellectual rather than the em* inal side, attracted by its spciious ri.!: in to firv: prim pies. He -vas nevuf other than repelled by its sa\age ahandonnurt to ^.^ sion ; and 'is 0(/e to France, or The Ret i ninth -■., ex- presses th( disillusionment which these excesses id this dv ortion of hich ideals enjfenL.cred ii his mi d. The invasion of S it norland by i.,c levolution v trot ps madepcrmanent tht alienation o hissy pathii Hence- forwma his contempt for K'ance was ;jssociareci -ith distru- of all r idical rr isures, .'.nd togetli wn? Wordsworth and Southey he idop cd ct servati\ ■ the ories that v ere almost reactionary in 'h«, s« ope. i 'is conservatism is liberally inter [feted h/ Pr 'esst r >ow- den as a desire "not to atte >pt dis iace t !d - v>nceplions in politics and mt s," h to d .. ver the vital centre ol each i-inct. ->n,' jk this from the .raditioii." icrust; ions of custom aad unil! -•liver ited LOLERIDGE AS A ReLIiUOIs f I.OSOPHt:! .MkTAPHYs CIA.N \D Coleridge in his •. irly years was a folic Prie.- jy ill religion and of I! lley ii= philosophy. asthce- fore a Unit. n, wj.ii ma ked tc>.uencte.s towards mate- rialism. He d, hov er, Irom hi^ vouth h en strongly attracted by )e ph r»hy t the nstics, and it was a revival of tl e tcnc ic \\ i h m.iJe him waver in his adherence ■ the mati iHsmc tneories ^f H.irtley. He easterly pcfw -d Herkeltv , 1 ibnitz, su '>pino a without finding a sec re foundatl ii ior his r^ u~ or philo- sophical fait I " I found myself all .iiuvit. Doubts rushed in. br> ce upoii me from the fountains of the great deep, anu fel' fro liie windows of heaven." I ^b THK RIME OF THK ANCIENT MARINER It was in this condition of spiritual bewilderment that he soujfht a refuge in Germany. He there fell under the influence of the German mystics, and vigorously perused the great modern systems of Kant and Schelling. Coleridge is therefore not a thoroughly original philosopher. His chief originality lies in his fruitful application of those borrowed theories to the conditions of Knglish religious thought. He found religion in Kngland dominated by the mechanical theories of Paley, and barely emerging from the comfortable deism of the eighteenth century. His life's work was devoted to making religion less purely mechanical, and lifting it to a higher moral and spiritual plane. Revelation resting upon miracles, and the existence of a God established by mechanical devices, had no Jippeal for him. Rather was his life a protest against this state of things; and in the nature of that protest against artificiality in the sphere of literature, morals, and religion, we find the true unity which binds his scattered work together. "In metaphysical specu- lation," writes Professor Dowden, "in ethics, in pol- itics, in theology, in biblical criticism, in the criticism of literature, he suggested a new exposition of received formulas. He quickened the sense of religion by reduc- ing or attempting to reduce dogma, imposed from with- out, to facts of the spiritual consciousness and their inner significance." Coleridge's religious teaching, we may conclude, is in a large measure responsible alike for the Broad Church and the Tract arian movements of the middle of the nineteenth century. The dominant single influence in the luigiish Church at that period, the Rev. V. D. Mau- rice, was confessedly a disciple of Coleridge. !i„ BIOGKAPHUAL SKETCH 57 COLKRIDGE THE CRITK Literary criticism, like theology, had been mechan- icallv inspired in the eighteenth century. Dryden had partially laid the foundations for a more generous system which should be at once comparatiye and h.stor..al m its scone His liberal principles, ho%yeyer, had sui.ored collapse, and Dr. Johnson, the huy-giyer of the e.ght- eenth century, was the incarnation of all that .s arbi- trary, dogma'tic, and artificial in the judgment of hterary products. His ^yas the magisterial-dictator.al method, proceeding from the assumption of certain fixed laxvs which mu!t imperatiyely be adhered to, or the hterary result was xyorthless in his eyes. The weakness of the system lay in the arbitrary application to modern cond.- tions of laws deriyed, for the most part, fro- .a t.m.d study of the lesser Latin poets. For Johnson therefore Milton's Co.,us was "a drama in the ep.c style mele- gantly splendid, and tediously instruct.ye ; m Lynd.s -the diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertam, and the numbers unpleasing"; and the .?.««./5;'deserye not any particular criticism. For of the best .t can only be sa.d That they are not bad, . . • these little p.eces may be dismissed without much anxiety." In Johnson s op.mon the summit of poetic excellence had been reached n Pone It was in vain to expect a further deyelopmet;c. ..New sentiments and new images others may produce ; but to attempt any further improvement of yers.ficat.on ..^1 be dangerous. Art and diligence have now done ;! betand what shall be added will be the effort of tedious toil and needless anxiety." Professor Herford concisely sums up the va ue of Colerid-e-s contribution to criticism as follows: "It was retrved for Coleridge and Carlyle to lay the toundafons 58 THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER (rii of the relative or historical method in criticism, with its attribute of catholic and many-sided sympathy. Every true poem was thence by its very nature original ; it presented universal truth under an absolutely indi- vidual form. It must therefore be judged, not by any external standard, but by the laws of the 'situation' from which it springs; and this can only be done when the critic imaginatively re-creates it in his mind, think- ing the poet's thought after him, sympathetically enter- ing into the whole process of its growth. It is the significance of the romantic criticism therefore to have substituted for the absolute method of judging by refer- ence to an external standard of 'taste,' a method at once imaginative and 'historical.'" ♦ "The change is significant. It makes the poet, not the critic, master of the situation. It implies that the critic is no longer to give the law to the poet ; but that, in some sense mon .r less complete, he must begin, if not by putting himself in the place of the individual writer as he was when at work on the individual poem, at least by taking upon himself— by making his own as far as may 'je— what he may con- ceive to be the essential temperament of the poet. ' f It is needless to say that though a spirit of unity pervades Coleridi,re's criticism, and binds it closely to other portions of his work, the criticism itself is pre- sented in his usual formless and haphazard manner. The volume devoted to Shakespeare ami Other Drama- tists IS the most coherent exposition of his views, but hardly surpasses in critical insight certain portions of the Biographia Literaria, the chapters more particularly which deal with the problem of Wordsworth's poetry. *C. H. Herford, Tlie Age of Words-vortti, pp. 5,, 5^. + C. E. y.-ius:h.iii, EugUsh Literary Criticism, London, Blackie & ^on, pp. Ixxxn, Ixxxiii. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 59 Simultaneously with the German Schlegel, Coleridge undertook to destroy the prevailing French estimate of Shakespeare as a "barbarian of genius," "a model of Gothic extravagance," who reached occasional heights of sublimity despite his constant abandonment of the beaten paths of art. Coleridge never denied that the great dramatist sometimes wandered astray from paths which others had beaten ; what he asserted was that he followed with implicit confidence the laws of his own intellect, that his judgment was in all respects commen- surate with his genius, and that his work attains in con- sequence to an organic unity which eludes the pursuit of artificial investigation. Into Coleridge's acute criticism of Wordsworth it is not necessary to enter. The Biographia Literaria, that curious medley of narrative, philosophy, and criticism, which contains his profound views upon his brother poet, interests the student of Coleridge's opinions more especially for its skilful application of his pM'osophical theories to the subject of literary criticism. Contemporary Opinions on the Ancient Mariner The Ancient Mariner was a puzzle to the critics of Coleridge's day, and a perplexing problem even to his own friends. Southey, impatient of its element of the marvellous, called it in The Critical Review "a Dutch attempt at German sublimity." The New Monthly characterized it as "the strangest cock and bull story that ever we saw." Wordsworth laid the blame on it for the failure of the Lyrical Ballads, and upon Coleridge's desire to withdraw it from the secor > Mon wrote the following patronising note : Note to the Ancient Mariner. — • can not refuse myself the gratification of informing such Readers as f < ■-. 1 I. 6o THE RIME Of THE ANCIENT MAKINER f I may have been pleased with this Poem or with any part of it, that they owe their pleasure in -ome sort to me ; as the Author was himself very desirou* that it should be suppressed. This wish had arisen from a consciousness of the defects of the Poem, and from a knowledge that many persons have been much displeased with it. The Poem of my Friend has indeed great defects; first, that the principal person has no distinct character, either in his profession of Mariner, or as a human being, who having been long under the control of supernatural impressions, might be supposed himself to partake of something supernatural ; secondly, that he does not act, but is continually acted upon ; thirdly, thai the events, having no necessary connection, do not produce each other; and lastly, that the imagery is somewhat too laboriously accumulated. Vet the Poem contains many delicate touches of passion, and indeed the passion is everywhere true to nature ; a great number of the stanzas present beautiful images, and are expressed with unusual felicity of language ; and the versification, tho' the metre is itself unfit for long poems, is harmonious and artfully varied, exhibiting the utmost powers of that metre, and every variety of which it is capable. It therefore appeared to me that these several merits (the first of which, namely, that of the passion, is of the highest kind) gave to the Poem a value which is not often possessed •by better Poems. On this account I requested of my Friend to permit me to republish it." This complacent criticism drew from Lamb the fol- lowing letter by way of rebuke : •♦For me I was never so affected with any human tale. After first reading it I was totally possessed with it for many da,\ s. I dislike all the miraculous part of it, but the feelings of the man under the operation of such H, m BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 6i scenerv dragged me along like Tom Pipe's magicwh.stle I totally diflfer from your idea that the Mariner should have had a character and profession. This .s a beauty in Gullivc/s Travels, where the mind is kept m a placid state of little wonderments; but the Ancient Manner undergoes such trials as overwhelm and bury all md.- viduality or memory of what he was-like the state ot a man in a bad dream, one terrible peculiarity ot which is, that all consciousness of personality is gone. \ our other observation is, I think as well, a little unfounded The Mariner, from being conversant in supernatura events, has acquired a supernatural and strange cast ot phrase, eye, appearance, etc., which frighten the wed- ding guest. You will excuse my remarks, because I am hurt and vexed that you should think it necessary, with a prose apology, to open the eyes of dead men that can not see." • The absolute uniqueness of the poem was realized by Coleridge himself alone in his generation. -The Anaent Manner can not be imitated, nor the poem Dyve. They may be excelled; they are not imitable." The Rime of the Ancient Mariner The poem was first printed anonymously in the first edition of the Lyrical Ballads, i79«. ^vith the ftle. The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere, tn Seven The text. p^^^^ and a brief prose argument prefixed. The second edition of the Lyrical Ballads, 1800. con- tained many important alterations in the text besides a consistent modernizing of the antiquated spelling. The Argument was extended as follows : " How a ^hip hav- ing first sailed to the Equator, was driven by storms 62 THE KIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER to the cold Country towards the South Pole ; how the Ancient Mariner, cruelly and in contempt of the laws of hospitality, killed a Sea-bird; and how he was followed by many stranye Judj,rements; and in what manner he came back to his own Country." (The most interesting chanjjes in the text are embodied in the notes of this present edition.) The poem was again reprinted in Lyrical Ballads, 1802 and 1805, without much change from the text of 1800, but with the omission cf the Argument. Further changes were made in the poem before its next appearance in the Sibylline Leaves, 1817, when the marginal gloss and the motto from Burnet* were also added. Subsequent editions before and after the poet's death contained no modifications worthy of note. Facile credo, Qtc. "I can easily believe that there are more Invisible than Visible beings in the Universe, .... but who shall declare to us the family of all these, and acquaint us with the Agree- ments, DiflFerences, and peculiar Talents which are to be found among them? [What is their work? Where are their dwelling-places?] It is true, Human Wit has always desired a knowledge of these things, though it has never yet attained it. ... I will own that it is very profitable, sometimes to contemplate in the Mind, as in a Draught, the Image of the greater and better World; lest the Soul, being accustomed to the Trifles of this present Life, should contract itself too much, and alto- gether rest in mean Cogitations; but, in the mean Time, we must take Care to keep to the Truth, and observe The motto ThMuas Burnet (?-i7i5) was mailer of tlu- Charterhouse Sibool and chaplain to William III. The extract in the motto is from Ins Arclueohgue Philosophiae, a treatise on the Origin of Thinps, * •' in _L BIOGRAPHICAL SKI-TCH 63 Circum- stances of composition, Moderation, that we may distinguish Certain from Uncertain Things, and Day from Night,"* The origin of The Ancient Mariner was described by Wordsworth to Miss Fenwick as follows : "In the autumn of 1797 [November] he (Coleridge), my sister, and myself started from Alfoxden pretty late in the afternoon with a view to visit Linton and the Valley of Stones, near to it. Ac- cordingly we set off and proceeded along the Quantock Hills toward Watchet, and in the course of this walk was planned the poem of The Ancient Mariner, founded on a dream, as Mr. Coleridge said, of his friend Mr. Cruikshank. Much the greatest part of the story was Mr. Coleridge's invention, but certain parts I suggested; for example, some crime was to be committed which should bring upon the Old Navigator, as Coleridge afterwards delighted to call him, the spectral persecution, as a consequence of that crime and his own wanderings. I had been reading in Shelvocke's Voyages a day or two before that, while doubling Cape Horn, they frequently saw albatrosses in that latitude, the largest sort of sea- fowl, some extending their wings twelve or thirteen feet •Suppose,' said I, 'you represent him as having killed one of these birds on entering the South Sea, and that the tutelary ..pirits of these regions take upon them to avenge the crime.' The incident was thought fit for the purpose and adopted accordingly. I also suggested the navigation of the ship by the dead men, but do not recollect that I had anything more to do with the scheme of the poem. The gloss with which it was subsequently accompanied was not thought of by either of us at the ^ij^P^ ^X least not a hint of it was given to me, and I •Translation of second edition by Mead and Toxton, London, 1736- 64 THIi RIME O/ THE ANCIENT MARINER I I t i have no doubt it was a gratuitous afterthought. We began the composition together on that, to me, memor- able evening. I furnished two or three Hues at the beginning of the poem, in particular, ' " And listend liko a three year's child : The Mariner had his will." "These trifling contributions, all but one, which Mr. Coleridge has with unnecessary scrupulosity recorded, slipped out of his mind, as well they might. As we endeavored to proceed conjointly (I speak of the same evening), our respective manners proved so widely diflfer- ent that it would have been quite presumptuous in me to do anything but separate from an undertaking upon which I could y have been a clog."* For Coleriages more philosophical account of the genesis of the poem we must turn to the fourteenth chapter of the Biographia Literaria: " During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbors, our conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of Nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colors of the imagination. The sudden charm, w hich accidents of light and shade, which moonlight or sunset, diffused over a known and familiar landscape, appeared to represent the practic- ability of combining both. These are the poetry of Na- ture. The thought suggested itself (to which of us I do not recollect) that a series of poems might be composed of two sorts. In the one, the incidents and the agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural ; and the excel- * Memoirs of William M'ordsivort/t, h\ Christopher Words- worth, London, 1S51, vol. i, pp. 107, 108:' Knights Wordsworth, vol. i, p. 198 t. BIOUKAHHICAL SKETCH 6$ lence aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real. And real in this sense they have been to every human being, who, from whatever source of delu- sion, has at any time believed himself under supernatural agency. For the second class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life ; the characters and incidents were to be such as w ill be found in every village and its vicinity where there is a meditative and feeling mind to seek after them, or to notice them when they present themselves. " In this idea originated the plan of the Lyrical Bal- lads, in which it w as agreed that my endeavors should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at. least romantic ; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth suffi- cient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling inalogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy cf custom, and direct- ing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us; an inexhaustible treasure, but for which, in consequence of the film of familianty and selfish solici- tude, we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that nc i er feel nor understand. "With thi: iew I wrote The Ancient Mariner, and was preparing, among other poems, the Dark Ladie and the Christabel, in which I should have more nearly real- ized my ideal than 1 had done in my first attempt. But Mr. Wordsworth's industry had proved so much I 66 THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER more successful and the number of his poems so much greater, that my compositions, instead ot forming' a balance, appeared rather an interpolation o( hclero^'ene- ous matter. Mr. Wordsworth added twoor three poems, written in his own character, in the impassioned, lofty, and sustained diction which is characteristic of his ge- nius. In this form the Lyrical BalUids were published. " — Biographia Literaria, chapter xiv. We thus observe the serious aim which stimulated the poet to the production of The Ancient Manner. We do indeed receive the further hint that the immediate stimulus was the desire to earn five pounds, but that fact hardly comes within the scope of a literary inquiry. The external suggestions are very interesting. The dream of Coleridge's friend Cruikshank is responsible for the phantom ship ; Wordsworth's suggestion, based upon a passage in Shelvocke's Voyage, is responsible for the albatross; and Wordsworth again claims respon- sibility for the navigation oi the ship by dead men. Cruikshank's dream has faded beyond power of recovery, but Shelvocke's Voyuge round the WoHd'xs still sufficiently easy of access. The passage describing the coast of Patagonia is as follows : "These (Pintado birds) were accompanied by Albitrosses, the largest sort of sea-fowl, some of them extending their wings twelve or thirteen feet. " The superstitious fear attaching to the albatross as a bird of ill omen is described in another passage. Cape Horn has been rounded and Captain Shelvocke continues as follows: "One would think it impossible that anything Jiving could subsist i i so rigid a climate; and indeed we all observed that we had not had the sight .i- * BIOURAPHICAL tiKETCH 67 of one fish of any kind, since we were come to the South- ward of the straits of le Mair, nor one .sea-bird, except a disconsolate black Albitross, who accompanied us for several days, hovering- about us as if lost himself, till Hatley (my second Captain), observing, in one of his melancholy fits, that the bird was always hovering near us, imagined from its color, that it might be some ill omen. That which, I suppose, induced him the more to encourage his superstition, was the continued series of contrary tf.-mpestuous winds which had oppress'd us ever since we had got into this sea. But be that as it would, after some fruitless attempts, at length, he shot the Albilross, not doubting (perhaps) that we should have a fair wind after it."* We may accept Wordsworth's statement that he suggested to Coleridge the navigation of the mariner's ship by dead men. But the idea of revivifying them by a troop of angelic spirits was, according to a writer in the Gentleman' s AfagiiBme ior October, 1853, borrowed from a tale of shipwreck narrated by Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, in the fourth century. The old sailor of the story was a solitary survivor of a ship's crew. He lived in great peril and agony alone upon the sea for many days; but forthwith the ship was navigated by a "crew of angels," and "steered by the Pilot of the World .... to the Lucanian shore"; the fishermen there saw a crew, whom they took for soldiers, and fled, but returned again when the old man showed them that he was alone, and towed him into harbor. Finally, the Athenamm for March 15, 1890, contains a review of a book by Mr. Ivor James, The Source of the Ancient Mariner (Cardiff: Owen, 1890). The claim is • A Voyasre round the Worttl, by Capt. George Shelvocke, Lonil., 1726, p. 7» f. ijr , I i^ 68 THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER i-| r here urged that Coleridge owed a great deal, especially in the nature of dcNcription, to an old book by a Captain Thomas James called the Strange and Dangerous Voyage . . . in his inlended Discovery of the Northwest Passage into the South Sea : London, 1633. Mr. Dykes Campbell considers it probable that Coleridge did, in fact, casually consult this book, and in the notes reference will be made to the possible borrowings, slight though they are. It is curious that this old book contains the idea of being brought home in a dream or trance, but this point Mr James has overlooked. "For mine owne part, I give no credit to them at all ; and as little to the vicious, and abusive wits of later Portingals and Spaniards: who never speak of any difficulties (i. e., in returnmg from the South Sea): as shoalde water, ice, nor sight of land : but as if they had been brought home in a dreame or en- gine," p. 107. In this connection, Mr. Dykes Campbell refers to Part VI of The Ancient Mariner, and quotes the marginal gloss: "The Mariner hath been cast into a trance : for the angelic power causeth the vessel to drive northward faster than human life could endure." The Metre of the Ancient Mariner The metrical line employed by Coleridge for this poem is technically known as the "septenarius. " The second stanza will serve as a normal example of the type (rt = accented, j: = unaccented): /ide,f ♦»""*•! I r I 3 accents I The Bridegroom's doors are open wi X a X a X a And I am next of kin ; X a X a X a X a / •> The guests are met, the feast is set : j ♦ »ccent» j X a X a X a I j May'st hear the merry din. [^3 accent* j accents ,■ 7 accents BIOURAI'ltlCAL SKETCH 69 The stanza, therefore, really consists of two lines each of seven feet, hence the name. The rime words naturally occur at the seventh foot. In the stanza as here written, the second and fourth lines have a corre- sponding rime, whereas the first and third never rime with each other, although they may contain internal rimes — e. g., met: set. The departures from the regu- lar type consist in the frequent introduction of un;.> cented syllables, chiefly in the introductory foot (as in lines 2 and 3 of the first stanza); and in the addition of lines, until the quatrain becomes a quintain, some- times a sextain, and in one place is expanded to nine lines (U. 203-211). ■iw wEA THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER f i It m Facile credo, plures esse Naturas invisibiles quam visibiles in rerum universitate. Sed horum omnium familiam quis nobis enarrabit, et gradus et cognationes et discrimina et singulorum munera? Quid agunt ? quae loca habitant? Harum rerum notitiam semper ambivit ingenium humanum, nunquam attigit. Juvat, interea, non diffiteor, quandoque in animo, tamquam in tabula, majoris et melioris mundi imaginem contemplari : ne mens assuefacta hodiemae vitae minutiis se contrahat nimis, et tota suhsidat in pusillas cogitationes. Sed veritati interea invigilan- dum est, modusque servandus, ut certa ab incertis, diem a nucte, distinguauiTis. T. BiRNET, Arckteol. Phil., p. 68. ARGUMENT. How a Ship having passed the Line was driven by storms to the cold Country to'.vards the South Pole j and how from thence she made her course to the tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific Ocean ; and of the strange things that befell ; and in what manner the Ancyent Marinere came back to his own Country. («798.1 i i iUk THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER JN SEVEN PARTS PART I It is an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three. '•By thy long gray beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp'st thou me? The Bridegroom's doors are open wide. And I am next of kin ; The guests are met, the feast is set : May'st hear the merry din." He holds him with his skinny hand, "There was a ship," quoth he. ••Hold off! unhand me, graybeard loon!" Eftsoons his hand dropt he. An ancient Mariner mecteth thrre Gal- lants bidden to a wed- ding feast, aad detain- eth one. I. The abrupt opening is characteristic of ballad poetry. 3. glltt^rinf . Show the appropriateness of the word. See ♦he final note. 7. Note the internal rime. Point out other examples. Ob- serve the effectiveness of the contrast expressed in the openings stanzas — worldly joy on the one hand, spiritual mystery on the ether. 10-12. Note the rich rime, hi : he. 13. UXaiWya'A- soon afUr, forthwith. ' (73) 74 THE RfME OK THK ANflEXf MAKINER The Wed- ding-Ouest itapelllYt>und by the eye ot the old sea- ij farini; man. and con- Htraiiied to hear his tale The Mariner jj tells how the ship sailed south- ward with good wind and fair weather, till it reached the Line. 30 He holds him with his glittering tye — The Weddiny-Guest stood stifi, And listens like ;i thr*'-« years' chiki : The Mariner hath his wHl The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone : He cannot choose but hear; And thus spake on that ancient man, The bright-eyed Mariner. "The ship was cheered, the harbor cleared, Merrily did we drop Below the kirk, below the- hill, Below the light-house top. The sun came up upon the left, Out of the sea came he! And he shone bright, and on the right Went down into the sea. Higher and higher every day, Till over the mast at noon — " The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast, For he heard the loud bassoon. 13. He holds, etc. T!io mesmeric spell is complete, and tliere is no longer nood to holil him with his hand, as in line 9. 15, 16. CoMiributod by Wordsworth. 18. hear. Looso rimes as hear: mariner are a common lii-oiiso ill popular ballads. Point out other examples. Compare lines 3S-40 for a repetition of lines 18-20 (another ballad ciiarac- teristic). See also lines 588-51^0 for a recurrence to the same idea. 20. The bright-eyed Mariner. Epithets and fig^ures are of the simplest and most eonventional character in the old ballads. Is brii;lil-tyed mere y conventional here? 22. drop. HiTc used in the nautical sense— to put out to sea with the eblMii); tide. 25 1. See the note \o line 25 I., lor Lowell's estimate of Cole- ridge's descriptive powers. THE RIME OF THE AN'CIENT MARINER 75 The bride hath paced into the hall, Red as a rose is she ; Nodding their heads before her goes The merry minstrelsy. The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast, Vet he cannot choose but hear ; And thus spake on that ancient man, The bright-eyed Mariner. "And now the Storm-blast came, and he Was tyrannous and strong : He struck with his o'ertaking wings, And chased us south along. With -sloping masts and dipping prow, As who pursued with yell and blow Still treads the shadow of his foe, .\nd forward bends his head, The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast. And southward aye we fled. And now there came both mist and snow, And it grew wondrous cold : And ice, mast-high, came floating by. As green as emerald. The Wed- ding-Guest heareth the bridal rnu- 35 sic ; but the Mariner continueth hi« tale. The ship driven by a storm to- wards the south pole. 45 37. The Weddingr-Guest he beat, in the ballads, the repe- tition of the subject was not uncommon ; e. j;., " Our king he kept a false slewarde." Sir Aldingar, line i (Percy's Reliqites). 45. With sloping masts. Analyze the figure in this stanza, and develop its full force. 46. As who pursued. Supply the antecedent. Its omission is archaic. Cf.: " As who should say, ' I am Sir Oracle.' Shakesfieare, Merchant of Venice, I, i. 53-54. cold: emerald. 1798 edition, cauld: emerauld. 76 THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER Thciandof a And throufifh the drifts the i.iowy clifts ice, and of ° ^ ' Did send a dismal sheen : Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken — The ice was all between. fearful ■ounda, where no livinfc things wai to be •ecn. The ice was here, the ice was there, 60 The ice was all around : Itcrackedandgrowied, and roared and howledi Like noises in a swound ! At length did come an Albatross : Thorough the fog it came ; Till a rreat ■ra-bird, called the came ' 65 As if it had been a Christian soul, ■iiow'-foK, We hailed it in God's name. and tvas re* ceived with great joy and hoipitality. It ate the food it ne'er had eat, And round and round it flew. The ice did split with a thui>.- li^ht throug^h the drift- ing mist and snow, or shed a " dismal sheen " upon the drifting ice-packs.— the SnOWy eliftS. CUf/s is a secondary form of ciiffs, and probably influenced by c/i/t, a secondary form of cle/t. 56. sheen. Denve the word. C/. line 314 for its ute as an adjective 57. ken = to see. More commonlj- a noun. 61. Note the onomatopoeic effect. 64. Thorough ^/AroMi'A. Cf. thoroughfare, 69. thunder-flt. A noise resembling' thunder. ii& I THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 77 In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud, " ooTthwird. . . r _:^<>. through foB It perched for vespers nme, andfloatioK Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke ^■ white, Glimmered the white moon-shine." ••God save thee, ancient Mariner! From the fiends, that plagut ihee thus !— - jriiteifi the Why look'st thou so?"— "With my crossbow p^^^^ I shot the Albatross. Th« ancient Mariner 80 inhospitably ■■■ !th ' ■ PART II The sun now rose upon the right : Out of the sea came he. Still hid in mist, and on the left ' Went down into the sea. And the good south wind still blew behind, But no sweet bird did follow. Nor any day, for food or play. Came to the mariners' hollo ! And I had done a hellish thing, And it would work 'em woe : For all averred, I had killed the bird That made the breeze to blow! His ship- mates cry out against the ancient Mariner, tor killing the bird of good luck. 76. yeSl»TS = evenings. Latin vesper, evening star, evening, ^/f " " Black vesper's pageants." Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, IV, xiv, 8. 77. Whiles. Cf. the adverbial "5" of e/tsoons, line 12. It is an archaic ba'lad form. 70 God save thee. The dramatic force of the interruption eives'added intensity to the confession wrung from the Manner. What does the story gain by the character of the Wedding- Guest ? . . . .• 81. The Sun now rose. The course of the vessel is indi- cated by the same poetic expedient as above in lines 25 f. 5 78 THE KIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 4^- 95 Ah, wretch! said they, the bird to slay, That made the breeze to blow ! Nor dim nor red, like God's own head, The glorious Sun uprist : Then all averred, I had killed the bird But when the for cleared off, they justify the same, and thus i i <• • • make them- loo That brought the fog and mist. selves ac- . • . • , ■ • ■ ■ wompiicesin Twas right, said they, such birds to slay, the crime. _,, , . , - ' , . That bring the fog and mist. The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew. The furrow followed free ; The fair breeze con- tinues; the ■hip enters the Pacific lo., We were the first that ever burst Ocean, and sails north- Into that silent sea. w.ird.even until it reaches the Line. The ship hath been suddenly becalmed. Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, 'Twas sad as sad could be ; And we did speak only to break •» The silence of the sea! All in a hot and copper sky, The bloody Sun, at noon, Right up above the mast did stand, No bigger than the Moon. IIS Day after day, day after day. We stuck, nor breath nor motion ; 97. hOad. State the grammatical relation of this word. Why did the sun previously rise " dim and red " ? 98. UJiriSt = uprose. A Chaucerian form, and usually em- ployed as a substantive. loi. The crew render themselves accomplices in crime. 103 f. Note the alliteration throug-hout this stanza. 107. the sails dropt down. This does not mean that they were lowered, for see lines 311, 312, in - II 5. Note the accuracy and minuteness of the observation. 1 15. Day after day. What force does the repetition give to this passage? C/. lines 119, 121, 125, 143 f., etc. THE KIME OP THE ANCIENT MARINER 79 As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean. Water, water, everywhere. And ail the boards did shrink ; Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink. The very deep did rot : O Christ ! That ever this should be ! Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs Upon the slimy sea. About, about, in reel and rout The death fires danced at night ; The water, like a witch's oils, Burnt green, and blue, and white. And the Albatross i'W. Cf.: " Have I a tongue to doom my brother's death. And shall that tont^ue grive pardon to a slave ? " Shakespeare, Richard III, II, i. 133. fathom. Parse. 8o THE RIM., or THE ANl lEN i MARIV'EK S3, would lain throw the whole fuilt on the ancient Mariner : in ■ign whereof they hanK thedeadiea- bird round hit neck. MS The nncient Mariner beholdclh a xign in the element afar otf. 'SO Instead of the cross, the Albatross About my neck was hung. PART III There passed a weary time. Each throat " Was parched, and ^'•lazed each eye. A weary time ! a weary time ! How ghized each weary eye, When looking westward, I beheld .A something in the sky. .\t first it seemed a little speck. And then it seemed a mist : It moved and moved, and took at last A certain shape, I wist. A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist! And still it neared and neared : .\s if it dodged a water-sprite, It plunged and tacked and veered. With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, We could nor laugh nor wail ; Through utter drought ail dumb we stood ! I bit my arm, 1 sucked the blood, .\nd cried, A sail! a sail! With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, Ai^apc they heard me call : 152. WiSt = *no«i. (Cf. I trow.) 155. dodged. Comment on tho use of the word here. Is it dignified ? \\ Iwt, in brii-f, was Wordsworth's theory of poetic diction i"- water-sprite. Sprite is a doublet of spirit. 157. with black lips baked- Explain the appropriateness of the labials. ".« At iiv nearer approach, it seeincthhim to be a (hip: andatadear ransom he freeth his 160 ■peech from the lionds of thirtt. I • g THE RIME OF THE AM IKNT MARINER 8l Gramercy! they for joy did ^'rin, And all at once their breath drew in, As they were di a, king all. See! See! (I cried) she tacks no more! Hither to work us weal ; Without a breeze, without a tide, She steadies with upright keci ! The western wave was all aflame, The day was well-nigh done ! Almost upon the western wave Rested the broad bright Sun ; When that strange shape drove suddenly Betwixt us and the Sun. And straight the Sun was flecked with bars, (Heaven's MoiIk send us grace!) As if through a dungeon-grate he peered With broad and burning face. Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat loud) How fast she nears and nears ! Are those her sails that glance in the Sun, Like restless gossameres? Are those her ribs through which the Sun Did peer, as through a grate? A ria>h of joy. '(>% Anil horror follow!. For can it be a ship that coma* onward 17a without windur lid*? •75 It leemaili him but th« •kelaton of aahip. 180 And its ribi 185 are teen ai bars on the face of the An 164. Gramercy = French f^rand merci, great thanks, exclamation expressive of gratitude mingled with surprise. 166. As they. Supply the ellipsis. 170. She steadies, etc. She sails on an even keel. 179, 180. Develop the force of the simile. 183! How fast, etc. The repetition expresses the relentless approach of the phantom ship. 184. ffOSSamepeS = fine-spun cobwebs. Literally = goose- summer, alluding to the downy appearance of the film, and to the time )f its appearance. 18s 1. See the note to lines 185 f., for Professor Dowdens comme.it with reference to the repression of gruesome detail. •^ % i\ P }'\ \ ■ \ , li I \ VmmfM MICROCOPY RESOLUTION TEST CHART (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) 1.0 I.I 1^ 2.8 1^ 2.5 2.2 2.0 1.8 ^ APPLIED INA^GE Inc S7. 1653 East Mam Street S'.S Rochester. New York 14609 USA ,^B (716) 482 - 0300 - Ptione ^g (716) 288 - 5989 - fax 82 THE KIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER il setting' Sun. The Spec- tre-woman and her Death- mate, and no other on board the 190 skeleton- ship. Like vessel, like crew ! And is that Woman all her crew? Is that a Death? and are there two? Is Death that woman's mate? Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold : Her skin was as white as leprosy, The Night-mare Life-in-Death was she, Who thicks man's blood with cold. The naked hulk alongside carriC, And the twain were casting dice ; 'The game is done! IVewon! I've won!* Quoth she, and whistles thrice. The Sun's rim dips ; the stars rush out : At one stride comes the dark ; With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea, Off shot the spectre-bark. ofthl'Moon^ We listened and looked sideways up! P^ear at my heart, as at a cup, 205 My life-blood seemed to sip! The stars were dim, and thick the night. The steersman's face by his lamp gleamed white ; From the sails the dew did drip — Till clomb above the eastern bar «io The horned Moon, with one bright star Within the nether tip. Death and Life-in- 193 Death have diced for the ship's crew, and she (the latter) winneth the ancient Mariner. No twiligfht aoo within the courts of the Sun. 198. and whistles thrlee. For the .■superstitious force of these words, see the note to line 198. 199, 200. The sudden closinjf in of night within the tropics is magnificently described in two brief lines. 204, 205. FeaP at my heart, etc. Discuss the trope. 211. Within the nether tip. What poetic license exists here? THE RIME OF THE ANXIENT MARINER 83 One after one, by the star-dogged Moon, Too quick for groan or sigh, Each turned his face with a ghastly pang, And cursed me with his eye. Four times fifty living men, (And I heard nor sigh nor groan) With heavy thump, a lifeless lump, They dropped down one by one. The souls did from their bodies fly — They fled to bliss or woe ! And every soul, it passed me by. Like the whizz of my cross-bow !" One after another. "5 His thip. mates drop down dead. ' ajo But Life-in> Death begins her work on the ancient Mariner. PART IV "I fear thee, ancient Mariner! The Wed. t r .1 • • 1 J • dingr-Guest I tear thy skmny hand ! 1*5 feareth th«t And thou art long, and lank, and brown, talking to * • « "111 1 him; As IS the ribbed sea-sand. • I fear thee and thy glittering eye, And thv skinnv hand so brown." — 212 by = wnafer. 213. Too quick. This has been explained according- to its original meaning of "living," as in the expression "the quick and the dead." Anglo-Saxon cwic. It seems better to take it in its usual sense = swift I)', and to supply an ellipsis, such as, "they fell too guici for groan or sigh.' 217. Four times fifty, a poetic periphrasis. 218. thump: lump. What is the effect of the rime? 223. my CrOSS-bOW- The events of the |K>em did not there- fore occur after the sixteenth century. Read carefully the quot- ation from Walter Pater (note to lines 222, 223), which discusses the supernatural element in 77te Ancient Mariner. 224. I fear thee, etc. Compare the Wedding-Guest's inter- ruptions now with those at the outset. 226, 227. Contributed by Wordswcrth. f ■ ■ ill 84 THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER a^o "Pear not, fear not, thou Wedding-Guest I P I 11 = i I Bui the ancitrnt -i:::.7h This body dropt not down. him ot his bodiij lite. Alone, alone, all, all alone, and proceed- ' ethtoreiiite Alone on ii wide wide sea! his horrible penance. And nevcf a saint took pity on Hedespispth thecrcatures of the calm. '35 My soul in agony. The many men so beautiful ! And they all dead did lie: And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived on ; and so did I. Andenvieth that they 240 I looked upon the rottinir sea. ihould hve ' » > andt many And drew my eves awav: 1?"! uead. "^ •' - ' I looked upon the rotting deck, And there the dead men lay. I looked to Heaven and tried to pray; »4s But or ever a prayer had gusht, A wicked whisper came, and made My heart fl^ dry as dust. I closed my lids, and kept them close, And the balls like pulses beat; 234. Never a = nof one. 236. The many men, etc. His soul is full of reproach that Death should be so ruthless and wanton in his choice of victims, while sparinj; himself, the chief offender, and the debased crea- turos of the slime. There is no regeneration possible for the heart which harbors contempt or pride. 244. I looked to Heaven, etc. Why could the Mariner not pray? What spiritual significance may be attached to this? C/. the King's speech in Hamlet: " Pr.-iy can I not. Though inclination be assharp as will : My .stronger guilt defeats my strong intent." Shakespeare, Hamlet, III, iii. 345. OWfW = before ever, 245-247. gusht : dust. Imperfect rime. THE RIME OK THE ANCIENT MARINER 85 For the sky and the sea, and the sea and »*> the sky Lay like a load on my weary eye, And the dead were at my feet. m The cold sweat melted from their limbs, Nor rot nor reek did they : The look with which they looked on me Had never passed away. But the curse liveth for him in the eye of 3 j5 the dead men. An orphan's curse would drag to Hell A spirit from on high ; But oh ! more horrible than that Is a curse in a dead man's eye! «6o Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse, And yet I could not die. The moving Moon went up the sky. And no where did abide : Softly she was going up. And a star or two beside — In his lone< linets and fixedness he yearneth 365 toward the journeyinf Moon, ana the stars that still so* journ, yet still move onward ; and everywhere the blue sky belongs to them, and 14 their appointed rest, and their native country and their own natural homes, which they enter unannounced, as lords that are '•ertainly expected and yet there is a silent joy at their arrival. Her beams bemocked the sultry main. Like April hoar-frost spread; But where the ship's huge shadow lay, 254. reek. Literally, smoke, but here probably sme/l. Cf. German riechen, to smell. 261. Seven days, etc. Cf. the final note to line 2. 263 f. Do these lines, which attribute a healinjj power to Nature, correspond with the view expressed in the Ode to Dejec- tion, especially stanza iv ? 267-281. These lines show a stronjj romantic feelinjf for color. Who are the jjreat masters of color in English poetry ? What other fine color effects are there in this poem ';" i II a 86 THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER »7o By the light of the Moon hebehuldeth God's crea- tures of the great calm. »7S aSo Their beauty and their happiness. Heblesseth t8j them in his heart. The charmed water burnt alway A still and awful red. Beyond the shadow of the ship I watched the water-snakes : They moved in tracks of shining- white, And when they reared, the elfish 'ght Fell off in hoary flakes. Within the shadow of the ship I watched their rich attire : Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, They coiled and swam; ai i every track Was a flash of golden fire. O happy living things ! no tongue Their beauty might declare : A spring of love gushed from my heart, And I blessed them unaware! Sure my kind saint took pity on me, And I blessed them unaware. The spelt begins to break. The selfsame moment I could pray; And from my neck so free ago The Albatross fell off, and sank Like lead into the sea. i' 9' P.ART V Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing, Beloved from pole to pole ! To Mary Queen the praise be given ! 270. Chftrmed. Latin carmen. Explain the force of the word here in connection with its derivation. 271. red. What is the f^yntactical relation of this word? 282 f. Consult the note to these lines. 2qo. The Albatross fell off. With what may this be com- pared in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress? ra IP THE PIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 87 She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven, That slid into my soul. The silly buckets on the deck, That had so long remained, I dreamt that they were filled with dew ; And when I awoke, it rained. My lips we.e wet, my throat was cold, My garments all were dank ; Sure I had drunken in my dreams. And still my body drank. I moved, and could not feel my limbs: I was so light — almost I thought that I had died in sleep, And was a blessed ghost. And soon I heard a roaring wind : It did not come anear; But with its sound it shook the sails, That were so thin and sere. The upper air burst into life ! And a hundred fire-flags sheen, To and fro they wt hurried about! And to and fro, and in and out, The wan ^tars dam ed between. *9S By (race of the holy Mother, the ancient Mariner ia refreshed 300 with rain. i ! a^ He heareth ■ounds, 310 and teeth •trange tights and commotiont in the tky and the element. 3>5 297. silly = blessed. Shortened from early modem English seely, German selig. 300. And when, etc. Observe the metrical movement of this line. 303. drunken. Archaic as participle. 309 f. These ""trange commotions in Nature portend the re- animation of the feless bodies. 314. flre-flagS. Poetical and archaic for Htrhtning. — ^Sheen. See line 56, note. m pi THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER And the coming wind did roar more loud, And the sails did sigh like sedge ; 3»o And the rain poured down from one black cloud ; The Moon was at its edge. The thick black cloud was cleft, and still The Moon was at its side : Like waters shot from some high t, w The lightning fell with never a j A river steep and wide. Tke bodies a/ the ship'* aew are in- ^liredand the ship ■ovei on The loud wind never reached the ship, Yet now the ship moved on ! 'beneath the lightning and the Moon 330 The dead men gave a groan. They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose, Nor spake, nor moved their eyes ; It had been strange, even in a dream, To have seen those dead men rise. 335 The helmsman steered, the ship moved on ; Yet never a breeze up blew ; The mariners all 'gan work the ropes. Where they were wont to do ; They raised their limbs like lifeless tools — 340 We were a ghastly crew. The body of my brother's son Stood by me knee to knee : 318-326. See Rev. Stopford Brooke's comment in the final note. 321. The Moon, etc. Note the eflfective contrast. 322. The thick, etc. Comment on the verbal harmony of this line. 324-326. Discuss these lines as to me.aning- and form. 339-344- Note the intensity of the realism. 'I-I-^ 345 But not by the »ouli cf the men, nor by dsmona oi earth or middle air, but by a blessed ■THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 89 The body and I pulled at one rope, But he said nought to me." — "I fear thee, ancient Mariner!" "Be calm, thou Wedding-Guest! 'Twas not those souls that fled in pain, Which to their corses came again, But a troop of spirits blest : troop of an- KL'lic spirits. For when it dawned— they dropped their ^s" "" hli*" „-rnc vocation of '^'^'"^' the Kuard- And clustered round the mast ; '"" "'"'• Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths, And from their bodies passed. Around, around, flew each sweet sound. Then darted to the Sun ; Slowly the sounds came back again, Now mixed, now one by one. Sometimes a-dropping from the sky I heard the sky-lark sing ; Sorr ■=" all little birds that are, Ho ; *med to fill the sea and air Will. . sweet jargoning! And now 'twas like all instruments, Now like a lonely flute ; And now it is an angel's song. That makes the heavens be mute. 355 360 36s It ceased; yet still the sails made on A pleasant noise till noon, 362. jargoning^. Old Frtinchjargon, the sinj^injj of birds. 367-372. These lines, with their pentle melody, reveal Coleridge's power over the musical re-iourceH of our !;inj,-u;ij;e. The words themselves have the murmuring flow of a hidden 1 j ■> i t ilf:t ; 3 ^ !HfcB 1 i ^Hw ' i \ i \ ' T ■,; 1 1 a ^^B '" 90 THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER A noise like of a hidden brook 3^° In the leafy month of June, That to the sleeping- woods all night Singeth a quiet tune. Till noon we quietly sailed on, Vet never a breeze did breathe : sna Slowly and smoothly went the ship, Moved onward from beneath. The lone- ■ome ipirit from the (outh pole carries on the ship a* far at the Line, in obedience to the angelic troop, but still requireth vengeance. Under the keel nine fathom deep, From the land of mist anJ snow. The spirit slid : and it was he 380 That made the ship to g-o. The sails at noon left off their tune. And the ship stood still also. The Sun, right up above the mast, Had fixed her to the ocean : 38s But in a minute she 'gan stir, With a short uneasy motion — Backwards and forwards half her length With a short uneasy motion. Then like a pawing horse let go, 390 She made a sudden bound ; It flung the blood into my head, And I fell down in a swound. How long in that same fit I lay, I have not to declare ; The Polar Spirit ;> tel- low-da-mons, the invisible inhabitants 395 But ere my living life returned. brook. The peacefulnoss atid continuity of the ships motion could not be more felicitously described. 382. See the final note. .^04- I have not, etc. = I have not power to. S05- living life, in contrast with his former Life in Death, THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 9« I heard and in my soul discerned Two voices in the air. •Is it he?' quoth one, 'Is this the man? By him who died on cross, With his cruel blow he laid full lov,-, The harmless Albatross. The spirit who bideth by himself In the land of mist and snow, He loved the bird that loved the man Who shot him with his bow.' The other was a softer voice, As soft as honey-dew : Quoth he, 'The man hath penance done, And penance more will do.' PART VI of tKi el«- mcnl, take part in hit wronir; anJ two of tham relate, one to the other, that penance 400 long and heavy for the Ancient Mariner h.-tth been accorded to the Polar Spirit, who returneth southward. FIRST VOICE 'But tell me, tell me! speak again. Thy soft response renewing — What makes that ship drive on so fast? What is the Ocean doing?' SECOND VOICE 'Still as a slave before his lord. The Ocean hath no blast ; His great bright eye most silently Up to the Moon is cast — 4>S 397. Two voices. These voices probably represent Justice and Mercy. Justify this statement. 407. honey-dew. Drops of sugary substance found on the leaves and stems of plants. j 1 I i I I HI 9» THE KIME OF THE AN'CIENT MARINER If he may know which way to go; For she guides him smooth or grim. 4K> See, brother, see! how graciously She looketh down on him.' FIRST VOICE i 'But why drives on that ship so fast, Without or wave or wind?' The Mariner hath been cait into a trance; tor the anKelii: power cauK- eth the vct- tcl to drive northward faster than ... <• u u- i human lite 4>.f And closcs irom behind could en- dure. SECOND VOICE 'The air is cut awav before, Fly, brother, fly! more high, more high! Or we shall be belated : For slow and slow that ship will go, When the Mariner's trance is abated.' The Super- 430 I woke, and we were sailing on natural , , motion i« As in a gentle weather : the Mari'ner 'Twas night, calm night, the Moon was high, his penance The dead men stood together. begins anew. All Stood together on the deck, 435 For a charnel-dungeon fitter: All fixed on me their stony eyes. That in the Moon did glitter. The pang, the curse, with which they died, Had never passed away : 440 I could not draw iny eyes from theirs. Nor turn them up to pray. And now this spell was snapt : once more I viewed the ocean green. The curse is finally expiated. 418. Supply the ellipsis. 426 f. See the final note. THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 93 And looked far forth, yet little saw Of what had else been seen — Like one that on .i lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having' once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows, a frightful fiend Doth close behind hi-n tread. But soon there breathed a wind on me, Nor sound nor motion made : Its path was not upon the sta. In ripple or in shade. It raised my hair, it fanned my cheek Like a meadow-gale of spring — It mingled strangely with my fears, Yet it felt like a welcoming. Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship, Yet she sailed softly too : Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze — On me alone it blew. Oh ! dream of joy ! is this indeed The light-house top I see ? Is this the hill ? is this the kirk ? Is this mine own countree ? *u 4iid the anci'.'t 46'! Manner N-holdelh ;• :>attve .01 atry. 452. But soon, etc. Compare this with the wind described in lines 309 f. 457. Like a meadow-gale of spring. A sea-image redol- ent of the lard and memories of home. See the final note on lines 318 f. 458. It mingled strangely, etc. The Mariner is not quite sure whether to dread this wind or not. He remembers his former experience. 464 f. Compare lines 21 f. The evolution of the poem is completed. See the note to lines 464 f. 94 THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER We drifted o'er the harbor-bar, And I with sobs did pray — 470 O let me be awake, my God ! Or let me sleep alway. The harbor-bay v/as clear as glass, So smoothly it was strewn ! And on the bay the moonlight lay, 475 And the shadow of the Moon. The rock shone bright, the kirk no less, That stands above the rock : The moonlight steeped in silentness The steady weathercock. 480 And the bay was white with silent light, Till rising from the same, The angelic _ ,, , , , . spirits leave FuU many shapes, that shadows were, the dead , . , bodiei, In crimson colors came. And appear A little distance from the prow in their own form* of 48s Those crimson shadows were : I turned my eyes upon the deck — Oh, Christ ! what saw I there ! Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat, And, by the holy rood ! 490 A man all light, a seraph-man. On every corse there stood. 478. steeped in silentness. The peacefulness of this scene, in marked contrast with the unrest which had gone before, is re- iterated in the next line of this stanza, and in the stanza which follows, e.g., line 479, The Steady weathercock, and line 480, with silent light. 482, 483. that shadows were In crimson colors. Note the forcible antithesis. Point out other examples of verbal antithesis in The Ancient Mariner, a.nd of color contrasts in general. 489. And, by the holy rood! A ballad oath. TOQCi = cross. ^ I M THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER This seraph-band, each waved his hand : It was a heavenly sight ! They stood as signals to the land, Each one a lovely light ; 495 This seraph-band, each waved his hand ; No voice did they impart — No voice ; but oh ! the silence sank Like music on my heart. But soon I heard the dash of oars, am I heard the Pilot's cheer ; My head was turned perforce away, And I saw a boat appear. The Pilot and the Pilot's boy, I heard them coming fast : j*t Dear Lord in Heaven ! it was a joy The dead men could not blast. I saw a third — I heard his voice : It is the Hermit good ! He singeth loud his godly hymns S4S THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 97 ' Dear Lord ! it hath a fiendish look — (The Pilot made reply) I am a-feared '— ' Push on, push on ! ' Said the Hermit cheerily. The boat came closer to the ship, But I nor spake nor stirred ; The boat came close beneath the ship, And straight a sound w.is heard. Under the water it rumbled on, Still louder and more dread : It reached the ship, it split the bay ; The ship went down like lead. Stunned by the loud and dreadful sound, Which sky and ocean smote. Like one that hath been seven days drowned My body la' afloat ; But swift as dreams, myself I found Within the Pilot's boat. m Upon the whirl, where sank the ship, The boat spun round and round ; And all was still, save that the hill Was telling of the sound. I moved my lips— the Pilot shrieked ^ And fell down in a fit ; The ship suddenly stnketh. Sjo The ancient Mariner is caved in the Pilot's boat. 540. a-feared. Distinguish carefully by derivations a-feared and afraid. S4Q. The Ship went down like lead. This line is a strif power; And central peace, subsisting at the heart Of endless agitation. —Excursion IV, William Wordsworth was born on the 7th of April, 1770, at Cockermouth, Cumberland, on the verge of that lake country with which his name will alwavs be associated. He was the second son of five children BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH lOS born to John Wordsworth and Anne Wordsworth, the daughter of William Cookson, a mercer of F'enrith. His mother died of consumption when the poet was ei^ht years old, and his father died five years later, leavinjf no property save an unpaid claim upon the estate of the Earl of Lonsdale, whose agent for many years he had been. While his mother lived, William Wordsworth had been sent with small profit to schools at Cockermouth and Penrith. Upon her death, in 1778, his father sent him and his elder brother to the Grammar Granimar school at Hawkshead, where he remained, 1778-1787. boarding with a village dame, in thorough contentment until 1787, little hampered by discipline, satisfying his lively delight in reading as his fancy prompted him— old-world fables, Arabian Nights, Don Quixote, Fielding, and Swift, and roaming at will through the beautiful country-side, enjoying nature with all the zest of a healthy boy. Such unreflecting joy in nature was not, however, un tempered by feelings akin to awe such as are recorded in the memorable passage of "The Prelude," when a he was rowing down the silent lake, a grim peak, blacK and huge, towered up between him and the stars, and strode after him "with measured motion like a living thing." And often, even to his boyish vision, the external world seemed to fade, and substantial things lost the semblance of reality. ' ' 1 was often unable," he says, "to think of external things as having external existence, and I communed with all that 1 saw as something not apart from, but inherent in my own immaterial nature. Many limes while going to school have I grasped at a wall or tree Early feel- Ins for mystery In Mature. io6 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH h to recall myself from this abyss of idealism to the reality. " His masters weresympathetic and freefrom pedantry, if we may trust the idealized portrait which Wordsworth has left us of his favorite teacher, William Taylor, the Matthew of the poems. They never interfered with the healthy native impulses of boyhood, and few poets can look back upon a youth where the qualities of mind and body have had such freedom to expand. Coleridg-e was growing,'- pale in the unhealthy cloisters o( Christ's Hos- pital, while Wordsworth was roaming- the Esthwaite hills, moulded less by the lore of books than by the delicate influences of the woods and skies. In the poetic record of his own life these at least are the influences which he recalls with positive rapture ; Ve Presences of Nature in the sky And on the earth ! Ye Visions of the hills! .And Souls of lonely places' can I think A vulg:ar hope was yours when ye employed Such ministry, when ye throujjh many a year Haunting^ me thus amonjf my boyish sports, On cavos and trees, upon the woods and hills, Impressed upon all forms the characters Of dans^-er or desire, and thus did make The surface of the universal earth With triumph and delig^ht, with hope and fear, Work like a sea?* In estimating- the influences which moulded Words- worth's youth, we must accord to that of nature the first importance; yet the democratic spirit of rustic life, the humble, though noble, characters of the shep- herds and dalesmen of the north country among- whom he lived, were not without their effect, and could not /'/te Prelude. \. 464 f. BIOC.RAPHICAI. SKETCH 107 fail to stamp his mind with the ideals of .sincerity and simplicity that dominate his poetry upon the human side. Wordsworth's father had left his young family under the guardianship of two uncles, who managed when the time arrived to gather enough money to send William and hisjounger brother to the University of Cambridge. In October, therefore, of the vear 1787, St. John's , , ., , , College. Wordswort'i was duly enrolled as a student Cambridge. ^ ., ... „ , 1787-1791. of St. John's College. Like most h reshmen he entered residence with romantic visions of the future, but soon the feeling came over him that he "was not for that hour, nor for that place." After the untrammelled freedom of his boyhood the comparative restrictions of the university fretted his spirit, nor could he accommodate his mind to the narrow courses of study then prescribed. Intellectual life at Cambridge was stagnant, and for mathematics and theology which still commanded their zealous votaries, Wordsworth could simulate no enthusiasm. To the mortification of his guardians he systematically neglected his studies, and devoted such time as he gave to books to the modern languages, then as now despised in those conservative abodes of learning. But his vacations brought a renewal of his old en- thusiasms, and to a sunrise beheld at Hawkshead, during the first summer of his return, he ascribes the definite awakening of his poetic spirit : Magnificent The morning rose, in memorable pomp, Glorious as o'er I had beheld- in front, The sea lay laughing at a distance ; near. The solid mountains shone, bright as the clouds. Grain-tinctured, drenched in empyrean hght ; And in the meadows and the lower grounds •i Io8 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Was all till- sweetness of a common dawn — Dews, vapors, and the melody of birds, And laborers Ki''"K forth to till the fields. Ah ! need I say, dear Friend ! that to the brim My heart was full ; I made no vows, but Viiws Were then made for me ; bond unknown to me Was given, that I should be, else sinning- g^reatly, A dedicated Spirit. On I walked In thankful blessedness, which yet survives.* Wordsworth spent his second long: vacation in Derbyshire and Yorkshire, and in wandering about the Lake Country with his sister Dorothy and his old school companion and future wife, Mary Hutchinson. During the summer of 1790 he made a foreign tour with his friend, Robert Jones. With about £20 apiece, and all their belongings knotted in a handkerchief, they went on foot through northern France, then in the early fer- ment of the Revolution, into Switzerland and the Italian mountain lakes, and homeward by the Rhine. This journey was to bear fruit in his future poetry, but the immediate result of this systematic neglect of Takes his his studies was an undistinguished dee-ree Degree. 1791. ,.1, ^ . • , ^ without honors m January, 1791. Then followed a long period of hopeless irresolution. He passed three months in London, where he records that the moving scenes of the great city quickened at least his human sympathies. But his outlook was gloomy. He had offended his guardians by his want of assiduity, and he now alienated them completely by his apparent infirmity of purpose, and his seeming un- concern for the future. He spent the summer with his friend Jones in Wales, and in the late autumn he again set foot in France. * The Prelude, IV. t,it, f. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 109 France. 1791-1792. From Paris he passed on to Orleans, and thence in the early sprinj;' of 1792 to the town of Blois. He h;d hitherto been an astonished but unsympa- thetic spectator of the momentous drama of the Revolution. But now he, too, caught the blaze, and kindled with enthusiasm for what he judged a sacred cause. This change had been wrought in him by his growing friendship with Michel Beaupuy, a captain in the little garrison at Blois, and an ardent and noble-minded republican. The September mas- sacres in Paris did not suffice to disillusion him, and he seriously contemplated throwing in his lot with the Girondist party. A dearth of funds quite possibly saved his neck from the guillotine, for in December he was forced to forego his political dreams and return to his own country. With our preconceived ideas of Wordsworth's rever- ence for Order and established custom it is well nigh impossible for us to realize the vehemence sympathte". of his republican sympathies at this time. Soon after his return to England he found occasion to give expression to his advanced opinions. The country was divided between the discreet views of Edmund Burke, who relished the measured domina- tion of the past, and the incendiary theories of Paine and Godwin, who represented in England the most extreme tendencies in French thought, and desired a root and branch destruction of existing evils. For these thinkers the past was nothing less than a mighty blunder, and all modern institutions inherited from the past were founded on error. They advocated the abolition therefore of all government, and Godwin went so far as to urge the dissolution of the human ties of friendship, gratitude, and love as consecrated by the ■i no WILLIAM WORDSWORTH t! marriage bond. In their stead individual liberty would flourish, and reason (what they meant by the term is scarcely clear), would reign supreme. The early views of Wordsworth are tinged by these doctrines, and are plainly expressed in a letter which he addressed to Richard Watson, the Bishop of Llandaflf, in January, J 793. Never an advocate of violence he still could reconcile himself to the Reign of Terror, and to the execution of Louis X\T as a measure of indis- putable justice. The outbreak of war between Great Britain and France, in February, 1793, cast him into great mental distress. His philosophy and his patriotism were in conflict, and British reverses caused him exultant triumph. At this painful period of his life he was absorbed wholly by political thought and had sadly lapsed from his earlier innocent delight in nature. During the year 1793, with little enthusiasm and, as it were, poems, 1783. '"=ip^''l^i,''y f^^"" hisidleness, he prepared someof his early poems for publication — the Even- ing Walk, and the Dtscriptive Sketches. Coleridge declared that "seldom, if ever, was the emergence of an original poetic genius above the literary horizon more evidently announced." To the student of Wordsworth these poems are now chiefly of interest as showing the distance that his mind was able to traverse in a brief space from obscurity and artificiality to the clearness and naked simplicity of the "Lyrical Ballads." The sky was soon to clear for Wordsworth. The summer of 1793 he passed in the Isle of Wight with William Calvert. Early in 1794 he caught more than a fleeting glimpse of his sister Dorothy wlio had been jealously kept apart from him owing to their guard- II BIOGRAPHICAl. SKETCH III ian's mistrust of his radical opinions. Wordsworth still firmly persisted in his refusal to enter one of the liberal professions, but later in this same year a timely legacy released his mind from care, and made possible for him the only career in which he mi.i,'^ht confidently look for success and contentment. Raisley Calvert, the brother of his friend William, dying of con- beauos't'"' sumption in 1794, left the young poet a bequest of ;£.900, "from a confidence on his part," as Wordsworth writes, "that I had power and attainments which might be of use to mankind." With this modest sum, and little besides, he sup- ported his sister and himself for the next seven or eight years. In 1795 he became tutor to the son of Basil Montagu for the sum of ;^5o a year. Also through the Racedown ^'-^^'^ offices of Montagu he secured in the 1796. autumn of the same year, a farmhouse with orchard and garden, rent free, at Racedown in the southern part of Dorsetshire. Though his financial resources, slender indeed as they were, had now become less restricted, and the possibility of a poetic career seemed assured, it must not be supposed that his harmony of mind was at once restored. Indeed at Racedown he may be said to have reached the crisis of his mental distress, when disillu- sionment had begun to fall upon his ideals, and a new philosophy had not yet dawned for him. But the conditions were favorable for a restoration of his peace of mind. His dearly loved sister was his . companion, and as his old dreams fell into Wordsworth, worthless dust, she led him back to nature for consolation : She g.ive me eyes, she g'ave me ears, And humble cares, ami delicate fears ; ••1 41 :'■' 112 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH A heart the fountain of sweet tears; And love, and thought id joy.* Inevitably, we imajfine, Wordsworth would have been led of himself to revive his early love for nature, but the influence of his sister at this critical time can scarcely be over-estimated. She herself possessed the poet's eye, and almost the poet's faculty of expression, for Wordsworth seems to have caught some of his most felicitous phrases from her lips.f Her sympathy also for the simple manners of rustic -life was sincere, and it was her powerful inducement which stimulated her brother in the choice of his poetic themes. But for the present, the revolutionary leaven was still fermenting within him. In 1796, Coleridge, who had met him shortly before, describes him as "a repub- lican, and at least a semi-atheist." The poems upon which he spent his time in 1795-6 reveal how deeply he had imbibed the theories of the Revolution. These were : Satires, inveighing against the evils of society ; Guilt and Sorrow, a sombre poem of human suffering; and more particularly deserving mention. The Borderers, his sole dramatic eflort. In this ill-constructed and undramatic play, which Cole- ridge in his early enthusiasm ranked with Shakespeare's, Wordsworth finally purged his mind of the theories he had once revered. .\s Goethe exposed in "The Sorrows of Werther" the fatal results of unrestricted sentiment- alitv. and thus freed himself from the clutches of that disease, so Wordsworth, in "The Horderers," showed the disintegrating power of moral casuistry, masquerad- ing in the guise of reason. Defective though the play •Thf Sparrow's Nest. + Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal contains the jjerni, and touches eveaot_lhe phraseology of many of the poet's early lyrics. \\ BIOORAPHKAI. SKETCH "3 Wordsworth and Coleridge. The Words- worths at Alfoxden. may "oo, it is still of capital importance as showiny^ the proj^ressive evolution of Wordsworth's opinions. The final shock which definitively alienated the poet's sympathies from revolutionary France, was to come in 171)8, when the Republican armies invr Jed Switzerland, the ancient inviolate home oi' liberty. Wordsworth and Coleridije had first met towards the close of 1795, and by 1797 their intimacy had ripened into a close friendship. Colerid^'^e was livinif in 1797 at Nether Stowey, and in June paid the Wordsworths a visit at Racedovvn. In July, they visited him at Stowey, and while there they rented a house at Alfoxden, three miles away, their principal inducement, of course, beinjr Coleridg^e's society. "We are three people," said Coleridge, "but only one soul," and Miss Wordsworth's Journal amply confirms the state- ment. The critical importance of this period in Words- worth's development has already been shown. His effort had been to recover joy from the heart of despair, and to free himself from the exclusive domination of the reason- ing faculty. The habit of analysis had vitiated his mind, and well nigh paralyzed his emotional nature. A partial recovery he had indeed found in his renewed delight in nature, and now his intimacy with Coleridge was to aflFord him the path of escape from the bondage of reason. This escape Coleridge had already found in the mys- tic philosophies of Boehme, Swedenborg, and Spinoza, and in the writings of the great modern thinkers of Germany. "They contributed," writes Coleridge, "to keep alive the heart in the head ; gave me an indistinct, yet stirring and working presentiment, that all the pro^ 1 ' 114 WILLIAM WORPSWORTH ducts of the mere reflective faculty partook of death, and were as the rattlin^r twij^-s and sprays in winter, into wliich a sap was )et to be propelled, from some root to which I had not penetrated, if they were to afford my soul either food or shelter." These unfamiliar ideas assertinjf the supremacy of imaj,'ination and the emotions, and poured forth with the irresistible eloquence of his frit iJ, were like manna in the desert to Wordsworth. He had found the rcst- inj^ place his thoughts had so long sought in vain ; and urged onward by Coleridge's unfeigned admiration for his powers, and his growing confidence in himself, he entered upon a season of unexampled poetic activity. His genius had been slow to put forth blossom, but now the harvest was bounteous. Wordsworth's removal to Alfoxden in 1797 marks the turning point in his career. His faith in the specious humanitarian ideals of the revolutionary writers had yielded to saner views of life and human destiny. The region was beautiful enough to satisfy his renewed delight in the charms of nature. "There is everything here," Miss Wordsworth wrote in iier first enthusiasm, "sea, woods wild as fancy ever painted, brooks clear and pebbly as in Cumberland, villages so romantic; and William and I, in a wander by ourselves, found out a sequestered waterfall in a dell formed by steep hills covered with full-grown timber trees. The woods are as fine as those at Lowther, and the country more romantic; it has the character of the less grand parts of the neighborhood of the lakes." And finally, the stimulating society of Coleridge and an intellectual group of friends saved him from the narrowness of mind which his natural love of solitude would have surely engen- dered. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH "5 "The stream of his poetry, hitherto slender and intermittent, now began to gusli forth in an abundant tide. The Recluse, his great philosophical work, was projected and commeneed just at the time when Coleridge was composing his indignant ode to France. Almost all the Lyrical Ballads were written during BaUadf. **'*' spring and summer of 1798, a spring of excep- tional beauty in spite of its backwardness, a summer so marvellous that The Prelude looks back towards it as the brightest and sunniest the author had known since his boyhood. The loss of his last illusion concerning the Revolution, instead of destroying the joyousness of his spirit, taught him that in himself and in his comprehension of nature, he possessed an inexhaustible well-spring of happiness, against which no external disappoint- ment could prevail. Henceforth he was conscious of his own power to resist depression, and of the vitality of his own joyous spirit. Still a convalescent when he arrived, Wordsworth left Alfoxden cured. When he came, he was engaged in putting the finishing touches to Guilt and Sorrow, The Borderers, and The Ruined Cottage. On his departure, a year later, after addressing to Nature his first hymn of thanksgiving, written near Tintern Abbey, he carried away with him in manuscript about .1 thousand lines of his great consolatory poem. The Recluse. His self-identity, de- stroyed for H time by a crisis of despair, was restored. The link which was to connect his early years with those of his maturity was happiness; hapniness formerly spontaneous, but now the result of conscious reflection; at first mere lightness of heart, but a settled optimism at last. The years of doubt and gloom had fled, leaving behind them merely a fruitful impression, a salutary warning. Those which preceded them, on the other hand, the years of his childhood and early youth, drew near again, until for him they became the present. He recognized that in them, un- known to himself, he had lived the true life ; and if for a moment he had gone astray, he would now attempt to ascertain the direc- tion of his first innocent footsteps, in order that he might set his feet once more upon the path which they had followed."* The remaining years of Wordsworth's life were placid and uneventful. There are no new developments in :l; * Emile Legouis. The Early Life of IVordsworth. ii6 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH his opinions to be recorded, save perhaps ■\ deepening of his sympathies towards ecclesiastical and political authority, and an intensification of his prejudices ajjainst all that savored of innovation in the state, and against the increasing utilitarianism of the age. His most brilliant productive period lay within the decade from 1 797 to 1807. His share in the conception of the Ancient Mariner has already been pointed out ;* and as the poems of the two friends continued to mul- tiply beneath the stimulus of their intercourse the plan of a joint volume was discussed. Thus arose the famous "Lyrical Ballads," in which, as has also been shown,! Wordsworth was to reveal the poetry that lay beneath the surface of familiar things, while Coleridge was to transfer human interests into the realm of the supernatural. The Lyrical Ballads appeared in September, 1798, and in 1800 a second edition was issued with a celebrated Lyrical preface, in which Wordsworth propounded his teptenbep. famous theory of poetic diction, contending 17»8. th^t jj^g language of poetry should be iden- tical with that of " real life," and that " there neither is nor can be any essential difference between the lan- guage of prose and metrical composition. " The fallacy of this theory, in its extreme application at least, was pointed out in Coleridge's remarkable criticism of Wordsworth's poetry and poetic theories in the Bio- graphia Literaria (181 7). Indeed, Wordsworth rarely binds himself by his own theory, and then only in passages whose bathos permitted the poet's critics to sti|; natize his verse as childish and nonsensical. The majestic diction of the " Tintern Abbey," which he pro- * See page 63. tSee page 64. KIOi;KAI>HIC.\I. SKETCH 117 duced at this period, m- * surely be measured by another test ! In September, 1798, on the eve of the first appear- ance of the Lyrical Ballads, the Wordsvvorths, in com- pany with Coleridjje, set sail from Yarmouth Gertnftn ,• '^. « ■ , • « visit. 1798- tor Uermanv. Coleridi'e parted from them 1799 ' " • almost immediately, and Wordsworth and his sister proceeded to Goslar. Here, amid much dis- comfort, and in the uninspiring' snow and slush of a German winter, Wordsworth produced many of his finest poems — Xii/l/'ng, portions of T/ie Prelude, and the exquisite series of verses to Lucy. Wordsworth's stay in Germany, unlike Coleridg^e's more sij^-nificant visit, was absolutely unproductive of result upon his development. Early in 1799, he returned to England. In October he made a tour of the English lakes with Coleridge and his brother John. Oi. me 20th December, 1799, he made his home at Dove Cottage, Town End, Grasmere, where he remained until his growing family compelled him in j8o8 to change his abode. In 1802, the death of Lord Lonsdale freed him for the rest of his life from financial embarrassment. The heir to the title and estates, nobly recognized and acquit- ted the debt which now with interest had accumulated to ^.^8,500. Of this, Wordsworth and his Names . . , . Mary sister received their proportionate share, Hutchinson, /- r, , »»•.-,. October, amounting to ;£,i,8cx) each. His brighter outlook enabled Wordsworth, in October, to marry Mary Hutchinson, his long valued friend. This .same year is memorable in his poetic history as marking the commencement of his sonnets, which now forni a series as noble as the English language Dove Cottage, 1799-1808. i ii8 WILLIAM WORnsWOKTU 1^ contains. The first stinuiliis lo the choice of this form camo from Milton, whose majestic tone he has souj;ht, and not without success, to reproduce. Hut Sonnets' *''*-* '"i'"«-'J'"'^' inspiration to his political poems was the crisis in his country's history, which, moving' to it> depths his newly awakened spirit of patriotism, inspired his sonnets of liberty with a nervous enerj,'y and passion that revealed a profoundly emotional nature. The sonnet remained with Words- worth always a favorite form of poetic expression for a },'reat variety of retlective and descriptive themes. The necessary compression saved him from his besettintf sin of prolixity, and nowhere so consistentlv as in the sonnet does he reveal himself as a consummate master of expression. The last fifty years of his lite were passed in placid retirement amonj^ the Kn.iflish lakes, broken only by occasional visits to the Continent or Scotland. On his second Scottish tour in 1S03 he learned to value thi friendship of Sir Walter Scott, then at the heis^ht of l^s poetic fame. In February, 1H05, the first f,'-reat sorrow of his manhood tell upon him. His fa\ orite brother, John, the captain of an Kast Indiaman, went down with his vessel off the Bill of Portland. The Elegiac Sftinam were written when this grief was fresh upon him, and The C'.tinicter 0/ the Happy Warrior, sujj- gested by the death of Nelson, contains traits avowedly borrowed from the character of his brother. In May, 1S05, he brouj^ht to a conclusion his {rreat autobiographical and philosophical poem The Prelude. The Prelude. ^^'^ ^^''^ intended to be 'the portico' of a May. 1808. „n,re ambitious poem. The Recluse, which The was destined never to be written. The Ex- Excurslon, , • , , • ,, 1814. cursion, which appeared in 18 14, and prompt- Po«ms, 1807. BICKIKAIMIKAI. SKETlH I ig ed Jcffro v's faimnis remark in iho l-Aliiibiir^li Review, "This '.ill ne\cr do," is another mijfhly fraj^nient of the up.inished edifice. Two volumes o( his collected poems appeared in 1S07, containing' the j^'reat odes, To Du/v, and On the hitimations of Immortality^ Miscellaneous Sonnets, sonnets dedicated to liberty, and the poems of the Scottish tour. These volumes, more important in the liistory oi Kn^'lish poetry than anythinjf which had appeared since Milton, were coldly received. L'onlidcnt in his ultimate triumph, Wordsworth wrote to his friend Lady Heaumor.t as follows: "Trouble not yourself upon their present reception ; o'i worth's what moment is that compared with what I estimate of • .1 • 1 »• o » 1 .u m- » hisown trust is their destiny.-' — to console the amict- *"*• ^^' ^j J to add sunshine to daylight by makinj^ the happy happier ; to teach the young and the gracious of every age to see, to think and feel, and, therefore, to become more actively and securely virtuous ; this is their office, which I trust they will faithfully perform, long after we (that is, all that is mortal oi us) are mouldered in our gnnes." In 1 80S, the Wordsworths moved to a larger house, Allan Bank, near l£asedale. Here his poetical activity flagged, but he produced two works in prose Allan Bank, of some merit — a pamphlet stigmatizing the recent Convention of CIntra, and a Guide to the Lahes. The pamphlet is a lofty production in the manner of Burke, but, owing to its weightiness, was of comparati\ ely little effect. The Guide to the Lakes deals in a masterly analytical fashion with the character- istics of the natural scenery he had celebrated in his ...J verse. In 1810, occurred his painful breach with Coleridge, i I20 WILLIAM WOKDSWORTH which oiuiotl ill a partial rccoiicniation seven years later.* His poetical activity was chiclly devoted to the com- position ^^f The Excursion, the narrative of a soulful pedlar. When it appeared, in 1814. the public were exhilarated by the brilliant poems of Lord Bvron, and Wordsworth exacted of his readers a deliberate atten- tion that they were not then prepared to i,'-ive. For three years ( r.Sio-iSi;,) the Wordsworth.s now occupied the parsonaj-e at Grasmere. It was a period 1810-1813. '■''* '"'"■■*' unhappincss for the poet, and after The Parson- ^\^^ \^,^^ ^,,j^^.^, children he moved, in 181 , to Grasmere. r,,,.,,, ^j^,^„,,^ bcautifuilv situated two miles G?fsler°e."'' '"'■^^'" ^Iio villai^^e oi Cirasmere. Here he re- 1813-1850. ,ij,.j ^,„fi, ,^i^ ^,^..,^,^ About the period of his removal to Rydal .Mount he received, throuj-h the i,rood offices of I'^ord Lonsdale, Distributor ^'^'-' P'-'^^ ^""^ distributor o^ stamps for the wlsSe^*"" -•^^^'"'>- ^^f Westmoreland. This yielded the land, £400. p,,^.t ;^.'4oo a year and was in the nature of a floo'hTiSM '''"'^^'^■"'■^"' '''' ^ tleputy discharged the main duties attachins,'- to the office. When Words- worth resii,'-ned this post in 1.S42, Sir Robert Peel, at the instance <>i Gladstone, conferred on the poet a pension <^f £}fx> a year. In 1839, the first indication of his throwing- popularity was manifested when the as^ed poet went up to Oxford D.C.L of to receive an honorary degree. His welcome there was as spontaneous as it was enthus- iastic. When his old friend, Robert Southey, died, in 1843, and the laureateship fell vacant, there could be no two opinions as to the most fittinfr successor for the office. Wordsworth accepted Oxford, 1839. Laureate, 1843-1850. : ft" • See pajfo 2 1 . BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 121 it upon the understandinjf that no poetry of an official character should be exacted of him. Thus in di^-nity and honor t?^ ,-oet's life was draw- ing to a close. Famous i mi made p ! .jrima^es to Grasmere, where the old f lan was aUv, ys willing to discuss his own poetry in th •icu\'^h dctai . Among his disciples were Matthew Arnold, Aubrcj,' de \'ere, and .Sir Henry Taylor. His last days were darkened by domestic v^rief through the loss of his daughter, .Mrs. Ouillinan. In March, 1S50, while watching a beautiful sunset, Wordsworth caug^ht a chill, which at his ad- vanced age he could not resist. He gradually sank, and died on the 23rd of April. He was buried beside his children in Grasmere churchyard. Charactkr and Personal .Appearance The hidden places which lie in the depths of ordin- ary human character are so withdrawn as to render analysis almost futile, or at the best a mere compromise between truth and probability. When the investigation concerns a man of genius, the attempt would Words- . . worth's be incredibly more difficult, were it not that genius betrays itself into perpetual confes- sion, and by sudden flashes here and there reveals its secret. Therefore, the student of Wordsworth's life, turning from the quiet incidents of his dignified career to a contemplation of his poems, will see reflected there the same grave simplicity, the same quiet dignity, the same steadfast sincerity of purpose. Vehement, even to the verge of passion in his youth, unsettled in his beliefs and vagrant in his habits, his maturer life is the story of a hard won conquest over himself. We m.iy regret the gradual cooling of those early fires, the chill- m :i & lit 1^ 122 WILLIAM \VOKI>S\VOKTH 11^ intr of his \ oun^' enthusiasms which would have inspired the glow and fervor which his poetry hicks. And yet we have missed the secret of Wordsworth's power if we fail to discern the true passion which underHes his great- est verse, a passion which has in it nothing hysterical nor erotic, is never simulated or artificial, but burns inconsumably nevertheless in the depths of his nature— the passion for noble living and steadfast endurance. Wordsworth's character has been described as un- amiable and selfish, and friendly criticism even has dwelt upon the narrowness and bigotry of his intellectual opinions. He was, perhaps, too profoundly conscious ^^f his poetical mission ; took himself too seriously al- most, and like his great contemporary, \'ictor Hugo, worshipped too exclusively at theshrineof hisown genius. Protracted solitude may intensify, but it certainly nar- rows, the range of the intellectual sympathies. Hugo emerged from his seventeen years of exile .self-hypno- tized, and apparently unconscious that the world had revolved upon its axis in the interval of his seclusion. Thus Wordsworth, too, grew constantly more incapable of grasping the significance of modern life, and when the intellectual stimulus of Coleridge's society was with- drawn, his poetical powers gradually but steadily de- clined. Had Wordsworth died thirty years earlier his poetic fame would have been more secure. Four contemporary descriptions of Wordsworth's appearance are of particular interest. The portrait of Haydon in this volume shows well the mas- aipwlncel -^'^en^-'^s of his head, but the heavy-lidded eyes, while denoting contemplation, yet dull the expression of the face. Leigh Hunt and De Quincey dwell especially upon the significance of his e\es. . . I I HlOGRAI'HICAl- SKETCH 12-3 " I never beheld eyes that looked so inspired, so su- pernatural. They were like tires, half burning, half smouldering^, with a sort o( acrid fixture of rei^ard. One might imagine Kzekiel o^ Isaiah to have had such eyes." — Leigh Hunt. "His eyes are not, under any circumstances, bright, lustrous, or piercing ; but, after a long day's toil in walking, I have seen them assume an appearance, the most solemn and spiritual that it is possible for the human eyes to wear." — De Quincey f Forks, vol. ii. " Wordsworth and Scott were as little alike in their aspect as in their genius. The only thing common to both countenances was that neither expressed a limita- tion. Vou' might not have divined from either frontis- piece the treasures of the volume, — it was not likely that you should ; — but when you knew that there they were, there was nothing but what harmonized witli your knowledge. Both were the faces of considerable men. Scott's had a character of rusticity. Wordsworth's was a face which did not assign itself to any class. It was a hardy, weather-beaten old face which might have belonged to a nobleman, a yeoman, a mariner, or a philosopher ; for there was so much of a man that you lost sight of superadded distinctions. For my own part I should not, judging from his face, have guessed him to be a poet. To my eyes, there was more of strength than refinement in the face .... Perhaps what was wanting was only p/iysi'ca/ refinement. It was a rough grey face, full of rifts, and clefts, and fissures, out of which, some one said, you might expect lichens to grow." — Autobiogrtip/iv of Henry Taylor. "For the rest, he talked well in his way; with veracity, easy brevity, ;ind force, as a wise tradesman would of his tools and workshop, and as no unwise one 124 WILLIAM WOKDSWOKTH ;l ll could. His voice was j^-ood, frank, and sonorous, though practically clear, distinct, and forcible, rather tlian melodious; the tone of him, business-like, set^ately confident; no discourtesy, yet no anxiety about being- courteous. A fine, wholesome rusticity, fresh as his mountain breezes, sat well on the stalwart veteran, and on all he said and did. You would have said that he was a usually taciturn man, i,Had to unlock himself to audience sympathetic and intel!ij,'-ent, when such offered itself. His face bore marks of much, not always peace- ful, meditation; the look of it not bland or benevolent so much as close, impregnable, and hard; a man w«//« /acrre loqiiive paratus, in a world where he had exper- ienced no lack of contradictions as he strode along. The eyes were not very brilliant, but they had a quiet clear- ness; there was enough of brow, and well-shaped; rather too much cheek ('horse face' I have heard satirists say); face of squarish shape, and decidedly longish, as I think the head itself was (its length going horizontal); he was large-boned, lean, but still firm"! knit, tall, and strong-looking when he stood, a right good old steel-gray figure, with rustic simplicity and dignity about him, and a vivacious strength looking through him, which might have suited one of those old steel-gray niarkgrafs whom Henry the Fowler set up to ward the 'marches' and do battle with the intrusive heathen in a stalwart and judicious manner."— Thomas Carlyle in Reminiscences. .1 ■ T Chronological Table Born, April 7, 1770, at Cockermoulh, Cumberland. Goes to Hawkshead Grammar School, 1778. Sent by guardians to St. Johns College. Cambrid-e, October 1787. Foreign tour with Jones, 1790. Jl BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 12: 111 Graduates as B.A. without honors, January, 1791. Residence in France, November, 1791, to December, 1792. Publication of 7 he Evening- Walk, and Descriptive Sketches, »793- Legacy from Raisley Calvert of /I900, 1 794. Lives at Racedown, Dorsetshire, autumn of 1795 to summer of 1797. Composes The Borderers, a tragedy, 1795- 1796. Close friendship with Coleridge begins in 1797. Rents a house at Alfoxden, 1797. Genesis of the Lyrical Ballads, 1797. Lyrical Ballads ^uhWshad September, 1798. German visit, September, 1798, to April, 1799. Lives at Dove Cottage, Grasmere, December 21, 1799, to J 806, 1 807- 1 808. The Lonsdale debt of ;C8,5oo repaid, 1802. Marries Mary Hutchinson, October, 1802. Death by drowning of his brother. Captain John Wordsworth, 1805. Lives at Coleorton, Leicestershire, 1806 to 1807. Collected Edition of Poems, 1807. Lives at Allan Bank, Easedale, 1808 to 1810. Lives at the Parsonage, Grasmere, i8io to 181 2. Loss of two children and removal to Rydal Mount, Grasmere, 1813 to 1850. Appointed distributor of stamps for Westmoreland (;C40o a year), 1813. The Excursion appears, July, 1814. Honorary degree of D.C.L. from Oxford, 1839. Resigns his office as distributor of stamps, 1842. Receives a pension from Sir R. Peel of JC300, 1842. Appointed Poet Laureate, 1843. Dies i*t Grasmere, April 23, 1850. m m References on Wordsworth's Life and Works. Poems by William Wordsworth (with life). Edited by W. Knight. Macmillan & Co. Poems by Wordsworth. Edited by Matthew Arnold. Mac- millan & Co. mm 126 WIM.IAM WORDSWORTH I II i Poems by \Vordsn- S. T. Coleridg-e. Theology in the English Poets. By Stoplord Brooke, 1874. Essays Chiefly on Poetry. By Aubrey de Vere. Studies in Philosophy and Poetry. Bv J. C. Shairp. Essays Philosophical and Literary. By R. H. Hutton, vol. ii. Appreciations. By Walter Pater. Miscellanies. By A. C. Swinburne. Among my Book.';. By J. K. Lowell. Autobiography. By j. S. Mill, pp. 146 f. The Poetry of Willi.am Wordsworth Coleridge, with rare insijrht, summarized Words- worth's characteristic defects and merits as follows : "The first characteristic, thouj^h only occasional de- fect, which I appear to myself to find in these poems is the inconstancy of the style. Under this name I refer to the sudden and unprepared transitions from lines or sentences of peculiar felicity (at all events .striking and original) to a style, not only unimpassioned but undis- tinguished The second defect I can generalize with tolerable accuracy, if the reader will pardon an uncouth and newly-coined word. There is, I should say, not seldom a matter-of-factness in certain poems. This may be divided into, first, a laborious minuteness and fidelity in the-representation oi objects, and their positions, as POETRY or WORPSWOKTH •-7 they appeared to the poet himself; secondly, the inser- tion of accidental circumstances, in order to the full explanation of his living^ characters, their dispositions and actions; which circumstances might be necessary to establish the probability of a statement in real life, when nothinjjf is taken for granteu v the hearer ; but appear superfluous in poetry, where ti. reader is willing to belie\ e for his own sake. . . . Third; an undue predilection for the ragged that additional rents were of small account. Hi N'UTTING 141 More ragged than need was ! O'er pathless rocks, Through beds of matted fern and tangled thickets, Forcing my way, I came to one dear nook Unvisited, where not a broken bough Drooped with its withered leaves, ungracious sign Of devastation; but the hazels rose Tall and erect, with tempting clusters hung, A virgin scene ! A little while I stood, Breathing with such suppression of the heart As joy delights in; and with wise restraint Voluptuous, fearless of a rival, eyed The banquet; or beneath the trees I sate Among the flowers, and with the flowers I played; A temper known to those, who, after long And weary expectation, have been blest With sudden happiness beyond all hope. Perhaps it was a bower beneath whose leaves The violets of five seasons reappear And fade, unseen by any human eye; Where fairy water-breaks do murmur on Forever; and I saw the sparkling foam. And, with my cheek on one of those green stones That, fleeced with moss, under the shady trees. Lay round me, scattered like a flock of sheep, I heard the murmur and the murmuring sound. ij *s 35 ai. virgin- unmarred, undevastated. 31. Explain the line. Notice the poetical ^^ay in which the poet conveys the idea of solitude, (1. 30-3^). ^^. fairy water-breaks =wfli'<'/*/*. nppUs. Cf..— Many a silvery water-break Above the golden gravel. _, „ • Tennyson, The Brook. 36. fleeced with moss. Suggest a reason why the term •« fleeced " has peculiar appropriateness here. if M t riiy 142 SELECT POEMS OK WOKOSWORTH In that sweet mood when pleasure loves to pay Tribute to ease; and of its joy secure, ^ The heart luxuriates with indifferent thing-s, Wasting its kindliness on stocks and stones, And on the vacant air. Then up I rose, And draj^rjred to earth both branch and bough, with crash And merciless ravage: and the shady nook 45 Of hazels, and the green and mossy bower, Deformed and sullied, patiently gave up Their quiet being: and unless I now Confound my present fe-lings with the past, Ere from the mutilated bower I turned y, Exulting, rich beyond the wealth of kings, I felt a sense of pain when I beheld The silent trees, and saw the intruding sky. — Then, dearest Maiden, move along these shades In gentleness of heart; with gentle hand .« Touch, — for there is a spirit in the woods. 39-40. Paraphrase these lines to liriiit,'- out ihiir nu-aninj;. 43-48- Then up I rose. Contrast this active exuberant plea- sure not unmixed with pain with the passive meditative joy that the preceding lines express. 47-48- patiently gave up Their quiet being. Notice the attribution of life to inanimate nature. Wordsworth constantly held that there was a mind and all the attributes of mind in nature. C/. 1. 56, "for there is a spirit in the woods." 53- and saw the intruding slcy. Hrin.< out the force of this passa^re. 54. Then, dearest Maiden. This is u reference to the poets sister, Dorothy Wordsworth. 56- for there is a spirit in the woods, c/. Tintem Abbey, lol t. A motion an:ht ! And giv'st to forms and images a breath And everlasting motion ! not in vain, By day or starlight, thus from my first dawn f Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me The passions that build up our human soul; Not with the mean and vulgar works of Man: But with high objects, with enduring things, With life and nature: purifying thus m The elements of feeling and of thought. And sanctifying by such discipline Both pain and fear, — until we recognize A grandeur in the beatings of the heart. Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me if With stinted kindness. In November days, When vapors rolling down the valleys made A lonely scene more lonesome ; among woods At noon ; and 'mid the calm of summer nights, 1-14. In what other poems does Wordsworth describe "the education of nature ?" 8. Nature's teachinjj is never sordid nor mercenary, but always purityinif and ennobling-. 10. purifying, also sanctifying (l. 12), refer to "Soul" (1. 2). 12-14. Human cares are lig-htened in proportion to our power of sympathising^ with nature. The very beatings of our heart acquire a certain grandeur from the fact that they are a process of nature and linked thus to the jjeneral life of things. It is pos- sible that "beatings of the heart " may figuratively represent the mere play of the emotions, and thus have a bearing upon the words " pain and fear" in line 13. 15. fellowship. Communion with nature in her varying aspects as described in the following lines. |l 144 SELECT POEMS OF WORDSWORTH When, by the margin of the trembling lake, Beneath the gloomy hills, homeward I went In solitude, such intercourse was mine: Mine was it in the fields both day and night. And by the waters, all the summer long. And in the frosty season, when the sun Was set, and, visible for many a mile. The cottage windows through the twilight blazed, I heeded not the summons : happy time It was indeed for all of us ; for me It was a time of rapture ! Clear and loud The village clock tolled six — I wheeled about, Proud and exulting like an untired horse, That cares not for his home. — .\11 shod with steel We hissed along the polished ice, in games Confederate, imitative of the chase And woodland pleasures, — the resounding horn, The pack loud-chiming, and the hunted hare. So through the darkness and the cold we flew. And not a voice was idle ; with the din Smitten, the precipices rang aloud ; The leafless trees and every icy crag Tinkled like iron ; while far-distant hills Into the tumult sent an alien sound Of melancholy, not unnoticed, while the stars. 31. village Clock. The village was Hawkshead. 35. Confederate. Qualifies "we, " or ">fames." Point out the different shades of meaning for each agreement. 42. Tinkled like iron. "When very many are skating together, the sounds and the .noises give an impulse to the icy trees, and the woods all round the lake tinkle." S. T. Coleridge in The Friend, ii, 325 (1818). 42-44' The keenness of Wordsworth's sense perceptions was very remarkable. His sus. optibility to impressions of sound is well illustrated in this passage, which closes (1. 43-46) with a color picture of striking beauty and appropriateness. INFLUENCE OF NATl'KAL OliJKlTS Eastward, wore sparkling clear, and in the west The oranj,'c sky of eveninf,' died away. '45 Not seldom from th». I retired Into a silent bay, or sportively Glanced sideway, lea\ injj the tumultuous thronjf, To cut across the reflex of a star ; jp Image, that, flying still before me, gleamed Upon the glassy plain ; and oftentimes, When we had given our bodies to the wind, And all the shadowy banks on either side Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still « The rapid line of motion, then at once Have I, reclining back upon my heels. Stopped short, yet still the solitary cliffs Wheeled by me — even as if the earth had rolled With visible motion her diurnal round ! 60 Behind me did they stretch in solemn train, F<»i.Mer and feebler, and I stood and watched Till all was tranquil as a summer sea. 50. reflex = tefiec/ion. Cf.: Like the reflex of the moon Seen in a wave under green leaves. Shelley, Prometheus Unbound, iii, 4. In later editions Wordsworth altered these lines as follows : To cut across the image. 1809. To cross the bright reflection. \%iq. 54-60. The effect of rapid motion is admirably described. The spinning effect which Wordsworth evidently has in mind we have all noticed in the fields which seem to re'\ ' 'e when viewed from a swiftly moving train. However, a skt: rom the low level of a stream would see only the friii^e of trees sweep past him. The darkness and the height of the banks woild not permit him to see the relatively motionless objects in the distance . n either hand. 57-5^- This method of stopping short upon one's heels might prove disastrous. .s8-6o. The effect of motion persists after the motion his cea .,>d. o_' .03. The apparent motion of the cliffs grows feebler by degrees until 'all was tranquil as a summer sea." In 7A«. m Jiiij 146 SEI.KIT I'OEM- c^K WORDSWORTH •THREK VEAk- SHE GREW Three years she jjrcw in sun and shower, Then Nature said, *A lovilior flower On oarlh was vc\ r sow 11 ! This Child I to tnysll wi I take ; She shall V>e mine, ;'id 1 \. .'I make A Lady ot my c vn. ' Mvself will to nn rltrli, .- he Both law and impiils • ; i. J with me The Girl, in rock and pi rn, In earth and heaven, in j^dade and bower, Shall feel an overseeing^ power To kindle or restrain. 'She shall be sportive as the fawn That wild w ith glee across the lawn Or up the mountain spring- ; And hers shall be the breathing balm, And hers the silence and the calm Of mute insensate things. 'The floati;;;^'- clouds their state shall lend To her; for her the willow bend ; Nor shall she fail to see Ev«.M in the motions of the storm »s Prelitiir, 1 8(Kj. Wordsworth substituted "Till all was Irauqiiil as a droamless sU^ep. Suggest a reason for 'his, and criticise tlie , iianjfo. 16. breathing balm. The fraj^rance which exhales from trt-es <->r shrubs, or thi- heaiinef power which resides in their o(ii>roii-i breath. "Balm" is orijfinaliy th< oily subsi.incc exudt .1 fr.Mn resinous trees, r.nd by extension ot nicinnif{- the .iromat ^ oilor and he.iling- power of" the exudation. 2o-i4. for her the willow bend. etc. The wiiijw v mould her form to symmetry, and i ^eii llie swi-t'pinj^ elouJ ,es of approaching' storms will commuiiictte their grace t«) hei M^m MICHAEL '47 Grace hat shall mould the Maiden's ."orm By aent -^.vmpathy. «s so u! hen * Tht stars of iiudni^ i all l><: dear To her ; and -he sli a lean her ear In many a socret pla e Where ivulets dumti tneir wayward r^und And beauty hon '" mit nu*-- Shall p -ss ini ^r fate ' Anu vitai ieeliuj^s 4 dt^u Shall r tr r form lo sf Hfci '.ir^' bosom m> el! Such thi Jj,ni ^ to I-ury 1 , \Vh\U hi a»v, I ti T li\ lere itt thi happ j|.' ^' ■ ^^' '■ The work was done — How sooi. m\ i.1. nee was run ! She uied, a^d It i to me Iliis I eath. this m, and quiet scene; 4. The I nory < f t has been, And ueve rr jH '>e. a 'CHAFL A P STORAL POEM fror the p hlic way you turn your steps P the I muUuous brook of Green-head GhyH. u - Ml ..ppos. 'hat uith an upright path "^ ■ et mus* , i{r<-^Ip in such bold ascent Th uitoral moi. u^ iront you, face to face. Green-head Ghyll. Near Dove Cottape. Wordsworth's no- at Grasmere, Uhyll. A short, steep, and narrow valley with a stream run- ni!it .hroug-h It. ur I ! 148 SELECT POEMS OF WOKDSWORTH But, courage ! for around that boisterous brook The mountains have all opened out themselves, And made a hidden valley of their own. No habitation can be seen ; but they Who journey thither find themselves alone With a few sheep, with rocks and stones, and kites That overhead are sailing in the sky. It is in truth an utter solitude ; Nor should I have made mention of this Dell But for one object which you might pass by, Might see and notice not. Beside the brook Appears a straggling heap of unhewn stones. And to that simple object appertains A story, — unenriched with strange events, Yet not unfit, I deem, for the fireside. Or for the summer shade. It was the first Of those domestic tales that spake to me Of Shepherds, dwellers in the valleys, men Whom I already loved -.—not verily For their own sakes, but for the fields and hills Where was their occupation and abode. And hence this Tale, while I was yet a Boy Careless of books, yet having felt the power Of Nature, by the gentb agency Of natural objects, led me on to feel F"or passions that were not my own, and think (At random and imperfectly indeed) On man, the heart of man, and human life. Therefore, although it be a history Homely and rude, I will relate the same to ad : " After diniuT we walked up Greenhead C'.ill in search of a -shecpfold The sheepfold is falling awa^. It is built in the form of a heart unequally divided. MICHAEL 149 For the delight of a few natural hearts ; And, with yet fonder feeling-, for the sake Of youthful Poets, who among these hills Will be my second self when I am gone. Upon the forest-side in -'asmere Vale There dwelt a Shepherd, Niichael was his name ; An old man, stout of heart, and strong of limb. His bodily frame had been from youth to age Of an unusual strength : his mind was keen. Intense, and frugal, apt for all affairs. And in his shepherd's calling he was prompt And watchful more than ordinary men. Hence had he learned the meaning of all winds. Of blasts of every tone ; and oftentimes, When others heeded nul, he heard the South Make subterraneous music, like the noise Of bagpipers on distant Highland hills. The Shepherd, at such warning, of his flock Bethought him, and he to himself would say, "The winds are now devising work for me ! " And, truly, at all times, the storm, that drives ss 48. the meaning of all winds. This is not a fixuralive statement. Michael knows by expi. ience whether the sound and direction of the wind forebode sUr 1 or fair weather, — precisely the practical kind of knowledge which a herdsman should possess. 51. subterraneous. The meaning of this word has given rise to discussion. "Subterraneous" cannot here be literally employed, unless it refer to the sound of the wind in hollow places, and beneath overhanging crags. 51-52. like the noise, etc. Is there a special appropriateness in the use of a Scottish simile ? What is the general character of the similes throughout the poem? 56-7-. Wordsworth never attributes to Michael the subtler and more philosophical sensations which he himself derived from iiatmo. Such poems as The Pi-elude or 7he Fxrurxi-m contain many elevated passages on the influence of nature, which would have been exceedingly inappropriate here. Pli \M 150 SELECT POEMS OF WORDSWORTH ill? The traveller to a shelter, summoned him Up to the mountains : he had been alone Amid the heart of many thousand mists, That came to him, and left him, on the heights. 60 So lived he till his eightieth year was past. And grossly that man errs, who should suppose That the green valleys, and the streams and rocks, Were things indifferent to the Shepherd's thoughts. Fields, where with cheerful spirits he had breathed 65 The common air ; hills, which with vigorous step He had so often climbed ; which had impressed So many incidents upon his mind Of hardship, skill or courage, joy or fear ; Which, like a book, preserved the memory 70 Of the dumb animals whom he had saved, Had fed or sheltered, linking to such acts The certainty of honorable gain ; Those fields, those hills — what could they less? — had laid Strong hold on his aflfections, were to him 75 A pleasurable feeling of blind love. The pleasure which there is in life itself. His days had not been passed in singleness. His Helpmate was a comely matron, old — Though younger than himself full twenty years. 80 She was a woman of a stirring life. Whose heart was in her house: two wheels she had Of antique form ; this large, for spinning wool ; That small, for flax ; and if one wheel had rest. It was because the other was at work. 85 The Pair had but one inmate in their hovsse, An only Child, who had been born to them When Michael, telling o'er his years, began MICHAEL 15' To deem that he was old, — in shepherd's phrase, With one foot in the grave. This only Son, 90 With two brave sheep-dogs tried in many a storm, The one of an inestimable u-orth, Made all their household. I may truly say That they were as a proverb in the vale For endless industry. When day was gone, 95 And from their occupations out of doors The Son and Father were come home, even then Their labor did not cease ; unless when all Turned to the cleanly supper board, and th re, Each with a mess of pottage and skimmed milk, 100 Sat round the basket piled with oaten cakes, And their plain home-made cheese. Yet when the meal Was ended, Luke (for so the Son was named) And his old Father ^oth betook themselves To such convenieni < ork as might employ «•$ Their hands by the fireside ; perhaps to card Wool for the Housewife's spindle, or repair Some injury done to sickle, flail, or scythe, Or other implement of house or field. Down from the ceiling, by the chimney's edge, no That in our ancient uncouth country style With huge and black projection overbrowed Large space beneath, a« duly as the light Of day grew dim the Housewife hung a lamp ; An ag^d uten'-il, which had performed tu Service bey ... .1 others of its kind. Early at evt r ■ iid it burn, — and late. Surviving con..ade of uncounted hours, Which, going by from year to year, had found. 115. Scan this line. i SI ' KCT POEMS OF WORDSWORTH k- "S And left thf couple neither gay perhaps Nor cheerful, yet with objects and with hopes, Living a life of eager industry. And now, when Luke had reached his eighteenth year. There by the light of this old l.-mp they sate, Father and Son, while far into the night The Housewife plied her own peculiar work, Making the cottage through the silent hours Murmur as with the sound of summer flies. This light was famous in its neighborhood. And was a public symbol of the life That thrifty Pair had lived. For, as it chanced. Their cottage on a plot of rising ground Stood single, with large prospect, north and south. High into Easedale, up to Dunmail-Raise, And westward to the village near the lake ; 135 And from this constant light, so regular, And so far seen, the House itself, by all Who dwelt within the limits of the vale. Both old and young, was named the Evening Star. 130 Thus living on through such a length of years. The Shepherd, if he loved himself, must needs Have loved his Helpmate; but to Michael's heart 140 121. Hor cheerful. The epithet seems not well chosen in view of the fact that all the circumstances of their life breathe a spirit of quiet cheerfulness. Surely the light (129-131) ^vas a symbol of cheer. 126. peculiar work. Bring out the force of the epithet. 134. Easedale. Near Grasmere. Dunmall-Ralse. The pass loading from Grasmere to Keswick. RalSC. A provincial word meaning "an ascent." 139. the Evening Star This name was actually given to a neighboring house. MICHAEL 153 This son of his old age was yet more dear- Less from instinctive tenderness, the same Fond spirit that blindly works in the blood of all- Than that a child, more than all other gifts That earth can offer to declining man, Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts, And stirrings of inquietude, when they By tendency of nature needs must fail. Exceeding was the love he bare to him. His heart and his heart's joy ! For oftentimes Old Michael, while he was a babe in arms. Had done him female service, not alone For pastime and delight, as is the use Of fathers, but with patient mind enforced To acts of tenderness; and he had rocked His cradle, as with a woman's gentle hand. And in a later time, ere yet the Boy Had put on boy's attire, did Michael love. Albeit of a stern, unbending mind. To have the Young-one in his sight, when he Wrought in the field, or on his shepherd's stool Sat with a fettered sheep before him stretched Under the large old oak, that near his door Stood single, and, from matchless depth of shade. Chosen for the shearer's covert from the sun, Thence in our rustic dialed was called •45 ijo 155 160 i6s ,.,..S2. The love Of Michael for Luke .s '"^J'^! ^ht v.. h h-s lovelor his home and for the land which surrounds . . T»i^-- .^e desires at his death to hand down unencumbered to h.s son. I Save at em, ted," V\ordsworth wrote .0 Poole, " to K-ve a picture of\ man of stronjr mind and lively se.,sibility, agitated by two of Se morpowerful affections of the human heart-the parental affeSand the love of property, landed property. in-'^d.nK the feeiinp of inhe. itanco, hon.c and r.>rson.-vl and family mdepend- ence." 145. Scan this line. r! 154 SELECT POEMS OF WORDSWORTH ;i^ The Clipping Tree, a name which yet it bears. There, while they two were sitting in the shade, With others round them, earnest all and blithe,' Would Michael exercise his heart with looks Of fond correction and reproof bestowed Upon the Child, if he disturbed the sheep By catching: at their legs, or with his shouts Scared them while they lay still beneath the shears. And when by Heaven's good grace the Boy grew up A healthy Lad, and carried in his cheek Two steady roses that were five years old; Then Michael from a winter coppice cut With his own hand a sapling, which he hooped With iron, making it throughout in all Due requisites a perfect shepherd's staff, And gave it to the Boy; wherewith equipped He as a watchman oftentimes was placed At gate or gap, to stem or turn the flock; And, to his office prematurely called, There stood the urchin, as you will divine. Something between a hindrance and a help; And for this cause not always, I believe, Receiving from his Father hire of praise; Though naught was left undone which staff, or voice, Or looks, or threatening gestures, could perform. But soon as Luke, full ten years old, could stand Against the mountain blasts; and to the heights, ,95 Not fearing toil, nor length of weary ways. He with his Father daily went, and they Were as compa nions, why should I relate V L^' 7u^ Clipping Tree. Clipping is the uon. used in the North of Ensrland for shearing. (Wordsworth's note. ,l») 182. Notice the entire absence of pause at the end of th^ lit,*. Point out other instances of run-on lines (enjaj^,^^t° ^' 170 '75 .85 190 f MICHAEL That objects which the Shepherd loved before Were dearer now ? that from the Boy there came Feelings and emanations.-things which were Light to the sun and music to the wind; And that the old Man's heart seemed born again? Thus in his Father's sight the boy grew up: And now, when he had reached his eighteenth year, He was his comfort and his daily hope. While in this sort the simple household lived From day to day, to Michael's ear there came Distressful tidings. Long before the time Of which I speak, the Shepherd had been bound In surety for his brother's son, a man Of an industrious life, and ample means ; But unforeseen misfortunes suddenly Had pressed upon him ; and old Michael now Was summoned to discharge the forfeiture, A grievous penalty, but little less Than half his substance. This unlooked-for claim, At the first hearing, for a moment took More hope out of his life than he supposed That any old man ever could have lost. As soon as he had armed himself with strength To look his trouble in the face, it seemed The Shepherd's sole resource to sell at once A portion of his patrimonial fields. Such was his first resolve; he thought again, And his heart failed him. " Isabel," said he, Two evenings after he had heard the news, "I have been toiling more than seventy years, And in the open sunshine of God's love Have we all lived ; yet if these fields of ours Should pass into a stranger's hand, I think 155 aoo JOS •15 a*5 •30 156 SELECT POEMS OF WOKOSWORTH That I could not lie quiet in my grave. Our lot is a hard lot ; the sun himself Has scarcely been more dilij,'ent than I ; And I have lived to be a fool at last To my own family. An evil man That was, and made an evil choice, if he Were false to us ; and if he were not false, There are ten thousand to whom loss like this H.id been no sorrow. I forj,nve him ;— but Twere better to be dumb than to talk thus. " When I bej,'an, my purpose was to speak Of remedies and of a cheerful hope. Our Luke shall leave us, Isabel ; the la.id Shall not go from us, and it shall be free ; He shall possess it, free as is the wind That passes over it. We have, thou know'st, Another kinsman ; he will be our friend In this distress. He is a prosperous man. Thriving in trade ; and Luke to him shall go. And with his kinsman's help and his own thrift He quickly will repair this loss, and then He may return to us. If here he stay, ^^•hat can be done ? Where every one is poor. What can be gained?" At this the old Man paused, And Isabel sat silent, for her mind Was busy, looking back into past times. There's Richard Bateman, thought she to herself, He was a parish-boy.— at the church-door They made a gathering f.M- him, shillings, pence. And half-pennies, wherewith the neighbors bought A basket, which they filled with pedlar's wares; J40 HS *SO 'SS j6o ^59- parish-boy. Dependins^ on charity. ^^ MICHAEL •57 And, with his basket on his arm, the lad Went up to London, found a master there, Who, out of many, chose the trusty boy To ^'o and overlook his merchandise Beyond the seas ; where he grew wondrous rich, And left estates and moneys to the poor, And at his birthplace built a chapel, floored With marble, which he sent from foreign lands. These thoughts, and many others of like sort, Passed quickly through the mind of Isabel " And her face brightened. The old Man was glad. And thus resumed: "Well, Isabel, this scheme. These two days, has been meat and drink to me. Far more than we have lost is left us yet. —We have enough— I wish indeed that I Were younger;— but this hope is a good hope. Make ready Luke's best garments, of the best Buy for him more, and let us send him forth To-morrow, or the next day, or to-night: —If he could go, the Boy should go to-night." Here Michael ceased, and to the fields went forth With a light heart. The Housewife for five days Was restless morn and night, and all day long W' rought on with her best fingers to prepare Things needful for the journey of her son. But Isabel was glad when Sunday came •6s *T »7S j8o »8s 268-270. Wordsworth added the followinK note on these hnes : "The stor>- alluded to here is well known in the country. I he chapel is oalled Ings Chapel ; and is on the nght hand side of the road leading from Kendal to Ambleside. 28V and to the fields went forth. Observe the inconsist- ency.' The conversation took place in the evenmg;. See 1. 227. 284 f. With a li«ht heart. Michaels growing misgivings are subtly represented in the following lines, and the renewal of his hopes. aMi IB* 4 i 'SB SELECT POEMS Of WOKDSWORTH To Stop her in her work; for, when she lay By Michael's side, she throuffh the last tw'u nights Heard him, how he was troubled in his sleep: And when they rose at morninjf she could see That all his hopes were gone. That day at noon She said to Luke, while they two by themselves Were sitting at the door, "Thou must not go: We have no other Child but thee to lose, None to remember— do not go away, For if thou leave thy Father he will die." The Youth made answer with a jocund voice; And Isabel, when she had told her fears, Recovered heart. That evening her best fare Did she bring forth, and all together s;>t Like happy people round a Christmas fire. With daylight Isabel resumed h.r work; And all the ensuing week the house appeared As cheerful as a grove in Spring: at length The expected letter from their kinsman came. With kind assurances that he would do His utmost for the welfare of the Boy; To which requests were added, that forthwith He might be sent to him. Ten times or more The letter was read over; Isabel Went forth to show it to the neighbors round; Nor was there at that time on English land A prouder heart than Luke's. When Isabel Had to her house returned, the old Man said, "He shall depart to-morrow." To this word The Housewife answered, talking much of things Which, if at such short notice he should go, Would K-^ely He forgotten. But at length She gave consent, and Michael was at ease. »>o »93 305 3'0 .i'S MICHAEL •59 9*3 sas Near the tumultuous brook of Grecn-hcad Ghyll, In that Jeep valley, Michael had dcsijjned To build a Shccp-fold; and, before he heard The tidiii^'s of his melancholy loss, For this same purpose he had gathered up A heap of stones, which by the streamlet's edjjo Lay thrown together, ready for the work. With Luke that evening thitherward he walked; And soon as they had reached the place he stopped, md And thus the old man spake to him:— "My Son, To-morrow thou wilt If ave me; with full heart I look upon thee, for thou art the same That wert a promise to me ere thy birth And all thy life hast been my daily joy. I will relate to thee some little part Of our two histories; 'twill do thee good When thou art from me, even if 1 should touch On things thou canst not know of. After thou First cam'st into the world — as oft befalls To newborn infants — thou didst sleep away Two days, and blessings from thy Father's tongue Then fell upon thee. Day by day passed on, And still I loved thee with increasing love. Never to living ear came sweeter sounds Than when I heard thee by our own firt^ >ide First uttering, without words, a natural tune; While thou, a feeding babe, did in thy joy Sing at thy Mother's breast. Month followed month. And in the open fields my life was passed, And on the mountains; else I think that thou Hadst been brought up upon thy Father's knees. But we were playmates, Luke; among these hills. As well thou knowest, in us the old and young Have played together, nor with me didst thou 3«» S4S i iSS i6o SEI.ECI POEMS (M- \VOHr>SWOKTH I : Lack any pleasure: which a boy can know." I.uke had a manly he.srt; buf at these v...<.'j He sobbed aloud. Tlie old Man grasped his hand, And sail! "N'ay, do not take it so -I see That these are thing's ^yi' which I need not speak. jfo Ivven to the utmost I have be^n to thee A kind and a g'ood Father; and herein I but repay a gift which I myself Received at others' hands; for, though now old Beyond the common life of man, I still g^ Remember them who loved me in my youth. Both of them sleep together; here they lived. As all their Forefathers had done; and, when At length their time was come, they were not loath To give their bodies to the family mould. 37* I wished that thou should'st live the life they lived; But 'tis a long time to look back, my Son, And see so little gain from threescore years. These fields were burthened when they came to me; Till I was forty yeais of age, not more 375 Than half of my inheritance was mine. I toiled and toiled; God blessed me in my work. And till the three weeks past the land was free. — It looks as if it never could endure Another Master. Heaven forgive me, Luke, 389 If I judge ill for thee, but it seems good That thou shouldst go." it il: 19 At this the o'd Man paused; Then, pointing to the stones near which they stood. Thus, after a short silence, he resumed: 367-368. These lines forcibly show how tenaciously Michael's feelings were rooted in the soil of his home. Hence the extreme pathos of the situation. tf: IP MICHAKL 161 "This was a work for us; and now, my Son, s*j It is a work for me. But, lay one stone, — Here, lay it for me, Luke, with thine own hands. Nay, Boy, be of good hope; w; both may live To see a better day. At ei{fhty-four I still am strong and hale; — do thou thy part; am I will do mine. — I will begin uifjiin With many tasks that were resigned 'o theo; Up to the heights, and in among the storms, Will I without thee go again, and do All works which I was wont to do alone, jm Before I knew thy face. Heaven bless thee. Boy! Thy heart thesi "^^wo weeks has been beating fast With many hopes; it should be so— yes, yes, — I knew that thou couldst never have a vvisl. To leave me, Luke; thou hast been bound ti) me 40* Only by links of love: when ''^ou art gone What will be left to us!— But I forget My purpose . Lay now the corne :.; v, As I requested; and liereafter, Luke When thou art gone away, should ev rn.!. 4111 Be thy companions, think of me, my ■ >r< And of this moment; hither turn thy thoughts, Ar.d God will strengthen thee: amid all fear And all temptation, Luke, I pray that thou May'st bear in mind the life thy Fathers lived, 41a Who, being innocent, did for that cause Bestir them in good deeds. Now, fare thee well — When thou return'st, thou in this place wilt see A work which is not here: a covenant 'Twill be between us; but, whatever fate ♦«« 388. Observe the dramaiic force of this line. 393-396. What unconscious poetry there is in the old man 'it words ! n: 1 62 SELECT POEMS OF WORDSWORTH , : I *y 1 -,»>■ Befall thee, I shall love thee to the last, And bear thy memory with me to the grave." The Shepherd ended here; and Luke stooped down, And, as his Father had requested, laid The first stone of the Sheep-fold. At the sight 4»o The old Man's grief broke from him; to his heart He pressed his Son, he kissed him and wept; And to the house together they returned. —Hushed was that House in peace, or seeming peace, Ere the night fell : — with morrow's dawn the Boy 4»5 Began his journey, and when he had reached The public way, he put on a bold face; And all the neighbors, as he passed their doors, Came forth with wishes and with farewell prayers, That followed him till he was out of sight. u* A good report did from their Kinsman come, Of Luke and his well doing: and the Boy Wrote loving letters, full of wondrous news, Which, as the Housewife phrased it, were throughout "The prettiest letters that were ever seen." 4M Both parents read them with rejoicing hearts. So, many months passed on; and once again The Shepherd went about his daily work With confident and cheerful thoughts; and now Sometimes when he could find a leisure hour 440 He to that valley took his way, and there Wrought at the Sheep-fold. Meantime Luke began To slacken in his duty; and, at length, He in the dissolute city gave himself To evil courses; ignominy and shame 44s 420. Scan this lino. 445. Scan this line. MICHAEL 163 Fell on him, so that he was driven at last To seek a hiding place beyond the seas. There is a comfort in the strength of love; Twill make a thing endurable, which else Would overset the brain, or break the heart: I have conversed with more than one who well Remember the old Man, 'and what he was Years after he had heard this heavy news, f'is bodily frame had been from youth to age Of an unusual strength. Among the rocks He went, and still looked up to sun and cloud, And listened to the \vind; and, as before, Performed all kinds of labor for his sheep, And for the land, his small inheritance. And to that hollow dell from time to time Did he repair, to build the Fold of which His flock had need. 'Tis not forgotten yet The pity which was then in every heart For the old Man — and 'tis believed by all That many and many a day he thither went, And never lifted up a single stone. There by the Sheep-fold, sometimes was he seen Sitting alone, or with his faithful Dog, Then old, beside him, lying at his feet. The length of full seven years, from time to time ini 49" 4iS «70 466. Matthew Arnold commenting' on this line s.iys : "The right sort of verse to choose from Wordsw orth, if we are to seize his true and most characteristic form of expression, is a line like this from Michael: ' And never lifted up a single stone." There is nothing subtle in it, no heightening, no study of ptietic style strictly so called, at all ; yet it is an expressiiMi of the highest and most truly expressive kind. " 467 f. Note the noble simplicity and pathos of these closings lines. There is a reserved force of pent-up pathos here, which without effort reaches the height of dramatic effeclivenesA. 164 SELECT POEMS OF WORDSWORTH He at the building of this Sheep-fold wrought, And left the work unfinished when he died. Three years, or little more, did Isabel Survive her Husband; at her death the estate Was sold, and went into a stranger's hand. 47s The Cottage which was named the Evening Star Is gone, — the ploughshare has been through the ground On which it stood; great changes have been wrought In all the neighborhood: — yet the oak is left, That grew beside their door; and the remains 480 Of the unfinished Sheep-fold may be seen Beside the boisterous brook of Green-head Ghyll. TO THE DAISY Bright Flower ! whose home is everywhere. Bold in maternal Nature's care. And all the long year through the heir Of joy and sorrow, Methinks that there abides in thee g Some concord with humanity. Given lo no other flower I see The forest thorough ! Is it that Man is soon deprest ? A thoughtless Thing ! who, once unblest, la Do "S little on his memory rest, Or on his reason. And Thou would' st teach him how to find A shelter under every wind, 8, thorough. This is by derivation the correct fo- n of the modern word "throujfh." A.S. fhur/i, M.E. thuruh. The use of "thorou{ii:h" is now purely adjectival, except in archaic or poetic speech. TO THE CLCKOO A hope for times that are unkind, And every season ? Thou wander'st the wide world rbout, Uncheck'd by pride or scrupulous doubt, With friends to g - . hee, or without, Yet pleased at i v illing; Meek, yielding' to the occasion's cail, And all things suffering from all. Thy function apostolical In peace fulfilling. ^5 TO THE CUCKOO blithe Netv-comer ! I have heard, 1 hear thee and rejoice. O Cuckoo ! shall I call thee Bird, Or but a wandering Voice ? i\ 24. apostolical. The stanza in which this word occurs was omitted in 1827 and 1832, because the expression was censured as almost profane. Wordsworth in his dictated note to Miss Fenwick has the following': " The word (apostolical) is adopted wiih reference to its derivation, implying something sent out on a mission ; and assuredly this little flower, especially when the subject of verse, may be regarded, in its humble degree, as administering both to moral and spiritual purposes." I. blithO New-comer. The Cuckoo is migratory, and appears in England in the early spring. Compare SolUury Reaper, 1. 16. I haye heard, i. e., in my youth. 3. Shall I call thee Bird? Compare Shelley. Hail to thee, blithe spirit ! Bird thou never wert. To a Skylark. 4. awanderingrVOiee? Consult Wordsworth's note, (p. 224.) i -: m i l66 SELECT POEMS OK WORDSWORTH While I am lyinf»- on the j^rass, Thy twofold shout i hear; From hiH to hill it seems to pass, At once far off, and i .;ar. Thoujj^h babbling- only to the \'ale Of sunshine and of flowers, Thou bringest unto me a tale Of visionary hours. Thrice welcome, darlini,' of the Sprinj^- ! Even yet thou art to me No bird, but an invisible thing, A voice, a mystery; The same whom in my schoolboy days I listened to; that Cry Which made me look a thousand ways In bush, and tree, and sky. To seek thee did I often rove Through woods and on the green; And thou wert still a hope, a love; Still longed for, never seen. And I can listen to thee yet; Can lie upon the plain And listen, till I do beget That golden time again. ■s »5 6. twofold shout. 'rwoCold, hoiause consist injf of a double note. Compare Wordsworth's sonnet, 7o the Cuckoo, 1. 4 : " With its twin notes inseparably paired. " ^ Wordsworth employs the word "shout in several of his Cuckoo descriptions. See The EAfritmion, ii. 1. •546-148 and vii. 1. .|o8 ; also the following fr.mi K<\v .' it -u-as the Mountain Echo : Yes! it was the mountain echo, Solitary, i-lear, profoutsd, A»swerin>r to the shouting Cuckoo ; Giving- to her sound for sound. THE GREEN LINNET O blessed Bird ! the earth we pace Again appears to be An unsubstantial, faery place; That is fit home for Thee ! 167 THE GREEN LINNET Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed Their snow-white blossoms on my head. With brightest sunshine round me spread Of spring's unclouded weather. In this sequestered nook how sweet To sit upon my orchard-seat ! And birds and flowers once more to greet, My last year's friends together. One have I marked, the happiest guest In all this coveit of the blest: Hail to Thee, far above the rest In joy of voice and pinion ! Thou, Linnet ! in thy green array, Presiding Spirit here to-day. Dost lead the revels oi the May; And this is thy dominion. While birds, and butterflies, and flowers Make all one band of paramours, Thou, ranging up and down the bowers, .Art sole in thy employment: A Life, a Presence like the .Air, Scattering thy gladness without care, Too blest with any one to pair; Thyself thy own enjoyment. «5 i I i68 SELECT POEMS OF WORDSWORTH III; Amid yon tuft of hazel-trees, That twinkle to the gusty breeze, Behold him perched in ecstasies, Yet seeming still to hover; There ! where the flutter of his wings Upon his back and body flings Shadows and sunny glimmerings, That cover him all over. My dazzled sight he oft deceives, A Brother of the dancing leaves, Then flits, and from the cottage-eaves Pours forth his song in gushes; As if by that exulting strain He mocked and treated with disdain The voicfciess Form he chose to feign, While fluttering in the bushes. u P • SHE WAS A PHANTOM OF DELIGHT She was a Phantom of delight When first she gleamed upon my sight; A lovely Apparition, sent To be a moment's ornament; Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair; Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair; But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful Dawn— A dancing Shape, an Image gay. To haunt, to startle, and waylay. This poem describes the poets feeling: for his wife. For other references to her. compare The Prtlude, vi, 1. .,4 f. and xiv, I. "S THE SOLITARY REAPER 169 I saw her ripon nearer view, A Spirit, yet x Woman too ! Her household motions light and free, And steps of virgin-liberty: A countenance in which did meet Sweet records, promises as sweet; A Creature not too bright or good For human nature's daily food; For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles. And now I see with eye serene The very pulse of the machine; A Being breathing thoughtful breath, A Traveller between life and death; The reason firm, the temperate will, Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill; A perfect Woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command; And yet a Spirit still, and bright With something of angelic light. I THE SOLITARY REAPER Behold her, single in the field. Yon solitary Highland Lass ! Reaping and singing by herself; Stop here, or gently pass ! Alone she cuts and binds the grain, $ And sings a melancholy strain; 22. pulse Of the machine. Tho use of the word • • machine has boen much criticized. Explain and comment upon the meaning-. 6. a melancholy strain. Compare Wilkinson's expression p. 3*8. 170 SELFXT POEMS OF WORDSWOKTH It? O listen ! for the Vale profound Is overflowin^j with the sound. No Nightingale did ever chaunt More welcome notes to weary hands Of travellers in some shady haunt, Among Arabian sands: A voice so thrillinj^- ne'er was heard In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird, Breaking the silence of the seas Among the farthest Hebrides. Will no one tell me what she sings ? — Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow For old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago; Or is it some more humble lay, Familiar matter of to-day ? Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, That has been, and may be again ? 10. The first reading- (1807) was "So sweetly to reposing- birds." Wilkinson wrote, " The sweetest human voice," etc. r4. the Cuckoo-bird. Wordsworth's references to the Cuckoo are very numerous. In his Guide to the Lakes he speaks of "an imaginative influence in the voice of the Cuckoo, when that voice has taken possession of a deep mountain valley. ' Here we have, instead, the voice referred to as 15. Breaking the silence of the seas, which even more exquisitely conveys the pt>etic charm of solitude. Coleridge's " Ancient Mariner " doubtless suggested this line: — And we did speak only to lireak The silence of the sea'. (Part ii, stanza 6.) The literary quality of these stanzas is of the highest. 19. For old, unhappy, far-off things. Compare Dorothv Wordsworth's Journal for the day which includes this poem': "\\ illiam here conceived the notion of writing an ode upon the affecting subject of those relics of human society found in that grand and solitary region. " II ODE TO ni'TY Whate'er the theme, tlio Maiden sang As if her song could ha\ e no ending; I S.1W her singing at her work, And o'er the sickle bending; — I listened, motionless and still; And, as I mounted up the hill. The music in my heart I bore. Long after it was heard no more. 171 >5 ODE TO DUTY "Jam non con»iilio bonus, sed more e6 perductus, ut non tantum rectfe facere possim, sed nisi recti facere non possim." Stern Daughter of the Voice of God ! ■ O Duty ! if that name thou love, Who are a light to guide, a rod To check the erring, and reprove; Thou, who art victory and Liw s When empty terrors overawe; From vain temptations dost set free; And calm'st the weary strife of frail humanity ! There are who ask not if thine eye Be on them; who, in love and truth, » Where no misgiving is, rely 29. The editions of 1807 and 1815 read as follows : I listened till I had my fill. Is the chang'e an improvement ? 32. See the note on Wilkinson (p. 228.) Jam non COnsiliO, etc. "No lonjjer good by resolve, but induced thereto by habit, so that I am able not only to do rig^ht, but I am not able to do anything save wh-it is right." Words- worth inserted this motto in the edition of 18,^7. 9. There are who. There are some who. Compare the Latin construction, sunt gut. \H\ il 11 1 1 f- 17* SELFAT POEMS OF WORDSWORTH Upon the f(^enial sense of youth: Glad Hearts ! without reproach or hlot; Who do thy work, and know it not: Oh! if through confidence misplaced ,j They fail, thy savin^f arms, dread Power! around them cast. Serene will be our days and bright, And happy will our nature be, When love is an unerring light, And joy its own security. ^ And they a blissful course may hold Even now, who, not unwisely bold. Live in the spirit of this creed; Yet seek thy firm support, according to their need.' I, loving freedom and untried; ,, No sport of every random gust, Yet being to myself a guide, Too blindly have reposed my trust: And oft, when in my heart was heard Thy timely mandate, I deferred „ The task, in smoother walks to stray; But thee I now would serve more strictly, if I may. Through no disturbance of my soul. Or strong compunction in me wrought, I supplicate for thy control; ^ But in the quietness of thought: Me this unchartered freedom tires; I feel the weight of chance desires: My hopes no more must change their name, I long for a repose that ever is the same. 40 33 f. The punctuation offers some difficulty in this stanza. 37. unehartered. I'nrestricted, a freedom not limited by charter. ^ ELEGIAC STANZAS >73 *» Stern lawgiver ! yet thou dost wear The Godhead's most benignant grace; Nor know we anythinj; so fair As is the smile upon thy face: Flowers laugh before tiiee on their beds, And fragrance in thy footing treads; Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong; And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong. To humbler functions, awful Power! I call thee: I myself commend •• Unto thy guidance from this hour; O, let my weakness have an end ! Give unto me, made lowly wise, The spirit of self-sacrifice; The confidence of reason give; « And in the light of truth thy Bondman let me live ! ELEGIAC STANZAS SUGGESTED BV A PICTURE OF PEELE CASTLE, IN A STORM, PAINTED BY SIR GEORGE BEAUMONT. I was thy neighbor once, thoa rugged Pile ! Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee: I saw thee every day; and all the while Thy Form was sleeping on a glassy sea. 56. thy Bondman. Compare 1. 32. Paraphrase the poem verse by verse to elucidate the meaninff. Peele Castle, in Lancashire, south of Barrow-in-Furness. 2. Four summer weeks- in 1794 Wordsworth spent part of a summer vacation at the house of his cousin, Mr. Barker, at Rampside, a village near Peele Castle. MICRCKOPY RESOLUTION TEST CHART (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) 1.0 I.I ^ IIIIIM u^ m ^ 1^ 2.5 2.2 2.0 !.8 ^ /APPLIED IIVMGE Inc SS'^ '653 East Mom Street S'^S Rochester, New York 14609 USA ■^— (716) 482 - 0300 - Phone ^S ("6) 288 - 5989 - Fax 174 SELECT POEMS OF WORDSWORTH So pure the sky, so quiet was the air ! So like, so very like, was day to day ! Whene'er I looked, thy Imai^e still was there; It trembled, but it never passed away. How perfect was the calm ! it seemed no sleep; No mood, which season takes away, or brings:' I could have fancied that the mij,rhty Deep Was even the gentlest of all gentle Things. Ah ! THEN, if mine had been the Painter's hand. To express what then I saw; and add the gleam, The light that never was, on sea or land, The consecration, and the Poet's dream; I would have planted thee, thou hoary Pile, Amid a world how different from this ! Beside a sea that could not cease to smile; On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss. to ■5 6-7. Shelley has twice imitated those lines. Compare:— Within the surface of Time s fleeting river Its wrmkled Image lies, as then it lay Immovably unquiet, and for ever It trembles, but it cannot pass away. also the following : ^* '" ''^'''y^ ^•• Within the surface of the fleeting- river The wrinkled image of the citV lav. Immovably unquiet, and for ever ' It trembles, but it never fades awav. Evening. 9-10. The calm was so complete th it it did not w,.,.,« .. . sient mood of the sea, a passing sleep. """ - *•"""- 13-16. Compare with the above original readinir of .So, &oand.8':r "^'' "^^- ""- -hi^h W.;;dswor,h tXiulted'ln^ Ah ! THEN, if mine had been the Painters hand To express what then I saw ; and add a gleam," X ho lustre, known to neither sea nor latu'l Hut borrowed from the youthful Poets dream \l ELEGIAC STANZAS 175 Thou shoiildst have seemed a treasure-house divine Of peaceful years; a chronicle of heaven; — Of all the sunbeams that did ever shine The very sweetest had to thee been g^iven. A Picture had it been of lasting ease, Elysian quiet, without toil or strife; No motion but the moving tide, a breeze, Or merely silent Nature's breathing life. Such, in the fond illusion of my h^art. Such Picture would I at that time have made: And seen the soul of truth in every part, A steadfast peace that might not be betrayed. So once it would have been, — 'tis so no more; I have submitted to a new control: A power is gone, which nothing can restore; A deep distress hath humaniited my Soul. Not for a moment could I now behold A smiling sea, and be what I have been: The feeling of my loss will ne'er be old; This, which I know, I speak with mind serene. Then, Beaumont, Friend ! who would have been the Friend, If he had lived, of Him whom I deplore. This work of thine I blame not, but commend; This sea in anger, and that dismal shore. O 'tis a passionate Work ! — yet wise and well, Well chosen is the spirit that is here; •5 35 40 45 11 i li 176 SELECT POEMS OF WORDSWORTH if' 11 m That Hulk which labors in the deadly swell, This rueful sky, this pageantry of fear ! And this huge Castle, standing here sublime, I love to see the look with which it braves. Cased in the unfeeling armor of old time, The lightning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves. Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone. Housed in a dream, at distance from the Kind ! Such happiness, wherever it be known. Is to be pitied: for 'tis surely blind. But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer. And frequent sights of what is to be borne ! Such sights, or worse, as are before me here. — Not without hope we suffer and we mourn. 55 SEPTEMBER, 1819 The sylvan slopes with corn-clad fields Are hung, as if with golden shields. Bright trophies of the sun ! Like a fair sister of the sky. Unruffled doth the blue lake lie. The mountains looking on. And, sooth to say, yon vocal grove, Albeit uninspired by love, By love untaught to ring. May well afford to mortal ear 54. from the Kind. From our fellow-being's. 7. vocal grove. Filled with the music of birds. S-6. C/. B3'ron in Isles of Greece: "The mountains look on Marathon And Marathon looks on the sea." 8-9. The birds are not mating- now. |.l IPOX THE SAME OCCASION 1 77 An impulse more profoundly dc;ir Than music of the Sprinjj. For that from turbulence and heat Proceeds, from some uneasy seat In nature's strujj^ling- frame, 15 Some rej^ion of impatient life: And jealousy, and quivering strife, Therein a portion claim. This, this is holy; — while I hear These vespers of another year, «> This hymn of thanks and praise, My spirit seems to mount above The anxieties of human love. And earth's precarious days. But list ! — thoui^h winter storms be nij^h, ^s Unchecked is that soft harmony: There lives Who can provide For all his creatures; and in Him, Even like the radiant Seraphim, These choristers confide. 30 f UPON THE SAME OCCASION Departing summer hath assumed An aspect tenderly illumed, The gentlest look of spring; That calls from yonder leafy shade Unfaded, yet prepared to fade, A timely carolling. 14. seat. Condition. 5. Xote the finL-ness of porcoption in this line. 178 SELECT POEMS OK WORDSWORTH No faint and hesitating trill, Such tribute as to winter chill The lonely redbreast pays ! Clear, loud, and lively is the din, From social warblers gathering- in Their harvest of sweet lays. Nor doth the example fail to cheer Me, conscious that my leaf is sere, And yellow on the bough: — Fall, rosy garlands, from my head ! Ye myrtle wreaths, your fragrance shed Around a younger brow ! Yet will I temperately r-^joice; Wide is the range, and free the choice Of undiscordant themes; Which, haply, kindred souls may prize Not less than vernal ecstasies, And passion's feverish dreams. For deathless pow-ers to verse belong, And they like Demi-gods are strong On whom the Muses smile; But some their function have disclaimed. Best pleased with what is aptliest framed To enervate and defile. «s 7. Is there an ellipsis here ? or is the line appositional ? 14-15. Compare Shakespeare's lines in Macbeth, v, 3: " My way ol life Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf." J". th6 Muses smile. The Muses were nine in number, and were supposed to pr.^side over poetry, music, dancing-, and all the liberal arts. 30. Scan this line Wordsworth refers scathiny-ly to the -:jrruption of .nodern poetry. UPON THE SAMK OCCASION 179 Not such the initiatory strains Committed to the silent plains In Britain's earliest dawn: Trembled the groves, the stars grew pale, While all-too-daringly the veil Of nature was withdrawn ! Nor such the spirit-stirring note When the live chords Alcajus smote. Inflamed by sense of wrong; Woe ! woe to Tyrants ! from the lyre Broke threateningly, in sparkles dire Of fierce vindictive song. And not unhallowed was the page By winged Love inscribed, to assuage The pangs of vain pursuit; Love listening while the Lesbian Maid With finest touch of passion swayed Her own i^olian lute. O ye, who patiently explore fhe wreck of Herculanean lore. ss 40 31-36. Wordsworth implies that the Druids were the oariiest poets of Britain. 38. AlCSBUS- A lyric pi et of Mitylene, in the island o» Lesbos, about 600 B.C. Ho was a contemporary of Sappho (see 1. 46), and the inventor of the alcaic verse. 46. the Lesbian Maid. Sappho, born in the island of Lesbos about 600 B.C. Her poetry was extremely emotional, and was highly esteemed by the ancients. But two or three frajf- ments now rem mi. She is said to have hurled herself int ) the sea from Mount Leucas owinyf to unrequited love. 48. ^Olian lute. Sappho's birth place, Lesbos, .vas in i^iolia. 50. Herculanean iOFO. Herculaneum was entfulfod with Pompeii in the famous eruption from Mt. \'esuvius in A.D. 79. The town was unearthed in 1709, about j 4 feet underj^round, by workmen diiiti'intr fo'" a well. Many manuscripts were later discovered in the ruins. l8o SELECT POEMS OF WORUSWORTH What rapture ! could ye seize Some Theban fraj^ment, or unroll One precious, tender-hearted scroll Of pure Simonides. That were, indeed, a genuine birth Of poesy; a bursting forth Of genius from the dust: What Horace gloried to behold. What Maro loved, shall we enfold ^ Can haughty Time be just? 55 TO THE REV. DR. WORDSWORTH (with the sonnets to the river dl'ddon, anh other POEMS IN this collection, i820). The minstrels played their Christmas tune To-night beneath my cottage-eaves; While, smitten by a lofty moon, The encircling laurels, thick with leaves. Gave back a rich and dazzling sheen, a That overpowered their natural green. Through hill and valley every breeze Had sunk to rest with folded wings: 5-'. Some Theban fragment. The n-ference is to I'indar, tin- la ITU s Theban poet. His " Olympie Odes " were his most famous production. He died about 435 B.C. 54. Simonides. .\ celebrated p-^et of CVos. Some frajfments of his poetrv are extant. He died about 500 B.C. 55-60. Sueh discoveries would brinjj us a wealth of genuine poetry. Will Time ever be ifood enoui^h to restore to us what Horace and \'erg-il (Maro) loved? 58. Horace. .\ famous Roman poet, the author of Odes Satires, and Kpistles. He died in S B.C. 5c). Maro. ^'or} irON WKSTMINSTKR HKIin.K iS COMPOSKI) ri'ON WKSTMINSTKR imilHlK Skpi. 3, I Hi) J. Eiirth has not anything,' to show more fair; Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A stj,'ht so touchinjr in its majesty: This City now doth, like a tjarment, wear The beauty of the morning'; silent, bare. Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples he Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All brijfht and glittering' in the . -nokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendor, 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 mi^'hty heart is lying still ! "WHEN I HAVE BORNE IN MEMORY" When I have borne in memory what has tamed Great Nations, how ennobling thoughts depart When men change swords for ledgers, and desert The student's bower for gold, some fears unna " > I I had, my Country !-am I to be blamed? Now, w hen I think of thee, and what thou art. Verily, in the bottom of my heart, Of those unfilial fears I am ashamed. For dearly must we prize thee; we who find In thee a bulwark for the cause of men; And I by my affection was beguiled: What wonder if a Poet now and then. Among the many movements of his mind, Felt for thee as a lover or a child ! 10 i86 SELECT POEMS OF WORDSWORTH i^ "IT IS NOT TO BE THOUGHT OF" It is not to be thought of that the Flood Of British freedom, which to the open sea Of the world's praise from dark antiquity Hath flowed, 'with pomp of waters, unwithstood,' Roused thouj,'^h it be full often to a mood Which spurns the check of salutary bands. That this most famous Stream in bogs and sands Should perish, and to evil and to good Be lost forever. In our halls is hung Armoury of the invincible Knights of old: We must be free or die, who speak the tongue That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold Which Milton held. — In everything we are sprung Of Earth's first blood, have titles manifold. WRITTEN IN LONDON, SEPTEMBER, 1803 O Friend! I know not which way I must look For comfort, being, as I am, oppressed, To think that now our life is only dressed For show; mean handiwork of craftsman, cook, Or groom ! — We must run glittering like a brook s In the open sunshine, or we are unblessed: The wealthiest man among us is the best: No grandeur now in nature or in book Delights us. Rapine, avarice, expense, Tills is idolatry; and these we adore: 10 i'ii' 4- ' With pomp of waters, unwithstood.' Tliis is quoti-d from Daniel's C'l'vi'/ U'lir, Bk. ii, stanza 7. LONDON, 1802 187 Plain living and high thinking are no more: The homely beauty of the good old cause Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence. And pure religion breathing household laws. LONDON, 1802 Milton ! thou should'st be living at this hour: England hath need of thee: she is a fen Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen, Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bmver, Have forfeited their ancient English dower Of inward happiness. We are selfish men; Oh ! raise us up, return to us again; And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart: Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea: Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, So didst thou travel on life's common way, In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart The lowliest duties on herself did lay. TO SLEEP A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by. One after one; the sound of rain, and bees Murmuring; the fail of rivers, winds and seas, Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sl.:y; I have thought of all by turns, and yet do lie Sleepless ! and soon the small birds' melodies Must hear, first uttered from my orchard trees; And the first cuckoo's melancholy cry. Even thus last night, and two nights more, I lay, 1 88 SEI.FXT POEMS OK WORDSWORTH And could not win thee, Sleep ! by any stealth. So do not let me wear to-niyht awav: Witliout Thee what is all the iTiorninj,'-'s wealth ? Come, blessed barrier between day and dav, Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health ! BROOK! WHOSK SOClIiTV Brook ! whose society the Poet seeks. Intent his wasted spirits to renew; And whom the curious Painter doth pursue Throuj^h rocky passes, amon^ flowery creeks, And" tracks thee dancinj,' down thy waterbreaks; It wish were mine some type of thee to view, Thee, and not thee thyself, I would not do Like Grecian Artists, jjive thee human cheeks, Channels for tears; no Naiad should'st thou be, — Have neither limbs, feet, feathers, joints nor hairs: It seems the Eternal Soul is clothed in thee With purer robes than those of flesh and blood, And hath bestowed on thee a safer good; Unwearied joy, and life without its cares. OX THK SJBJCGATION OF SWITZERLAND Two \'oices are there; one is of the sea. One of the mountains; each a mij^'-htv \'oice: In both from age to age thou didst rejoice. They were thy chosen music. Liber^v ! ON thk si Kjii.ATiON OF swH ziRLAND. Napoleon had in i8o,^ rotl>uod .Switzerland to a virtual dependency of France. 1-4. Two Voices are there-Liberty. Liberty has always found her strongholds among llie mouiitain>, or upon the open INSIDE OF king's collec;!-; chapel, cambkiik;k 189 There came a Tyrant, and with holy t,lee s Thou fouj,'^ht'st against him; but hast vainly striven: Thou from thy Alpine holds at length art driven, Where not a torrent murmurs heard by thee. Of one deep bliss thine ear hath been bereft: Then cleave, O cleave to that which still is left; to For, high-souled Maid, what sorrow would it be That Mountain floods should thunder as before, And Ocean bellow from his rocky shore. And neither awful Voice be heard by thee ! INSIDK OF KING'S COLLKGK CHAPEL, CAMBRIDGF Tax not the royal Saint with vain expense, With ill-matched aims the Architect who planned — Albeit laboring for a scanty band Of white-robed Scholars only this immense And glorious Work of fine intelligence ! 5. There came a Tyrant. Xapoioon i. 6. Thou. sc. Liberty. 7. holds = s/r(»ii^'/ioliis. 8. Till' Alpine torrents murmur still, but Liberty lias boon driven away. 10. England is still the home of Liberty. I r. high-SOUled Maid. Tho poet addresses Liborty throuifh- out the sonnet. 11-14. Napoleon never abandoned the idea ot iiivadiiiir Eng- land 1 . Tax not = b/ame nof. the royal Saint. Henry VL founded the ohapel in 1441. It was finished in 1527 under Henry \IL 2. Supply an ellipsis. With ill-matched aims. Such a sumptuous design for twelve surpliced schobxrs only. ; I igo ;- "? ir .,; SELECT POEMS OF WORDSWORTH Give ill thou canst; hij^h Heaven rejects the lore Of nicely-calculated less or more; So deemed the man who fashioned for the sense These lofty pillars, spread that branching- roof, Self-poised and scooped into ten thousand cells, Where light and shade reoose, where music dwells Lingeringr~and wanderinj,' on as loath to die; Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof That they were born for immortality. t'.L mi' ir CONTINUED They dreamt not of a perishable home Who thus could build. Be mine, in hours of fear Or grovelling thought, to seek a refuge here; Or through the aisles of Westminster t . roam: Where bubbles burst, and folly's dancing foam Melts, if it cross the threshold; where the wreath Ot awe-struck wisdom droops: or let my path Lead to that younger Pile, whose sky-like dome should not KrudKe a jfoncrous outlay, but should give to the ful- ness ot our power. lOre = feacAtHf^, doctrine f>rlnrif>le. 9- These lofty pillars. There are no aetual pillars. The bunresses of the walls have the app.aranee from within V^" that branching roof. The roof is of stone delieately .h.«'i?®*f"^°H^u '^^^ '''''^ depends upon the buttresses of tiK walls alone. There are no supporting pill,-,rs along- the aisles. scooped into ten thousand cells. The hoiiows of the earving-s. 8 that younfirer Pile. St. Pauls Cathedral, London. Westminster was begun in the i.sth eenturv. S . I'auls was built 111 1675. ■ "* Whose sky-like dome, imitated from the Oriental dome of at. Peter s, Rome. f h SCORN NOT THE SONNET Hath typified by reach of daring art Infinity's embrace; whose guardian crest, The silent Cross, among the stars shall spread As now, when She hath also seen her breast Filled with mementos, satiate with it:^ part Of grateful England's overflowing Dead. 191 "SCORN NOT THE SONNET" Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned, Mindless of its just honors; wilh this key Shakespeare unlocked his heart; the melody Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound; A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound; With it Camoens soothed an exile's gt-ief ; The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp. 8-10. The dome simulates the arched sky, and thus may be said to typify infinity. 1 1. The silent Cross. The emblem of christian ty. 12-14. St. Paul's is still less crowded than Westmin.iter with the illustrious o<" " England's overflowing- Dead." 3. Shakespeare unlocked his heart. This is disputed. Many critics hold that Shakespeare's sonnets are almost entirely fanciful. 4. Petrarch's wound. His unfortunate attachment to the Laura whom he celebrates in his sonnets. Petrarch was a great Italian poet of the Renaissance; he was bom in 1504, and died «n •574- 5. Tasso. I544-1595- A" halian poet of great genius, but of un'nalanced mind. Famous as the author of " Jerusalem Delivered." 6. Camoens. 1524-1580. The lyric poet of Portugal, and author of "The Lusiad. " 8. Dante. 1265-1321. An Italian, anU >Mie of the great poets of the world. His great work is thi " Divi.ie Comedy. " ig?. SKLEtT POEMS OK WORDSWORTH It cheered mild Spenser, call.;d from Faeryland To stru^r^rie throuj,-h dark ways; and, when a damp Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand The Thinj, became a trumpet; whence he blew Soul-animatinj,' strains— alas, too few ! lo. Spenser. Edmund Sponser, thi- author of the "Faerie yueone, ' was horn in 155-', and died in 1599. His influence has been very marked upon English poetry. mp ' Faerie nee has i U ■I I •ft - .'-> «A,../, ■ v>\ \' . : . , - ' - K. -^ v-/ H- alne> l.j "lian." MAP OF TIIK I.AKK COrXTRV By permission of the American Bcnk Co. NOTES ON THE TKXr OF tULERlUGK A.\l) WORDSWORTH NOTES ON THE TEXT OF THE ANTFEXT MARIXER Ti.K syst.Mn of toachiMjT .vhich employs a boautiCul poem prnnanly as a basis for a lesson in etymology is to be deprecated. I l>e object ot ti.e editor has been to disenss onlv words of peeu- ■■ar ...terest or of importance in the text. KIsewhere reference ...ay be made t .. our excellent modern diction.-.nes- 7/„. (V«/«rv /hrhouary, whose derivations are very reliable, and MurravC still nicomplete Xfw English Dictionary. PART I The s.ruKKle oi the Weddinj,^.Guest against the overn.asterine mfluence of the .Mariner is here depicted, and the ullin.ate sur- render to Ins n.agnetic sway. Sounds from the outer world obtrude themselves in the opening stanzas, but before the clese they fall Idly on the ears of the Wedding-Guest. The spell of the we.rd story is upon him. An exquisite poetic et!ect is gained m hnes 30 f. by the image of the bride as she paced into .he hall • but tho spell remains unbroken. It will be observed that the in" tcrruptions of the Wedding-Guest at the outset are impatient, and for the purpose of thwarting the narrative. The interru,,- tions which follow are the result of fear and fascination We need not spoil the simple beauty of the poem bv t.ie pre- mature intrusion of philosophical interpretations. Let the student hrst read the poem for the delight in reading if, and when the hour for reflection comes an added pleasure will doubtless accrue tor some minds at least, from the discoverv of hidden spiritual meanings, even r.t the risk o^ making the poem more difficult than It was meant to be. For a brief discussion of this question of philosophical significance, sec opening note to Part \\\. I. ancient. The word usuallv suggests time long past In the poem the action probab' relates to a remote period, but the J n/> NOTES word itsollIuTi- ralhiT ri-lor^ lo tin- ,iilvaiu\-d ajLji' I'l tin- narrator — till' Old Xavijfalor, as loliTidj;i> Imi-d lo rail liitii. •'It was a dfliialo lIuMijilit lo put tho wi-ird talo, not into tlu- authi>r'-s own nunith, but into that of an amii-iit niarinor, who rt-latos it with dreamy rei-olloclion."— Hraiidl, pa^e 202. 2. one of three. Thn-f and sovon are mysiii- nuinhors, and scum (or that ri'ason adopted tlirouj^^hout thi- poi-m ; f. ^f. : " And listens like a three years' child." (Line 15.) "(Juoth she, and whistles thrieo. " (Line 19K.) "Seven days, seven nijflits, I saw that eurse." (Line 261.) 3. By thy longr grray beard. Observe the art of this indirect description involved in the progress of the n.irrative. Compare otlier inst.inces of personal description in the poem, especi.illy lines 79 f., where the a^ony on the Mariner's face is reflected in the terrified words of tlie WedJinj^-Cluest. The custom of swear- ing- by the beard is not uncommon in old literature. Touch. " Swear by your beards that I am a knave. Cel. By our beards, if we had them, thou art. " ShakesjH'are, As You Like It, I, ii, I I. loon. Not to be confused with loon (a corruption of loom), the name of an ai|uatic bird. This is the explanation usually given. Our present word is Middle Knglish lowne. meaning "a stupid fellow." ('/. "The devil ilarnri thee black, thou cream-faced loon ! " Shakespeare, Macbeth, \\ iii. 13. He holds him, etc. Observe the repetition of the phrase, //(' holds him, from line 9, and notice the constant effective repetitions throughout. Repetition is extremely common in ballad literature, but even in other poems than Tlic Ancient Mariner it had developed into a mannerism with C'oleridi^e. Comp.nre also Kdgar Allan Poe. 21 f. Forthe joyousnessof a ship's departure compart- Tennv- son's The Vovoi^e. The evolution of Coleridge's poem is verv perfect. In line 46-; the return to the old familiar landmarks brings joy to the old man's heart : "Oh ! dream of joy ! is this indeed The lit; lit -house tup I see ':" Is this the hill ? is this the kirk ? Is this mine own countree?" ii THK AVCtENT MARIXKR '97 -W kirk. This is thf northern form still survivinj; in Scot, land of thf Ati^jlo-Saxon rvm, which b.-iaine church in MlJIand and Southt-rn Kn>f!ish. It is significant, in \iow of Iho occasional touches of Northern ilialect in 7he Ancifnt Afariner, to nolo that the borderland was the primitive home of the ballad. " There is scarcely an old historical sony or ball.-d, wherein a minstrel or harper appears, but he is characterized by way of eminence to have been 'of the north countrye.' -Percy", hss'ay on the Ancient Minstrelsv. 25 f. Not. the naked simplicity of this description. Lowell has very abl> ilyzed th.- charm of Coleridfjes descriptions in the followinjf passajfo. the excellence of which is an excuse for its length: "foleridK'e has taken the old ballad measure and Riven to it, by an indefinable charm wholly his own, all the .sweetp.ss, all the melody and compass oi a symphony. And- how picturesque it is in the proper sense of the word. I know nothinjf like it. There is not a description in it. It is all picture. Descriptive poets generally confuse us with multiplicity of detail ; we can not see their forest for the trees ; but Coleridge never errs in this way. With instinctive tact he touches the rijjht chord of association, and is satisfied, as we also are. I should find it hard to explain the singular charm of his diction, there is so much nil ety of art and purpose in it, whether for music or meaninjf. Nor does it need any explanation, for we all feel it. The words seem common words enough, but in the order of them, in the choice, variety, and position of the vowel sounds, thev become maKical. The most decrepit vocable m the lanjjuaKe throws awa> its crutches to dance and sinjf at his piping. I can not think it a personal peculiarity, but a matter of universal experi- ence, that mo-e bits of Coleridsfe have imbedded themselves in my mciiory than of any other poet who delighted my youth— unless I sl.ould except the sonnets of Shakespeare. This arg-ues perfectness of expression. Let me cite an example or two : ' The Sun's rim dips, the stars rush out, At one stride comes the dark ; U ith far-heard whisper o'er the sea Off shot the spectre barque.' Or take this as a bit of landscape : ' Beneath yon birch with silver bark And boughs so pendulous and fair, m t\ I9^« NOTES 'III The brook falls siattered down the rock, And all is mossy there.' • It is a perfect little picture, and seems so easily done. But trv to do someihinjf like it. Coleridge's words have the unashamed nakedness of Scripture, of the Eden of diction ere the voluble serpent had entered it. This felicity of speech in Coleridge's best verse is the more remarkable because it was an acquisition. His earlier poems are apt to be turgid ; in his prose there is too often a languor of profuseness, and there are pages where he seems to be talking to himself and not to us, as I have heard a guide do in the tortuous caverns of the Catacombs when he was doubtful if he had not lost his way. But when his genius runs freely and full in his prose, the style, as he said of Pascal, ' is a garment of light.' He knew all our best prose and knew the secret of its composition. When he is well inspired, as in his best poetry he commonly is, he gives us the very quintessence of perception, the clearly crystallized precipitation of all that is most precious in the ferment of impression after the impertinent and obtrusive p;irticulars have evaporated from the memory. It is the pure visual ecstasy disengaged from the confused and contusing material that gave it birth. It seems the very beati- tutle of artless simplicity, and is the most finished product of art. I know nothing so perfect in its kind since Dante." — Lowell, ll'oris, vol. vi, )p. 74, 75. Coleridge's power as a descriptive poet is touched upon else- where (see pages 47 f.). Simplicity is everywhere its prevailing quality, and an effort should be made to impress this upon the student by textual reference. In this stanza the loneliness which suddenly enveloped the ship is impressively conveyed. 32. the loud bassoon. Mr. Dykes Campbell has the follow- ing note on this : " During Coleridge's residence at Stowey his friend Poole reformed the church choir, and added a bassoon to its resources. Mrs. Sanford {T. Pooh- and bis Friends, i, 247) happily suggests that this 'was the very original and prototype of the /oud bassoon whose sound moved the Wedding-Guest to beat his breast.' " 34. Red as a rose. A common comparison in ballads, where alliterative similes and expressions are very frequent ; e.g., "green as ... . glass. " Lin., 10; "green as ... . grass," Alaur., 7. CJ. also, , THE ANCIENT MARINER 199 " Her clieeks were like the roses red." Dowsabell, lino 92 (Percy's Reliijues). " His lippes reed as rose. " Chaucer, I he Tale of Sir Jhopas. 51-70. And now there came, etc. Mr. Ivor James in the Athenceum for March 15, 1890, quotes a number of parallels from Captain James's NorUnvest Passage, as a proof that Coleridge drew some of his descriptions from that source (see also Dykes Campbell, Coleridge's ll-'oris, page 597). 62. Like noises in a SWOUnd. So (except of for in) in the 1798 edition. In 1800 the reading was, " A wild and ceaseless soimd. " The earlier reading was properly restored. The comparison of these muffled noises to the sound of the pulsing arteries in a condition of syncope is very expressive. — SWOUnd. Derived from swoun with excrescent d. Compare the "d" in sound, round. 67. It ate the food it ne'er had eat. reads : " The Marineres gave it biscuit-worms." Do you consider the revised text the better reading ? The 1798 edition PART II. The gloss forms a sufficient commentary upon the progress of the story in this second part. The crime is accomplished, the wanton slaying of a harmless creature, and retribution follows swift behind. The Mariner is first blamed by his comrades, but when a fair breeze rises to speed them on their northward vov.-ige they approve the deed, and thus become accomplices in crime. The fifth stanza is remarkable. The sudden stagnation that checks the ship's exultant speed offers a wonderful poetic con- trast. Nothing could excel in its kind the description which follows. 87. And the grOOd south wind. Cf. lines 91 and 92 for the use of "and" as an introductory word. It is a peculiarity of ballad diction ; e. g. : "And he cast a lease upon his backe. And he rode to the silver wood, zoo \OTi-:s m j« ^ Anil Ihoro he soiit;lit all about, About the silver wood," etc. CAi/de .Uaiiriic, Guininon", pa^-e 192. 92. 'em is not really a contraction of //,em, but a survivu'of Middle Kntflish //<«/, An^lo-Saxon Aeow, the dative plural of the third personal pronoun. 95 and 96. which balance lines 101 and 10.., were >iot in the early editions. .04. The furrow followed free. .Mr Dvkes Campbell nas the lollownisr note upon this line : "In SiM/nu' Leaves the line was printed, ' The furrow stn amed off free.' And Coleridjfe put this footnote, ' In the lornier edition the line was, ' The furrow follow'd free." But I had not been lon.y- on board a ship before I perceiv ed that this was the nnaKo as seen by a spectator from the shore, or from a.iother vessel. From the ship itself the ,vake appears like a brook flowing olT Irom the stern.' Hut in ,8^8 and after, the old line was restored.' Justify your preference for either line. 117-11S. The imasre contained in these lines is deservedly famous. . -'3-. 30. The very deep did rot. etc. This, with some allow- ance for poetic exapK<'ration, fairly accurately represents the con- dition of the sea in the tropics after a prooni^ed calm. An earlier poem of Coleridj^es contains lines which suKKest line 1 25 : " What time after long- and pestful calms, With slimy shapes anil miscreated life I'oisoninff the vast Pacific " Coleridg-e, The Destiny of Sations. 127. About, about, etc. There seems to be a hint in this pass- ajff of the witches' sonjf in Macbeth : "The weird sisters, hand in hand. Posters of the sea and land. Thus do tfo about, about." Shakespeare, Afacbeth, I, iii, 32 f. .2«. The death-flres. "AmonK the superstitious this name, as also corpse candles, dead mens candles and fetch-lights, was Kiven to certain phosphorescent li^rhts that appeared to issue m THE ANCIENT MARINER 20I from houses or arise from the jfround. It was believed that they foretold death, and that the course they took marked out the road the dead hixly was to be carried for'burial," etc.— Charlotte L.-'tham, Folk-lore Record. 129. like a witch's oils. Oil used in incantations was mingled, in order to make the scene more impressive, with sub- .stances which produced a colored flame. 139- Well-a-day. Altered by analogy with "dav. " from vellaway. Middle English -wela-vay, Anglo-Saxon -wa la iva, an exclamation of distress, w«, woe ; /«, lo ; «■«, woe. It is a very common ballad expression. The Gloss. 131 f. JosephUS, A.D. 37-100 (?). A celebrated Jewish historian. At the outbreak of the Judeo-Roman war ho was appointed Governor of Galilee, and took an active part in the war. He afterwards entered into the service of the p:mperors Vespasian and Titus. In Rome he composed the History of the Jewish War, in seven books, and also The Antiquities of the JfS.'S. PsellUS, I020-1I 10 (?), was born in Constantinople, where he was called the " I'rince of Philosophers." His works are numer- ous, consisting of commentaries on Aristotle and treatises on the occult sciences. Coleridge has reference to his Dialogue on the Operation of Demons. 11 ■i^iil \m PART III. The marvels accumulate in this third part, but, like the Wed- ding-Guest, we "can not choose but hear." The intensity with which the poet depicts the supernatural brings it vividly before our imagination, and "by sheer vividness of imagery, and terse vigor of descriptive phrase," he obtains our imaginative assent to the weird details of the narrative. We believe because we see. I }3- There passed, etc. This third part has been subjected to the most conscientious and successful revision on the poets part. What is the special value of the repetition in the present text? 152. 1 Wist. This has the appearance of being an archaic preterite from the preterite present verb wit, M. K. 7vifen, .A.-S. witan, to know ; but it is more probably a corruption of A.-S. il 202 NOTES I i ffeiKiss, iorUimW, indeed, M. K. ^,„,,-.„., /.,.,/,„, ,,.|,i,.,, |,e,.;i,„^. /^„-^^ b}- lonfusioii Willi the above preterite. 16. A sail ! a sail ! This ship sus^i-sts the faniot.s " Flvin- nulchman." "The orij;inal story is that of a Duteh captain who swore he would round Cape Horn ajfaiiisl a head ^ale. The storm increased; Ik; swore the louder; threw overboard those who trii-d to dissuade him ; cursed Clod, and w.-s condemneil to sail on forever, without hope of port or respite."— Svkes. 164 they for joy did grin. •• i took the thouj,M.t of ' ^rin- nniK for joy • from my companions [Berdniore, of Jesus Collej-e, Cambridj-el remark to me when we had climbed to the top of Plinlimmon, ;ind were nearly dead with thirst. We could not spe.ik, from the constriction, till we found a little puddle under a Mone. He said to me, ' Vou jfriimed like an idiot ! ' He had done the same r-Tab/e Talk, May ,3, ,830 (second edition). .78. (Heaven's Mother send us grace!) A., imitation of old ballad retrains. These refrains were of different kinds, some- tnnes beins,^ quite meaninsrless and of the nature of a burden merely to mark time, as Hey derry down, olilly lally, etc. Some- times ajfain the words are articulate, but strung together with no apparent sense, as, for example, in Riddles Wisely Expounded : •' There was a Knicht ridinjj frae the east— Jennifer gentle and rosemarie - W ho had been wooinjf at monie a place- As the de-w flies over the mulberry tree." And finally the refrain has sometimes more or less reference to the story as in The Ttvo Sisters: " He has taen three locks o' her yellow hair— Binnorie, O Binnorie — \\\A wi' them strunjf his harp sae rare By the bonnie mill-dams of Binnorie." Modern balladists have employed both the articulate and the meaningless refrain. As for the former, r/. Tennyson in The Sisters: " We were two sisters of one race. The wind is howling in turret and tree; She w.as the fairer in the face, O! the F.arl was fair to see." THE ANCIENT MARINER 203 Joan lii>roknv, and Rossotti in Sis/er Helen, Ttoy 7uw/i, Eden Bower, have by profi-ri'iue einpknod the lattor, an artoctalion cleverly parodied by the late Mr. C. S. Calverley: " The auld wife sat at her ivied door (Butter and etfjfs and a pound of chiese), A thinjf she had frequently done before; And her spectacles lay on her aproned knees. " The farmer's daujfhter hath soft brown hair. (Butter and ej^jjs and a pound of cheese). And I met witli a ballad, I can't say where, Which wholly consisted of lines like these." 179, 180 \oie the graphic force oi the simile here. The stanza be.t,,pi with a metaphorical allusion. Still, we are so accustomed to the term "bars, " as applied to level lines of clouds, that the metaphor passes as a plain statement. The idea of bars, by the principle of association which is at the bottom of all g^reat poetry, suggested the image of a dungeon grate, which by the same process of association led to the personification of the sun peering through its prison bars "with broad and burning face. " The same idea is still working in the poet's mind in lines 185 f , but with a transferred reference to thevessels hollow ribs instead of the low horizon clouds. 185 f. The changes from the original text of 1798 at this point are very radical. , In comparing the two full versions the toning down of the gruesome element is particularly to be noticed. The following words of Professor Dowden are apposite to this portion of the poem : " Relying largely, as he did in his poems which deal with the supernatural, on the effect produced by their psychological truth, Coleridge could afford to subdue the supernatural, and refine it to the utmost. . . . More important than truth physical he felt truth psychological to be. And attaining this, he did not need, as ' Monk ' Lewis* did, to drag into his verse all the hor- rors of the churchyard and the nether pit of Hell. . . . Again, in The Ancient Mariner, where the spectre bark approaches the doomed ship, and the forms of Death and Life-in-Death are vis- ible, playing at dice for the mariner and his companions, a verse * A contemporary of Colc-id^ Hi* chief work, 'd he Monk, accour PtI d author of •upcrnatural romances, lb . '.. I . ^A 204 NOTES I _ i full o( chartu'l abominations <■ rurs in the oriifinal text (twc Stan/as, in (art), ^vhic•l. was altorwards j.uliciouslv on.ittod tok-ndKo felt that th.-se hideous inddt-nts of the ^ravo only cU-lraot.-d from the fi.u-r horror of tlu- voUipluous boaulv of his U hite IX-vil, tho nighlmaro Lifo-in-Doath. •-Dovvdon, Xen- S/u- lilt's in Literature, paije 338 f. .98. And whistles thrice. Whistling at soa is sure- to bri„K on a storm, runs tho sailors' superstition. thrice, in addition to rimini,-uiih "diee." is used for its super- sffons siir-.-ificaneo. It is the favorite number for invocations. "Thrice to the holly brake— Thrice to the well — I bid thee awake. White .Maid of Avenel !" Scott, Tlie Monastery. Kniesomeness of the situation here reaches a Tht JO I f. climax. -MO-.,,. The horned Moon. " it is a common superstition amonj4 sailors that somethinj,^ evil is about to happen whenever a star dojfs the moon" (manuscript note bv Coleridge). " But " adds .Mr. (.ampbell. "no sailor ever saw a star within the nether t.i> o» a hor..ed moon." This error was not committed bv Cole- ndjfen, , he .798 edition, where the reading is " .Almost atween the tips." :"-'^.l- And every soul, etc. The souls in leaving the bodies make an angry noise in the Mariners guiltv ears It is superstitiously held that the soul may be seen and" heard some- times while leaving the body. CJ. Tennyson. : " The gloomy brewer's fCromwells] soul Went by me like a stork. " Tennyson, The Talkinq Oak, 55. And Rossetti : ".\nd the souls mounting up to God UVnt by her like thin flames. " Rossetti, riw Blessed Damuzel. ^ The impression of the supernatural conveyed bv this and the fo!Unv:T,g parts of the poem is skilihniN ai.alvzed by Walter Pater "I-ancies of the strange things which may very wdlhappen.even THK WCIEXT MARINEK 205 in broad dayli.ii:ht, to nu'ti shut up alone in ships far oft' on tin- S'.-a, seem to have ofcurreil to the human mind in all atfos with a peiuliar readiness, and often have about them, from the story of the stealintf of Dionysius downward, the fasi-inalion of a certain dreamy Jf'''ii'<-N whiih distinguishes them from other kinds of marvellous inventions. This sort of fascination 77ie Ancient Mariner brinjfs to its highest degree : it is the delicacy, the dreamy (ifrace, in his presentation of the marvellous, which makes Coleridge's work so remarkable. The too palpable intruders from a spiritual world in almost all ghost literature, in Scott and Shakespeare even, have a kind of crudity or coarseness. Cole- ridge's power is in the very fineness with winch, as by some really ghostly finger, he brings home to our inmost sense his inventions, daring as they are — the skeleton ship, the polar spirit, the inspiriting of the dead corpses of the ship's crew. The Rime of (he Ancient Mariner h-AS the plausibility, the perfect adapta- tion to rea:ion, and the general aspect of life, which belongs to the marvellous, when actually presented as part of a credible experience in our dreams. Doubtless the mere experience of the opium-eater, the habit he must almost necessarily fall into of noting the more eUisive phenomena of dreams, had something to do with that ; in its essence, however, it is connected with a more purely intellectual circumstance in the development of Coleridge's poetic gift. . . The modern mind, so minutely self-scrutinizing, if it is to be affected at all by a sense of the supernatural, needs to be more finely touched than was possible in the older romantic presentment of it. . . . It is this finer, more delicately marvellous supernaturalism, fruit of his more delicate psychology, that Cole- ridge infuses into romantic adventure, itself also then a new or revived thing in English literature ; and with a fineness of weird eff"ect in The Ancient Mariner, unknown in those older, more simple, romantic legends and ballads. It is a Hower of media;val or later German romance, growing up in the peculiarly compounded atmosphere of modi-rn psychological speculation, and putting forth in it wholly new qualities. The quaint prose commentary, which runs side by side with the verse of The A icient Mariner, illustrates this —a composition of quite a ditTerent shade of beauty and merit from that of the verse which it accompanies, con- nec'ingthis, the chief poem of Coleridge, with his philosophy, and emphasizing therein that psychological interest of which I have spoken, its curious soul-lore." 1' t ii 2o6 NOTES PART IV Tho Kloss forms here t he only porfec. commentary. The first Uv. s.an.as .n.errupt ,he .arra.ive for ,he purpose of pre^onti'i mo,uMony and tc reveal ,he effect of this weird s.orv upon th! \U.dd.nK-Guest The next stan.a relates the Mariners ut. -r desoafon ot sp.nt, and this and the stanzas ,vhieh folh.w are us a y eons.der<.. the erneia. part of ,he poen, from the philos.: plmal standpomt. The interpreta.ion lies upon the Lrfaee e,e ,s no real mystery about it. With unu.tered contempt in and 7 u r'' ^''■""""" ''' •'- ^"-P- ^^ -'-ks to pray and can no . He despises then, that in their debased form he • 1. o on wh.le on the deck lie dead "the many men so beautiful' Throu.^h days and ni,.hts he feels their curse on his soul, but .' n h.s lonehness and fixedness he yearneth toward the journeyine Moon, and , e stars tha, still sojourn, yet still move onward." h •s a beaut.lul retlecon of Wordsworth's teachinjf that Xature can redeem us and restore us t. our higher selves.' InvolunUH^ h hUsscs the swmmm.s. creatures which he had before despised' ^uth the uan.on and equally thoughtless crueltv which prompted h.m to shoot the unoffendinjf Albatross. ' ^ "The selfsame moment I could pray ; And from my neck so free The Albatross fell olT, and sank Like lead into the sea. " Here lies, if anywhere, the allegory. 3.6-..;. And thou art long, eu-. •■ For the las, two lines of ■ s sanxa I an, .ndebted to Mr. Wordsworth • (note of Coll riuge). Compare, "Ribbd like the sand at mark of sea." /-orti Sou/is (Border Minstrelsy). Note the direct description in this stanza. How does Coleridj^e Ronerally ob.an, his effects of hun,an description in the poem ' _J65-.7.. Alter commenting on the ex.,.isi,e beautv and truth of tins passa,.. the Rev. Stopford Hrooke adds: "Hu; Co.orid'e .s uncon.ent to leave the description of the skv without throui;;' ar.nnK^. t e h.-ht of the higher imagination, and i, is cha^:,:::: ..•>ttc ot the quauu phantasy which belonjfed to his nature that THE ANCIENT MARINER 207 he puts the thouffhts which lift the whole scone into the realm of the imagination into the prose jfloss at the side— and it is jerhaps the loveliest little thought in all his writing's. " 274- tracks of shining white. An allusion to the phos- phorescence of the sea occasioned by innumerable aiiimaUul.e. 2H2 f. happy living things, etc. ■• it is ihrouKh a sudden wellms: forth of sympathy with their happiness, and a sudden sense of their beauty, that the spell which binds the afflicted mariner is snapped. That one self-centred in crude ejfoism •should be purified and converted through a i.ew svnipathy with suffering: and sorrow is a common piece of morality ; this'purifi- cation throuKh sympathy with joy is a piece of finer and higher doctrme."— Dowden, AVw S/udies in LUera/ure, pajje 341. It will be observed that this expiation through sjwntaneous sympathy consorts w ilh the orig^inal offense of wanton cruelty. It has been pointed out ihat Nature (according: to Wordsworth's teachinK) had already by her restful beauty prepared the mariners mind for this access of pure and noble emotion. Its method of manifesting- itself by a tender sympathy with animal life is characteristic of romantic poetrj'. As Brandl (page 97) remarks, " The more the landscape poets of what may be called the century of humanity penetrated into the secrets et earth and air, the more they sym- pathized with the lower creatur.,-s of Nature, and demanded for all and each a fitting lot." What other poet of Coleridge's time and preceding him had shown this new kind of sympathy? ^88 f. I could pray. oU-. The modern humanitarian idea of the efficacy of sympathy is involved in this stanza with the mediaeval notion that prayer brought release from the obsession ot demons and curses. 111 PART V The climax of the story was reached in line 287 of Part VI. What follows in this portion is a result and not a cause. The gruesome element, especially in the stanza, lines 341-344, 's won- derfully presented, and the exquisite poetry of lines 367-372 is justly celebrated. The poem now becomes invaded more than ever by mystical allegorical figurr .. 291. Oh, Sleep! For other invocations of sleep, compare Shakes, eare, // Henry IV, HI, ; ; Macbeth, II, ii ; Sidney, Son- ii5 '5 .^ if: ■ ■.it. 2o8 NOTES tiff OH Sleep; Dani^•l^'•» Sonne/ to Sleep (seo Sharp's Sonnets oj this Century, pajfo Iviii) ; Wordsworth, Sonnets to Sleep; etc. .vS-,-?j6- The Rev. Stopford Brooke, comparinjf this descrip- tion of a tropical squall with the jieai-efulness of lines 367 f, writes as follows : " In both these descriptions, one of the terror, the other of the softness of Nature, a certain charm, of the source of which we are iu>t at once conscious, is jfiven by the introduction into the lonely sea of imag-es borrowed from the land, but which exactly fit the sounds to be described at sea ; such as the noise of the brcok and the si}»- for tne land and its peace. And we ourselves enjoy the travel of thought, swept to and fro without any shock— on account of the fitness of illustration and thing- — from sea to land, from land to sea." 334 f. The helmsman Steered, etc. See introduction (pages 61, 64) for the history of this idea of navigating- the vessel by the de.id seamen. 337- 'gan. C/. line 385. The apostrophe is due to the unwarranted supposition that the word is an abbreviated form of "began." It is in direct succession from Middle Knglish, ginnen, preterite gan, Anglo-Saxon ongimian, and is quite common in ballads and old English poetry generally. .UvS-349' I fear thee, etc. This stanza was not in the 1798 edition. 350- they dropped their arms, in the text as we now have it "they "refers to spirits, or at least appears to. In the old text the reference was to line 339. According to tradition, ghosts depart at break of day. Spirits are frequently reported to have disappeared with sounds of music. Contrast this with the angry departure of the seamen's souls in lines 222, Z2^. ,?«.!• And the ship stood still also. The ship has now ceased sailing northward i-'nelled by the South Polar spirit who has guided it. Beyond this limit he evidently is powerless to go. Till" Sun fixes the ship to the Ocean for a minute, when she begins to move " Backwards and forwards half her length Willi a short uneasy motion," THE AN'CIENT MARiyB ao9 for we must imagine that the Polar spirit does not care to relax his hold urtil his venffoaiue is assured. However, the anj^elic protecting' spirits seem to be victorious : '* Then like a pawing horse let go, She made a sudden bound.' The gloss in lirtes 377 f. involves curious contradictions. The marginal commentary to lines 103-106 indicates that the ship had then reached the Line on the voyage north. This appears to be contradicted from lines 328, 335, 367 f, 373 f., which imply that tiie vessel is still sailing northward from the position described in 103 f. 392. And I fell, etc. The metre of this line is irregular and scarcely pleasing. The edition of 1798 reads : ".-\nd I fell into a swound." 399. By Him who died on cross. A common ballad oath. CJ.: " 'This is a mery momyng," seid Litull John, ' Be hym that dyed on tre' " (cross). Robin Hood and the Monk, lines 13-14. 407. nOI'idy dew. For this interesting word consult a dic- tionary. Cf, Coleridge in his Kuhla Khan : "... Close your eyes with holy dread. For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise." '■ PART VI 426-429. Fly, bpotlier, fly ! more high, more high! These lines are not fully clear. We can form only a doubtful surmise as to why the spirits must fly higher, and why they would other wise be belated. The assumption is that they are bound for some far- off celestial goal, and if from curiosity they tarried longer in the lower regions of the air they would be retarded beyond the due time. It is perhaps more poetically satisfying to permit the existence of some mysteries that can not be explained in this poem. 446-451. Coleridge in English poetry, and V^ictor Hugo in French poetry, possessed this faculty of evoking' the supernatural ■* :' aio NOTES if! i dr.-ail i)( iho unknown. It i> (ar oiIut and hi^hor in its essence than thi-irude mot hods emuloyod to arouse alarm by ilie "grave- jaid poets • anil prose writers of the eighteenth century. 464 f. "This unexpected >,'.-ntlf conchisioii briiijjs our feet back to the common soil, witli a bewilder. I sweetness of relief and soil quiet after the prodigious strain of mental excitement, which is like nothinjf else we can remember in poetry. . . . Thus we are set down 0.1 the soft jfrass, in a tender bewiUlerment, out of the clouds." Mrs. Oliphant. "How pleasantly, how reassuringly, the whole niKhtmare stor\ is made to end amonjf the clear, fresh sounds, ;ind lij,^hts of the bay when- it beKan."— Walter Pater, Afypretiations, p. 101. 467. COUntree. Old French coiitn'r, Pop. Lat. amtraln, Irom L. cunira, i. e., lyinjf over aKainst, that which is opposite >.>w. Cf. C'.erman Cegend from ^lyiv/. — 1798 edition, count re,. To our modern ears this sounds like a case of wrenched accent, but there is no doubt that orijfinally the last was the stress-bearinjf syllable in this word, as in many others where we should not so exjK-ct it. AmonK modern poets Rosselli and .Mr. Swinburne obtain many curious and often legitimate metrical elTects by this unusual plac- ing of the accent; e.jj.: " Nothinjf is better, I well think Than love; the hidden well-water Is not so delicate to drink; This was well seen of me and her." Swinburne, The Leper. Naturally, examples might be multiplied from the old ballads. i-4 PART \1I The task of the poet increases in difficulty with this sudden return to normal conditions. He shows consummate skill in effect- ing the most difficult transition in the poem from the world of mystery and wonder to the world of human reality. "The ship went down like lead," and the iMariner returns once more to the busy haunts of men. Memories of his strange and awful spiritual experience still stir within him, and at uncertain hours the ancient agony returns, until he finds some chosen mortal whom he must chasten by his tale of sin and suffering, and redeem even in a THK AXflEXT MAKIXKU 211 i tlunii{htli'ss hour of iivcih lo a i'onsi'u>iisiu's<, of tlu' soriouMio>«s of lili-. As itu- laic draws to a close tho joyous uproar bursts from the I'pi'ii door : "Tho WVddinjf-Gucsts are thoro : Hut ill the .narden-bower th»' bride Aiul bride-maids sin{{:in}{' are : And hark the little vesper-bell, Whieh biddetli me to prayer I ' This is an evidence that the Ancient Mariner has found redemp- tion at last ; and then follows the poi^'nant stanza in whiih the whole story is lifted to the spiritual plane, to express, as it has rarely been expressed before, the isolation of a soul in sin : ■'O Weddinjc-t'iit'^t ! this soul hath been Alone on a wide wide se.'i : So lonely twas, that tiod himself Scarce seemed there to be." We cannot doubt that in theso wonderful lines Coleridg-e has jfiven expression also to his own striving's after spiritual truth. Though possessed of a fanatic's earnestness, the Mariner still reitiins his homelj- sympathies, his simple aflections ; and the touch of n.-ituralness in the slan/a which follows makes 'he story of his weird adventures seem more reliable : "O sweeter than the marriage-feast, 'Tis sweeter far to me. To wiilk to<;^ether to the kirk With a goodly companj'." The noises of the wedding-feast have broken in harmlessly upon the narrativ" ; we must be deaf to the world for a season in our moods of spiritual effort a^d attainment ; but the sweet charities of human intercourse again resume their sway : ' To walk together to the kirk, And all together pray, While each to his great Father bends. Old men, and babes, and loving friends. And youths, and maidens gay." Despite all the fantastic incident and romantic glamor of his work, we must conclude with Dante Rossetti that "the leading point about Co'eridge's work is its human love." Is nj I 3 - I i it u si \ 212 NOTES So much for the element of humanity in the poem. The lesson of love and charity to man and beast is even more strongly enforced in the next two stanzas, with too much insistence even. It we trust Coleridge's own statement. "Mrs. Barbauld once told me that she admired The Ancient ^/am,,.^ very much, but that there were two faults in it-it was improbable.'and had no moral. As for the probability, I owned that that mij^ht admit some question ; but as to the want of a moral, I told her that in my own judgment, the poem had too much ; a.id that the onlv' or chief fault, it I might say so, was the obtrusion of the moral sntti- mentso openly on the reader &s a principle or cause of action in a work of such pure imagination. It ought to have had no more moral than the Arabian Nights tale of the merchants sitting down to eat dates by the side of a well, and throwing the shell's aside, and, lo ! a genie starts up, and says he must kill the afore- said merchant, because one of the date shells had, it seems, put out the eye of the genie's iion.'-Table Talk, May 31, 1830 The italics are not Coleridge's, but serve to emphasize the fact that we must seek for no deeply-hidden moral teaching • the moral is, in fact, so obvious, as Coleridge averred, that he'who runs may read. Although we can reconcile many of the events of the narrative with spiritual truths, it is dangerous and not conducive to an enjoyment of th.- poem to carry the attempt too tar. Let us preserve something at least of the charming incon- sequence of the ^.«d,a« Nights, such as the condign punishment and the ruthless slaying of tite crew because the Mariner had killed a bird ! It does not measurably improve the beauty of the poem to hold with ^hc Journal 0/ Speculative Philosophy, vol XIV, that Coleridge desired to establish in The Ancient Mariner i system of Christian philosophy, "to present the fall from the innocence of ignorance, from the immediacy of natural faith, and the return, through the medium of sin and doubt, to conscious virtue and belief. . . . 'The ship was cheered '-man com- .nences the voyage of life. 'And now the storm-blast came - the world, with its buflFets, confronts him.' Coleridge never entertained such a poetical heresy as this. His chief concern was to tell a tale of wonder, to break in upon the commonplacencss of our material routine with a voice from the outer world of mystery and dim suggestiveness. And if at times a shaft of spiritual light strikes through the verse we realize that elsewhere lies the essence of its charm-in the subtle THE ANCIENT MARINER 213 cadence of the diction, the musical fall of the wo- !-. the imag-in- ative intensity of the thouglit, and in that qu;.' i\ ,,i -<- ri • i„ i har^cter; and, when distinctly moral issues do seem to be involveu in the poem, this occurs in pursuance of the poet's purpose to transfer " from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadow s of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith." It is sufficient for us to know that every poem which subserves the supreme laws of beauty must inevitably bear its tribute to that higher moral law which underlies the beautiful ; whereas a poem which should strive to preach morality in defi' ance of the laws of beauty would miss that nobler aim and thereby fail in its result. ,S'7- marineres. So spelled throughout the 1798 edition, and preserved here on account of the rime. Discuss the rimes in this stanzcH. 529- The planks look warped. So written in the 1798 edition, and surely correct. 1S17 and all later editions read "looked." 578-590. The motive of these stanzas is evidently derived from the legend of the Wandering Jew. The tradition runs that the latter refused Christ a resting place on his way to the cruci- fixion, and was therefore doomed to perpetual wandering over the earth, without release by death. He was forced in spite of himself to tell his story, and to preach Christianity even in unwil- ling ears. 61 2-61 7. He prayeth well, etc. Reference has alreadv been made to the love of animals as a new .source of poetry since the tune of Burns and Cowper. "In The Ancient Mariner are the two great elements of the folk-tale-love of the marvellous, the supernatural, and love of the lower animals. Wonder is the essence of both and both are of the essence of religion. True to the world"s heart is the recognition of something r^/ above and beyond the actual in life ; equally true is the reverent awe with which primitive men regard the migrations and strange mstmcts of birds and beasts ""—E. Charlton Hlack. Discuss the general question of a moralistic or allegoric inten- tion in the poem. i V, .: I \ NOTES ON THIi SI:LECT poems of WORDSWORTH I'-. rii t I r ,'i n*' h'- ! ■ ' I \ ■ -i THE REVERIE OF POOR SUSAX COMPOSKD 1797 (?); PIBLISHED rSoo. Wordsworth, in liis old age. tlictated to .Miss Isabella Fenwick a series of valuable notes wliiih iiidieate the eircumstanoes of the composition of his separate poems. In this edition these notes are in part reproduced, and arc enclosed within inverted commas. This poem "arose out of my observations of the atfectin.g music of these birds, liang:in,< in this way in the London streets durinif the freshness and stillness of the spring morning." These simple verses, which might almost appear to verg upon the commonplace, are thoroughly characteristic of the early manner of Wordsworth. They derive their peculiar force from the heightening of prosaic detail through the plav of the imagination. The extreme simplicity of the diction clearly marks the reaction from the artificiality of eighteenth century poetry in general, and the choice of a humble subject is in thorough harmony with Wordsworth's theories of poetry. The following passage from the preface of the L_^'ncal Ballads has an im- portant bearing upon this and many other poems in the present volume. "The principal object, then, proposed in these Poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them throughout, as far as possible, in a selection of language really used by men, and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain coloring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect ; and, further and above all, to make these incidents and situations interesting by tracing in them, truly though not ostentatiously, the primary laws of our nature : chiefly, as far as regards the manner in which we .-.s^.:„iate ideas in a staio of excitement. Humble and rustic life was generally chosen, because, in that condition, the essential passions of the heart find (•S'4) EXPOSTL'LATION AND REPLY 2Ii a better soil in which they can attain thi-ir maturity, are less under restraint, an I speak a plainer and more emphatic lanjjfuage ; because in that condition of life our elementary fc n^^s co-exist in a state of greater simplicity, and consequently, may be more accurately contemplated, and more forcibly communicated ; because the manners of rural life terminate from these element- ary feeling-s, and, from the necessary character of rural occupa- tions, are more easily comprehended, and are more durable ; and, lastly, because in that condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature. The lang-uage, too, of these men has been adopted (purified indeed from what appear to be its real defects, from all lajting and rational causes of dislike and disgust) because such men hourly communicate with the best objects from which the best part of languag-e is originally derived ; and because, from their rank in society and the sameness .-md narrow circle of their intercourse, being less under the influence of social vanity, they convey their feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated expressions. Accordinglv, such a language, arising out of repeated experience and regular feelings, is a more permanent, and a far more philosophical language Mian that which is frequently substituted for it by poets, who think that they are conferring honor upon themselves and their art, in proportion as they separate themselves from the sympathies of men, and indulge in arbitrary and capricious habits of expression, in order to furnish food for fickle tastes, and fickle appetites, of th'.-ir own creation." i EXPOSTUL.VTIOX AXO REPLY Composed 1798: Flblished 179S. " This poem is a favorite aipong the Quakers, as I have learned on many occasions. It was composed in front of the house of Alfoxden, in the spring of 1798." The scene is laid around Esthwaite Lake, which is near the village of Hawks- head, where Wordsworth went to school. William Taylor (the " Matthew " of this poem) was his favorite master. Wordsworth, when he wrote these verses, had but recently emerged from the mental crisis described in the biographical sketch. From having worshipped reason perhaps too exclus- ively, he passed for a time to the other no less dangerous 2l6 NOTES .te 'J extreme, in which, as the poem shows, the mind is purely recep- tive and passive. The true equipoise between his intellect and his emotions was, however, soon attained, and nature then received from the activities of his own soul as much or more than she conferred upon him : "An auxiliar light Came from my mind, which on the setting' sun Bestowed new splendor ; the melodious birds. The fluttering' breezes, fountains that run on Murmuring so sweetly in themselves, obeyed A like dominion, and the midnight storm Grew darker in the presence of my eye." The Prelude ii, 368 f. |l t THE TABLES Tl'RXED COMPOSED 1798: I'fBLISHED 1798. Professor Dowden has an interesting note on this poem. " The stanza beginning ' One impulse from a vernal wood ' has been censured for exaggeration, but Wordsworth means that in communion with external nature a moment mav come which will evoke from the heart more moral energy than can be taught by books. The contrast is not merely between books and nature, but also between the genial temper of mind induced by external nature, when rightly observed and felt, and the temper of the mere analvtic intellect." \m TO MV SISTER COMPOSED 1798: PfBLISHED 1798. "Composed in front of .Alfoxden House. My little boy- messenger on this occasion was the son of Basil Montagu. The larch mentioned in the first stanza was standing' when I revisited the place in May, 1841, more than forty years after." It has now disappeared, but its place can be identified. The overscrupulous minuteness to which Coleridge took exception in certain of Wordsworth's poems, m.ay be noted in lines 4 and 10. This poem, and two which follow, are important for their asseveration of the superiority of the emotions over the I easoiiing faculty. (Sec Biographical Sketch, p. i\2\'.) There is «te NUTTING 217 a half humorist ic exaggeration of this idea contained in 11. ^5-26, with which compare The Tables Turned, 11. 2\-ij,. These three poems (To My Sister, Exposhdation and Reply, and The Tables Turned) open up the interesting question of Words- worth's relation to modern science. Mr Leslie Stephen has said in his History of English Thought that Wordsworth "hates sci- ence, because it regards facts without the imaginative and emo- tional coloring." It is true that Wordsworth has often spoken petulantly, and even foolishly, of certain aspects of modern sci- ence, but it would be unjust to accuse him of hostility to science in general. His indictment may be summed up briefly in his own words:— "Trade, commerce, and manufactures, physical science and mechanic arts, out of which so much wealth has arisen, have made our countrymen infinitely less sensible to movements of imagination and fancy than were our forefathers in their simple state of society." His own words also indicate the possibility of the blending of a perception of beauty with the zeal for scientific research. "Some are of opinion that the habit of analysing, decomposing, and anatomising, is inevitably unfavorable to the perception of beauty. People are led into this mistake by overlooking the fact that such processes being, to a certain extent, within the reach of a limited intellect, we are apt to ascribe to them that insensibility of which they are in truth the effect, and not the cause. Admiration and love, to which all knowledge truly vital must tend, are felt by men of real genius in proportion as their discoveries in natural philosophy are enlarged ; and tlie beauty in form of a plant or an animal is not made less, but more apparent, as a whole, by a more accurate insight into its constituent properties and powers. A savant, who is not also a poet in soul and a religionist in heart, is a feeble and unhappy creature." 1i- •I NUTTING COMPOSED 1799; PIBLISHKD 1800. "Written in Germany ; intended as a part of a poem on my own life, but struck out as not being wanted there. Like most of my schoolfellows, I was an impassioned Nutter. For this pleasure, the Vale of Esthwaite, abounding in coppice wood, furnished a very wide range. These verses arose out of the remembrance of feelings I had often had when a boy, and ii- ■^ t i I 2l8 NOTES III- \r,f particiihtrly in the oxlonsivo woods that still stretch from the side of Esthwaite Lake towarils Graythwaite." Wordsworth possessed in an unusual degree the power of revivinj< the inipressiotis of his voulh. Few autobiokcraphical records are so vivid in this respect as his Pn'luiie. In his famous odt> on the Intimations of Immortality from Recollections 0/ Early Childhood, he dwells upon the unreflective exultation which in the child responds to the joyous^e^s of nature, and with a profound intuition that may not be justified in the facts, he sees in this heedless delitjht a mystical intimation of immortality. In the poem Nuttinsr the animal exhilaration of boyhood is fin-'ly blended with this deeper feeling' of mystery. Tlie boy exultingly penetrates into one of those woodland retreats where nature seems to be hokiiiig communion with herself. For some moments he is subdued by the beauty of the place, and l>ing among the flowers he hears with ecstasy the murmur of the stream. Then the spirit of ravage peculiar to boyhood comes over him, and he rudely mars the beauty oi the spot : "And the shady nook Of hazels, and the green and mossy bower. Deformed and sul'ied, patiently gave up Their quiet being :" Such wantonness seems to his maturer reflection a sacrilege, and even the boy was not insensible to the silent reproach of the "intruding sky." Touch,— for there is a spirit in the woods. Many lines might be quoted from Wordsworth to illustrate his theory of the personal attributes of nature. In some of his more elev.nted passages nature in all her processes is regarded as the intimate revelation of the Godhead, the radiant garment in which the Deity clothes Himself that our senses may apprehend Him. Thus, when we touch a tree or a flower we may be said to touch God himself. In this way the beauty and power of nature become sacred for Wordsworth, and inspired his verse at times with a solemn dignity to which other poets have rarely attained. The immanence of God in nature, and yet His superiority to His own revelation of Himself is beautifully expressed in some of the later verses of Ilart Leap Well: "The Being, that is in the clouds and air, That is in the green leaves among the groves, NfTTING 219 Maintains a deep aiul reverential care For the unoffendinjf creatures whom he loves." Yet the life in nature is capable of multiplying itself infmitely, and each of hei manifold divisions possesses a distinctive mood; one mi^rht almost say a separate life of its own. It is in -s ability to capture the true emotional mood which clinfjrs to soi beautiful object or scene in nature, and which that object or scene may truly be said to inspire, that Wordsworth's power lies. Wordsworth possessed every attribute necessary to the de- scriptive poet, — subtle powers of observation, ears delicately tuned to seize the very shadow of sound, and a diction of copious strength suggestive beyond the limits of ordinary expression. Yet purely descriptive poetry he scorned. "He expatiated much to me one day." writes Mr. Aubrey de Vere, "as \vc walked among the hills above Grasmere, on the mode in which Nature had been described by one of the most justly popular of England's modern poets — one for whom he preserved a high anc' affectionate respect [evidently Sir Walter Scott]. ' He took pains,' Wordsworth said; 'he went out with his pencil and note-book, and jotted down whatever struck him most — a river rippling over the sands, a ruined tower on a rock above it, a promontory, and a mountain-ash waving its red berries. He went home and wove the whole together into a poetical descrip- tion.' After a pause, Wordsworth resumed, with a flashing eye and impassioned voice : ' But Nature does not permit an inven- tory to be made of her charms ! He should have left Ms pencil and note-book at home, fixed his eye as he walked with a reverent attention on all that surrounded him, and taken all into a heart that could understand and enjoy. Then, after several days had passed by, he should have interrogated his memory as to the scene. He would have discovered that while much of what he had admired was preserved to him, much was also most wisely obliterated ; that which remained— the picture surviving in his mind — would have presented the ideal and essential truth of the scene, and done so in a large part by discarding much which, though in itself striking, was not characteristic. In every scene manv of tl e most brilliant details are but accidental ; a true eve for Nature does not note them, or at least does not dwell on them.' " ,1 i I 220 NOTES I!. ,| The student should learn to compare the descripave methods of Coleridpi' ntul Wordsworth. See especially Lowell's note quoted on pp. 197-198 ; also see pp. 47 f. IXFLIEXCE OF XATUR.AL OBJECTS This poem was composed at Goslar in 1799 as part of the first book of The Prelude (published in i«5o). It was first printed in Coleridge's periodical The Friend, in December, 1809, with the instructive thoujjh pedantic title, " Growth of Genius from the Influences of Natural Objects on the Imagination, in Boyhood and Early Youth. " It appeared in Wordsworth's poems of 1815 with the ibllowing title :— "Influence of Natural Objects in calling forth and strengthening the Imagination in Boyhood and Early Youth." The opening verses of this poem are still another instance of the identification of God with nature. As Mr. Stopford Brooke writes, "we are here in contact w ith a Person, not with a thought. But who is this person ? Is she only the creation of imagination, having no substantive reality beyond the mind of Wordsworth ? No, she is the poetic impersonation of an actual Being, the form which the poet gives to the living Spirit of God in the outward world, in order that he may possess a metaphysical thought as a subject for his work as an artist." The Lines Composed above Tintern Abbey contain the high- est expression which Wordsworth has given to this thought. To the heedless animal delight in nature had succeeded a season in his youth when the beauty and power of nature "haunted him like r passion," though he knew not why. The " dizzy rapture" of those moods he can no longer feel. Yet, "Not for this Faint I nor murmur; other gifts Have followed, for such loss, I would believe Abundant recompense. For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth ; but hearing oftentimes The still sad music of humanity. Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. A'ld I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts : a sense sublime THREE YEARS SHE GREW IN SUN AND SHOWER 221 Of someti 'ng fat more deeply interfused. Whose d-aeiling is the light of setting suns. And the round ocean and the living air. And the blue sky. and in the mind of man : A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, al! objects of all thought. And rolls through ail things." In II. 42-46, of The Influence of Xatural Objects, we l;ave an inimitable Wordswortliian effect. Into the midst of iiis wild sport the voice of Nature steals, and subdues his mind to receive the impulses of peace and beauty from without. We involuntarilv think of the boy he has celebrated, his playmate upon Win- dermere, who loved to rouse the owls with mimic hootings, but "When a lengthened pause Of silence came and baffled his best skill, Then sometimes, in that silence while he hung Listening-, a gentle shock of mild surprise Has carried far into his heart the voice Of mountj.in torrents ; or the visible scene Would enter unawares into his mind, With all its solemn imagery, its rocks, Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received Into the bosom of the steady lake. " The Prelude, v. 379 f. THREE YEARS SHE GREW l\ SUN AND SHOWER COMPOSED IN THE HARTZ FOREST IN 1799: PLBLISHED IN 1800. From what we know of Wordsworth's interpretation of nature this poem will not be considered a mere exercise of playful fancy. It was the ingenious theory of Rousseau that children should be educated in communion with nature, and apart from contact with the world. This poem is, therefore, in part a reflection of that idea; but we must not take it as representing Wordsworth's views upon education in their entirety. Yet, there is undeniable beauty, and some truth perhaps, in the thought that the child's character, and even her appearance, may be moulded by the subtle influences of nature. It will be noticed that not only is the child removed from the disturbing turmoil of the world, but she is also purely recep- afl NOTES h * ! I ti\ . of those beautiful influences. The mood of the poem is there- fore to l>e compared with that expressed in J\.\f>i>s/ulatiuii and J\'ef>ly, 7 he lablfs 1 urin-d, anil To My Sislt'r. In the first verse nature withdraws the ciiild, Lucy, to lierself. In the second verse she will exercise upon her both a kindlini; .uid restraining | ower. She shall have (vt-rse y\ at once the sportiveness of the fawn, and the quiet reserve i^i " mute insensate thinjfs." The two succeed- m^ verses show how nature will mould her form and add beauty to her face. The fifth verse affords another fine example oi Wordsworth s sensitiveness to the beauty of sound. This was instanced in the precedinjf poem, hut here the power of sound is still more subtle, for the face of the child g-rows more beautitul for the murmuring- of the dancing rivuU-ts. In the final versi- the poet speaks in his own words. Must we conclude that the child has breathed toc> rare an atmosphere of perfection, and that life in this world is not consistent with abso- lute purity ? The Lucy Poems. The Lucy Poeins, ..hich were composed at Goslar, form a group of five, namely: " Strange fits of pas- sion have I known " ; "She dwelt among the untrodden ways " ; " I travelled among unknown men "; "Three years she grew in sun and shower"; and ".\ slumber did my spirit seal." "The Goslar ,joems 'nclude those addressed to Lucy. Some have supposed that there was an actual Lucy, known to Words- worth in Yorkshire . 'about the springs of Dove,' to whom he was attached, who died early, and whose love and beaut v he commeinorates in these five memorial poems. There is no doubt that the intensity of the lines, the allusion to the spinning-wheel .... to the heath, the calm, and quiet scene, all suggest a real person. We only wish there were evidence that it had been so. But there is no such evidence." Knight's M'ordsivorth, ix, p. 187. MICHAEL A PASTORAL POEM Composed in 1800, and published in the second volume of the Lyrical Ballads \n the same year. "Written at the Town-end, Grasmere, abou*. the same time as The Brothers. The Sheep- fold, on which so much of the poem turns, remains, or rather the MICHAKI. -'^3 niins of it. The character and circumstances of Luke wore taken from ;i faniiiy to whom had belor.Ked, m.iny years be -e, the house we lived in at Town-end, alonjf witli solne fields and woodlands on the e.istern shore ot Grasmere. The name of the Evening Star was not in fad (fiven to this house, but to another on the same side of the valley, more to the north. ' .As a supplenniit to the note on p. 153 the following- may be added from a letter of Wordsworth to Charles James Fox : "In the wo poems, y/;,- /irof/urs and Michael, I have attempted to draw a picture of the domestic affections, as I know they exist amotiff a class o\' men who are now almost confined to the north of fcng^Iand. They are sniidl independent proprietors of land, here called 'stati-smen' [i.e., estates-men), men of respectable eilucalion, who daily labor on their little properties. . . . Their little tract of land serves as a kind of rallyinjf point for their domestic feelintfs, as a t.iblet upon which they are written, whiih makes them objects of memory in a thousand instances, when they would otherwise be forjfotten. The two poems that I have mentioned were written to show that men wh.> do not wear fine clothes can feel deeply." The poem Michael is probably the best adajxed of the present series to show Wordsworth's powers of realism. He describes the poem as "a pastoral," which at once induces a comparison, g^reatly to Wordsworth's advantage, with the pseudo-pastorals of the aj-e of Pope. There the shepherds and shepherdesses were scarcely the pale shadows of reality, while Wordsworth's poem never swerves from the line of truth. "The poet,' as Sir Henry Taylor says with reference to Michael, "writes in his confidence to impart interest to the realities of life, derivinjr both the confidence and the power from the deep interest which he feels in them. It is an attribute of unusual susceptibility of imagination to need no extraordinary provocatives ; and when this is combined with intensity of observation and peculiarity of language, it is the high privilege of the poet so endowed to rest upon the common realities of life and to dispense with its anomalies." The student should therefore be careful to obser\'e (i) the truth of description, and the appropriateness of the description to the characters ; (2) the stronir and accurate delineation of the characters themselves. Not only is this to be noted in the passages where the poet has taken pains openly to portray their various characteristics, but »H NOTES there are many passages, or single linos perhaps, which serve more subtly to dolineiito them. What proud resorve, what sorrow painfully restrained, the foilowinyf line, for example, contains : '• Two evenings after he had heard the news." As this is the only poem of the series in which human char- acter is presented in some diversity, the student should pay clos« attention to this feature. TO THE DAISY COMPOSED 1802 : PUBLISHED 1807 "This and the other poems addressed to the same flower were composed at Town-end, Grasniere, during' the earlier part of my residence there." The three poems on the Daisy were the outpourinjjs of one mood, and were prompted by the same spii t whii h moved him to write his poenis of humble life. The shel- tered jfarden flowers have loss attraction for him than the com- mon blossoms by the wayside. In their unobtrusive humility these "unassuminj; Common-pl.ucs of Nature" mig-ht be re- garded, as the poet says, " as ail.ninistering- both to moral and spiritual purposes." The "Lesser Celandine," buffeted by the storm, affords him, on another occasion, a symbol of meek endurance. Shelley and Keats have many beautiful references to flowers ill their poetry. Keats has merely a sensuous delight in their beauty, while Shelley both revels in their hues and fragrance, and sees in them a symbol of tr.insitory loveliness. His Sensu five Plant shows his exquisite sympathy for flower life. TO THE CUCKOO CO.MPOSED IN THE ORCHARD AT TOWN-END l8o2 : PUBLISHED 1807 Wordsworth, in his Preface to the 1815 edition, has the fol- lowing note on II. 3, 4 of the poem : — "This cor ' "* interrogation characterises the seeming ubiquity of the cuci ., and disposs- esses the creature almost of corporeal existence ; the Imagina- tion being tempted to this exertion of her power, by a conscious- ness in the memory- that the cuckoo is almost perpetually heard throughout the season of spring, but seldom becomes an object of sight." The cuckoo is the bird we associate with the name of THK l.RKKN I.IXNET 23$ Wonlsworlh, .is with Koats ilu- I'iffhlinjj.ilo, and with Shi'llov the skyl.-irk. W'hilo we adniiri- Iho tU-iii-ato piofisioii with whivli the poot i-harai-torisos the l>iril, the eliief \ahio of tin- jhhmii hi-s in its inia>finativ«' sn^fi^esiiveness. The bird is merely " babl)linj; to the vale ot sunshine and of Howers, " and yet its wanderinj^ voice brinjfs baek to him the thought ot' his vanished ihildhood. We havi- alieaily luitieed llu- alnu>sl sa»red value whieh Words- woitli aitaehes to the impressions of his youth, and even to the memory of these impressions whieh remains with him ti> console his malurer life. The bird is a link which binds him to his childhood : "Anil I tan listen to thee yet ; Can lie upon tlu- plain And listen, till I do beget That jjo.den lime ag'ain." In other poems, especially in the Intimafim^ of ImmnrtalHy, h ■ speaks of" "the jflory and the freshness of a dream," which halloweil nature for him as a chil.l, and which jfrew tainteras the "shades of the prison-house beijan to close upon the j^rowing Boy," until "At length the Man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day." thp: greex linnet COMPOSKI) iSoj : PlHI.ISHEn itioj "Composed in the orchard, Town End, Grasmere, where the bird was often seen as here desinbed." In this poem Wordsworth dwells upon the joyousness of nature as revealed in the revels oi the linnet. The following note by Mr. Wintringham, in The Birds of Words-^vorlh. is appro- priate to the last verse. "Of all English birds, the greenfinch— or the green grosbeak— is best adapted to its ptisition in nature. Its color makes it almost imperceptible to all who are not adepts in ornithology." SHE WAS A PHANTOM OF DELIGHT CO.MPOSED 1804: PlBIJSHKn 1807 "Written at Town End, Grasmere. The germ of this poem was four lines composed as a part of the verses on the Highiani 226 NOTES lii . It ' Girl. Thoug-h beginning' in this way, it was written from my heart, <-is is sufficiently obvious." It is not clear which four lines of the Highland Girl are re- ferred to by Wordsworth. The poems have a certain general resemblance inasmuch as in both the poet regards the woman at first as a phantom apjiari- tion, and then upon a nearer view he sees her human qualities. Compare 11. 11-18 of The Highland Girl ; "In truth together do ye seem Like something fashioned in a dream ; Such Forms as from their covert peep When earthly cares are laid asleep ! But, O fair Creature ! in the light Of common day, so heavenly bright, / bless thee. Vision as thou art, I bless thee with a human heart." In the present poem there is a progression of the thought from stanza to stanza. In the first stanza the apparition almost transcends our mortal senses ; in the second she takes on a woman's form, and seems a fitting comrade of man's every day life— " A Creature not too bright or good For human nature's daily food." In the third stanza, as his wife, her loftier qualities are described, and she becomes his intellectual and moral com- panion. In both the second and third stanzas the poet dwells upon the blending in her nature of spiritual and human attributes : "A Spirit, yet a Woman too ! 1. 12. A perfect Woman .... And yet a Spirit still." 11. 27-29. The reference to hs wife in The Prelude, xiv. 268, is similar in character : "She came, no more a phantom to adorn A moment, but an inmate of the heart. And yet a Spirit, there for me enshrined To penetrate the lofly and the low ; " 17-21. As apposite to 11. 17-21, we may note other verses addressed by Wordsworth to his wife, in which he rejoices in her human imperfections : THE SOLITARY REAPER 3*7 "Let other bards of angels sing, Bright suns without a spot ; But thou art no such perfect thing : Rejoice that thou art not ! " — and the following verses from Her only Pilot : "While here sits one whose brightness owes its hues To fl»>sli and blood ; no goddess from above, No fleeting spirit, but my own true love." Crabb Robinson states in his Diary (May 12, 1842), that "Wordsworth said that the poems 'Our Walk was far among the Ancient Trees," then 'She was a Phantom of Delight,' and finally the two sonnets To a Painter, should be read in succession as exhibitin|r the different phases of his affection to his wife." 22,. The very pulse, etc. Professor Dowden's comment is as follows: "Does Wordsworth mean by machine merely the body, as Hamlet does in his signature oi" the letter to Ophelia : ' Thine .... whilst this machine is to him ' ? I rather think the whole woman with all her household routine is conceived as the organism of which the thoughtful soul is the animating principle." The word has deteriorated for poetic uses since Wordsworth employed it. THE SOLITARY REAPER COMPOSED BETWEEN 1803 AND 1805 : PUBLISHED 1807. This poem was afterwards included in a series entitled Memorials of a Tour in Scotland, (1827). The tour in ques- tion was made by Wordsworth in company with his sister and Coleridge in the autumn of 1803. Dorothy Wordsworth throws a light on the genesis of the poem in her Recollections of the tour under date of September 13, 1803: "As we descended, the scene became more fertile, our way being pleasantly varied — through coppices or open fields, and passing farm-houses, though always with an intermixture of cultivated ground. It was harvest-time, and the fields were quietly — might I be allowed to say pen- sively? — enlivened by small companies of reapers. It is not uncommon in the more lonely parts of the Highlands to see a single person so employed. The following jK)em was suggested to William by a beautiful sentence in Thomas Wilkinson's Tour Throttgh Scotland." f Uf. 228 NOTES Wordsworth has a note to the editions of 1807 to 1820 as follows : "This Poem was suggested by a beautiful sentence in a MS. 'Tour in Scotland,' written by a friend, the first line being taken from it vcrba/im." The following is the sentence in question : " Passed a female who was reaping alone ; she sung in Erse, as she bended over her sickle ; the sweetest human voice I ever heard : her strains were tenderly melancholy, and felt delicious, loni^ ajter they were heard no more. In the last stanza of the poem we see again how tenaciously Wordsworth hoards his sensations. 3 i ODE TO DUTY COMPOSED 1805 ; PLBLISHED 1807. " This Ode is on the model of Gray's Ode to Adversity, which is copied from Horace's Ode to Fortune, Many ai'.rl mar.y a time have I been twitted by my wife and sister tor having forgotten this dedication of myself to the stern law-giver. Transgressor indeed I have been from hour to hour, from day to day : I would fain hope, however, not more flagrantly, or in a worse way than most of my tuneful brethren. But these last words are in a wrong strain. We should be rigorous to our- selves, and forbearing, if not indulgent, to others; and, if we make comparison at all, it ought to be with those who have morally excelled us." The temper of Gray's poem and Wordsworth's are somewhat similar, and the metre is identical. Adversity and Duly have in common the same chastening and strengthening power. The solemn character of Gray's poem, marred as it is by undue personification, is very impressive. The last stanza might almost have formed part of the Ode to Duly: — "Thy form benign, O goddess, wear, Thy milder influence impart, Thy philosophic train be there To soften, not to wound, my heart. The generous spark extinct revive, Teach me to love and to forgive. Exact my own defects to scan. What others are to feel, and know myself a Man.*' ODE TO DUTY 229 Wordsworth's ode deservedly ranks among the most famous in the language, and many critics are inclined to give it preference over the more elaborate ode On ike Jnlimations of Immortality. The meaning of the poem may be interpreted stanza by stanza as follows : St. I. The invocation sets forth the guiding and restraining power of Duty, and her strength to heal us in distress. Compare the similar powers ascribed to nature in the poem Three Years She Gre7i' ; and also compare with Wordsworth's invoca- tion to Duty as the "Stern Daughter of the Voice of God," Gray's Invocation to Adversity as the " Daughter of Jove, relentless power. Thou tamer of the human breast, I Stern, rugged nurse !" They are both emanations of the Divine will. St. 2. Some happy blameless souls are instinctively wedded to right, and do their duty though they know it not. If these should fail through over-confidence in their own strength, ("through confidence misplaced ") then may the power of duty descend upon them to shield them from harm. St. 3. The thought in the preceding stanza is almost re- peated. Our life will be serenely happy when our inclinations lead us towards virtue,— "When love is an unerring light, And joy its own security." Instinctive virtue ma' trial it listens to the St. 4. The poet li and has hitherto bei "ure in its happiness if in the hour of Duty. ->ys loved to act upon his own impulse, ried by misfortune ; yet, although he has never been unduly swayed by passion, he feels that he has reposed too much blind confidence in himself, and when Duty has called, he has preferred to follow pleasure. Now he craves for the stricter guidance of Duty (or Conscience). St. 5. He yearns for this control, not because his soul has been disturbed, or that he feels the remorse of a guilty con- science. But in his calm hours, and in " thequietness of thought," he seeks this guidatice. He has long enough enjoyed his unlim- ited freedom, and feels the oppression of wayward desires. He 230 NOTES wishes to rest his hopes upon something that shall endure, and longs for a lasting repose. St. 6. Though Duty may appear severe, she still is gracious. The beauty of the world obeys her law, and the divine harmony of the universe flows from her command. St. 7. Relying upon the graciousness of this "Awful Power," the poet summons it to humbler functions, namely, to fill him with the spirit of self-sacrifice and humility. ELEGIAC STANZAS COMPOSED 1805: PUBLISHED 1807. Further references to John Wordsworth will be found in the following poems : — To the Z)a»f>'(" Sweet Flower"), Elegiac V^erses in Memory of My Brother, When to the Attractions of the Busy World, The Brothers, and TIte Happy Warrior. With lines 3.V40, and 57-60, compare the Intimations of Im- mortality, 11. 176-187: — " 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 splendor 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 suflering ; In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind." I- i ill :: SEPTEMBER, 1819 COMPOSEI> 1819 : PlHLISIIEl') 1820. " This poem and the following were composed in front of Rydal .Mount, and during my walks in the neighborhood. Nine- tenths of my verses have been murmured out in the open air ; and here lei nie ropi-iit what t believe has already anjiearod in ]irint. One day a stranger having walked round the garden and grounds UPON THE SAME OCCASION 231 of Rydal Mount, asked one of the female servants, who hap- pened to be at the door, permission to see her master's study. * This,' said she, leading him forward, ' is my masters library where he keeps his books, but his study is out of doors. UPON THE SAME OCCASION COMPOSED 1819: PUBLISHED 1820. Shelley has also finely expressed the charm peculiar to Autumn days : — " The day becomes more solemn and serene When noon is past : ilv.-re is a harmony In autumn, and a lustre in its sky. Which through the summer is not heard or seen, As if it could not be, as if it had not been. " Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, st. vii. The poet feels that as the birds sing: '" the declining autumn days, so he, although " in the sere and yellow leaf, ' can still find fitting themes for his verse. Modern poets have been untrue to their lofty calling, and have sung in an enervating strain. He feels that the springtime passion of his youth is past, but still wide is the choice that remains. He will draw inspiration from the bards of old, from Alcaeus, the foe of tyrants, and Sappho, the poetess of Love. (This would seem to be inconsistent with stanzas 3 and 4, but the poet seems to justify true passion, and to hold that what is genuinely uttered has no power to "enervate and defile)." The rest of the poem is a fine play of poetic fancy. TO THE REV. DR. WORDSWORTH This pooni was written and published in 1820. TO A SKYLARK COMPOSED 1825: PIBLISHED 1 827. "Written at Rydal Mount, where there are no skjlarks, but the poet is everywhere." The poem consisted originally of three i 232 NOTES \l- stanzas, the second of which was transferred in 1S45 to the poem A Morning Exercise. It is as follows : — "To the last point of \ on, and beyond. Mount, darinjr Warbler ! that love-prompted strain, ('Twixt thee and thine a never-failing' bond) Thrills not the less the bosom of the plain : Yet mig'ht'st thou seem, proud privileg'e ! to sins^ Ail independent of the leafy spring-." In his note to A Morning Exercise Wordsworth says: — "I could wish the last five stanzas of this to be read with the poem addressed to the Skvlark." One verse o\' A Morning Exercise partieularly enlorees the thought conttiined in the earlier poem :-- "Faithful, though swift as lightning-, the meek dove ; Yet more hath Xature reconciled in thee ; So constant with thy downward eye of love, Yet, in aerial singleness, so free ; So humble, yet so ready to rejoice In power of wing and never wearied voice." In Shelley's lyric, in which we almost hear the quivering beat of the skylark's win;^s, we do not realize that the bird is bound to tlie earth by any lie. It is an unbodied joy among- the clouds, — the symbol of ag^ladness without stain. Wordsworth's poem h.'is nothing of this pulsating fervor ; but we feel some kinship with this bird whose nest is "upon the dewv ground," while Shelley's skylark typifies an ecstasy that can never be attained, — a yearn- ing- that can never be satisfied. A BRIEF HISTORY AND DESCRIPTION OF THE SONNET* The sonnet form was introduced into Eng-lish poetry by Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey. Their experiments in the Reference may l)e made to "The Sonnet : Its Origin, Structure and Place in Poetry, " by Charles Tomlinson, London, iS;*. "Sonnets of this Century," edited by William Sharp, London (Walter Scott) 1886. "A Treasury of Enghsh Si>;iiiets.' edited bv David M. Main. "Sonnets of Three Centuries," edited by Hall Caine. London, i»«2. ".\lilions Sonnets, ' by Mark Pattison (D. Apple- ton & Co.), " Neu-enKJische Metrik.'' by Schipper. Also artirlcs in the " Ency- clopa.'dia Britannica, " "Quarterly Review," iSSb; " Westminster Review, '1871; "Dublin Review, " 1876, 1877. THE SOXNET 233 The Struc- ture of the Sonnet. As to Form. soiinci were published in TotteFs Miscellunym 1557, and were proinplod by an admiration of Petrarch and other Italian models. Italy was almost certainly the original home of the sonnet (sonnet = Ital. sonetto, a little sound, or short strain, from suono, sound), and there it has been assiduously cultiv-*-d since the thirteenth century. In the fourteenth century Dante and Petrarch gave the form .1 European celebrity. Hoforo saying anything of its development in Knglish poetry, it is advisable to examine an admittedly perfect sonnet, so that we inaj- gain an idea of the nature of this type of poem, both as to form and substance. Words- worth's sonnet upon Milton (London, /-So.') will serve our purpose (see page 187). By reference to it you will observe : — (i) That the sonnv,t is written in iambic pentameter, and consists of fourteen lines — that number by repeated experimen- tation having been found the most appropriate for the expression of a single emotional mood. (2) As an examination of the rimes will show (a b b a a b b a : c d d e c e), there is a natural metrical division at the end of the eighth line. The first eight lines in technical language are called the "octave, " the last six lines are called the "sestet." The octave is sometimes said to consist of two quatrains, and the sestet of two tercets. {3) There is not only a metrical division between the octave and the sestet, but the character of the thought also undergoes a subtle change at that point. It is to be under- stood, of course, that in the whole poem there must be both unity of thought and mood. Yet, at the ninth line, the thought which is introduced in the oc- tave is elaborated, and presented as it were under another aspect. As Mr. Mark Pattison has admirably expressed it : " This thought or mood should be led up to, and opened in the early lines of the sonnet ; strictly, in the first quatrain ; in the second quatrain the hearer should be placed iii full possession of it. After the second quatrain there should be a pause not full, nor producing the eflfect of a break — as of one who had finished what he had g'ot to say, and not preparing a transition to a new subject, but as of one who is turning over what has been said in the mind to enforce it further. The opening of the second sys- As to Sub- stance. 234 NOTES i II I tern, strictly the first tercet, should iiirn back upon the thought or sentiment, take it up and carry it forward to the conclusion. The conclusion should be a resultant summing the total of the suggestion in the precedinij- lines. . . . While the conclusion should leave a sense of finish and completeness, it is necessary to avoid anything like epigrammatic jwint." (4^ An examination of the rimes again will show that greater strictness prevails in the octave than in the sestet. The most regular type of the octave may be represented by a b b a a b b a, turning therefore upon two rimes only. The ses- Syitem. '^'' *hough it contains but six lines, is more liberal in the disposition of its rimes. In the sonnet which we are examining, the rime system of the sestet in c d d e c e— containing, as we see, three separate rimes. In the sestet this is permissible, provided that there is not a riming couplet at the close. (5) Again, with reference to the rime, it will be observed that the vowel terminals of the octave and the sestet are differenti- ated. Anything approaching assonance between the two divi- sion . is to be counted as a defect. (6) It is evident that there is unity both of thought and mood in this sonnet, the sestet being differentiated from the octave only as above described. (7) It is almost unnecessary to add that there is no slovenly diction, that the language is dignified in proportion to the tlii-me, and that there is no obscurity or repetition in thought or phrase- ology. These rules will appear to the young reader of poetry as almost unnecessarily severe. But it must be remembered that the sonnet is avowedly a conventional form (though in it much of the finest poetry in our language is contained), and as such the conventional laws attaching to all prescribed forms must be observed to win complete success. Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton have lent the authority of their great names to certain distinct variations from the rigid Petrarchan type. The peculiarity of Spenser's sonnets is that the rime of the octave overflows into the sestet, thus marring the exquisite balance which should subsist between the two parts, and yielding an effect of cloying sweetness. .X'though the famous stanza-form which he invented in his " Faerie Queene " THE SONNET 235 has found many imitators, his sonnet innovation'^ are practically unimportant. The Shakespearean sonnet , on the contrary, mnst be regarded as a well-established variant from the stricter Italian form. Though Shakespeare's name has made it famous, it did not orig- inate with him. Surrey and Daniel had habitually employed it, and in fact it had come to be recognized as the accepted English form. Its characteristic feature, as the following sonnet from Shakespeare will show, was a division into three distinct quat- rains-, each with alternating rimes, and closed by a couplet. The transition of thought at the ninth line is usually observed : — "When, in disgrace with fortune and mens eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state. And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries. And look upon myself, and curse my fate. Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd. Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least ; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising. Haply I think on thee — and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate ; For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings, That then I scorn to change my state with kings. " It is Milton's merit that he rescued the sonnet from the snare of verbal wit in which the Elizabethans had involved it, and made it resjxjnd to other passions than that of love. His sonnets, as imitations of the Italian form, are more successful than the scat- tered efforts in that direction of Wyatt and Surrey. They are indeed regular in all respects, save that he is not always careful to observe the pause in the thought, and the subtle change which should divide the octave from the sestet. .After Milton there is a pause in sonnet-writing for a hundred vears. William Lisles Bowles (1762-1850), memorable for his in- fluence upon Coleridge, was among the first again to cultivate the form. Coleridge and Shelley gave the sonnet scant attention, and were careless as to its structural qualities. Keats, apart from Wordsworth, was the only poet of the early years of the century who realized its capabilities. He has written a few of 2^6 NOTES !!■! our memorable sonnets, but he was not entirely satisfied with the accepted form, and experimented upon variations that cannot be regarded as successful. There is no doubt that the stimulus to sonnet-writing in the nineteenth century came from Wordsworth, and he, as we hava seen (Bioaraphical Skthh, p. 1 18), received his inspir.it ion from Milton. Wordsworth's soimets, less remarkable certainly than a supreme few of Shakespeare's, have still imposed themselves as models upon all later writers, while the Shakespearean form has fallen into disuse. A word here, then-fore, as to their form. The strict rime movement i>f the octave abba a b b a is observed in seven only of the present collection t.i( twelve, namely, in the first somiet, the second, the third, the fifth, the sixth, the seviiith, and the eijfhih. The rime formula of the octave with which Wordsworth's name is chiefly associated is a b b .'i a c c a. The sonnets in which this addition.-d rime is introduced are the fourth, the ninth, the tenth, the eleventh and the twelfth. As rejfards the transition from octave to sestet the following sonnets observe the prescribed law, namely, the second, third, sixth, seventh, and ninth. The sevenremaininjf sonnets all show some irrejfularity in this respect. The first sonnet (Fair Star) with its abrupt enjumbeiiient at the close of the octave, and the thought- pause in the body of the first line of the sestet, is a form much employed by Mrs. Browninsj, but ritforously avoided by Dante Gabriel Rossetti with his more scrupulous ide.il of sonnet con- struction. This imperfect transition is seen ajfain in the fourth, fifth, eij<-hth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth sonnets. Its boldness certainly amounts to .i technical fault in the two sonnets on Kiiiij^'s College Chapel. In the sestet we naturally expect and find much variety in the disposition of the rimes. The conclusion of the last sonnet by a couplet is most unusual in Wordsworth. FAIR STAR OF EVENING COMPOSED HV THE SEA-SIIIK, NEAR CALAIS, AfGlST, l8o2: PI BUSHED, 1807 The following' extract from Dorothy Wordsworth's journal is appropriate to this poem : " We arrived at Calais at four o'clock on Sunday morning, the 31st of July. We had delightful walks m COMPOSEP IPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE 237 after the heat of the day was passed— set-in); far off in the west the coast of Enjrland, like a iloud, crested with Dover Castle, the eveninjf Star, and the >rning. The city, St. Paul's, with the river— a multitude of little boats, made a beautiful sight as we crossed Westminster Bridge ; the houses not overhung by their clouds of smoke, and were hung out endlessly ; yet the sim shone so brightly, with such a pure light, that there was something like the purity of one of Nature's own grand si>ectacles. " WHEN I HAVE BORNE IN MEMORY COMPOSED »Soj : PIBLISIIKD 1807, (AND IN THE "MORNING POST ' IN 1803) 11. 2-4. Compare Goldsmith — " contentment fails. And honor sinks where commerce long prevails." Traveller, 91-92. There would seem to be a contradiction in the sense as be- tween line 8 (tinjilial fears) and line 14, in which the poet says that his fears arose from his filial affection. Professor Dowden suggests — " Wordsworth doubtless means that t*- irs, filial as offspring of love, are unfilial as lacking faith. " At this period England's commercial prosperity was advancing bv leaps and bounds. Compare "Written in London, Septem- ber, 1802. ' IT IS NOT TO BE THOT'GHT Oi COMPOSED KFPTEMBER, l8o2; PIBLISHED 1807, (AND IN THE "MORNING POST ' in 1803) in \m .''38 NOTES WRITTEN* IN LONDON, SKPTKMBKR, 1H02: PIBI.ISHEI) tSo; " This was writton imiiu-iliati'ly afliT inv p-'ii: ■! f'oin (Vance to Loiidixi, wliiMi I ii'uld not but bo strurk, .i-. Ii. I. ~ 'ribod, with tho vanity and paraJo of our own countr\, v,^^r^ illy in jfrcat towns and I'itios, as oontrastod with lit- >|uif., ' mav say the desolation, tlial tho Revolution had pn 'niHi i-i trince. This must bo borne in mind, or olse the Reader mav Mnnkihat in this and Ihe suceeedin< Soimels I have exai;'^, -.i 1 ■ mis- chief en>fendered and fostered amon^ us by undi^'iurbed wertllh. ' it?" TO SLKEP COMPOSED l8ob : Pt'RLISHKI) 1S07 This is the best of three sonnets published on this subject, ali composed at alH>ut this time. Sidney and Daniel have Ivtli writit-n well-known Soimets to Skep. Compare also .\/aiht//t, act ii, scene ii, I. 31) ; A'iitg- Henry II', Part il, act iii, scefte 1, 1. 5 ; Midsummer Xit^/i/'s Dream, Act III, scene ii, 1. 435. BROOK ! WHOSE SOCIETY COMPOSE!! l8o6(?): PI BLISHED 1815 II. 6 t. Compare Wordsworth's account of ancient niMh- olojjies in 77te Exrursinn Bk. I\'. Wordswi>rth would not hu rjize nature, but would rather see in her a direct revelation of the "Eternal Soul." The jxH-t rejjards the objects of inanimate nature so miscalled as instinct with individual life, and almost possessed of conscious person- ality. The follow"i>f verses from The Prelude are an interestmjj confession of hi., faith : — " To every natural form, rock, fniit, or flower, Even the loose stones that cover the hij^hwav , I jfave a moral life : I saw them feel, Or linked them to some feeling' : the great mass Lay bedded in a quickoiiin^ sduI, and ali That I beheld respired with inward meaning ' Bk. Ill, 130 f. ! :! THE srnjl tlATItiV OK SWITZIRLAXP ^ Tlinit.HT tM- A HKi'TON v>X THK S BJl*. : ION OF SWIT/KRLAM' COMP».*«»KD IN 1807 AT mLKORTOS . ! ' BLlJiHEl* iKi); l.NSID!': OF Kl -v.S t. I LEO" cu> riN :n .lAl'KL Those oiincls o- Kiiijf's Collejf-* Chapt'- .or. abou' :he lose of ihj .. and • . ti p lished \ th ti fifu' Sunnets in iHti. 1 ley lor ti> 1 >bfts 4^ serios. '• .My purpose ill writ im Ihi -■ ^ to confine my view to tii> iiuri"'"*-!*'! of the Church in Enffland h pr Reformation. The --onnc t-re ;; lual hi torv ai ' poi' ts of aoiirint- naU whicli ley have beei cently i ujuired nt .>, a- h as ; iirojfi d I' iiion and ■ qufiii > the '■ lore ecilesias- ■xc 'le interest with ntt i.j ..iscusised. • SCORN NO HF S* T <.OMPOSF!> i z-[''): pi isHKij 1827 "Compc ■ almi' ' extempore ill walk i the western sid« .'f Rydi» :-akc. .ni^ i;S Englhh Sonne! ^ : A Selection, p. 220, .rtii > «.|ualitit as a si let writer .-is follows : — . thi 4 ate >f modern jxieis, is perhaps the sh sonii ' wriurs Not only has he composed i;. nur .r of nnot-. than any other of our h.is alsf ;ten more that are of first- once. i hi '- ntensity of jiassion in \Vi>rds\sorth s sonnet id lierein hi- differs from Shakespeare, and from Mrs. Browning, for whose sonnet the reai r may feel an enthusiastic admiration that Wordsworth'-* tfe. nrhlfiil and calm verse rarely excites ; neither has he attained' 'dignified simplicity ' which marks the sen- nets t" Miltoi JUt for purity of language, for variety and M John D sum- p \V \'oruh gn -.t ft I a Words worth's Quali tei as a b'?nn«t Writ* po. rati- ifeHBl 240 NOTES 1^ streiiKth of thous,'ht, for the ruriosa felicitas o( poetical diction, for the exquisite skill with which he associates the emotions ol the mind and the aspects of nature, we know of no sonnet writer who can take precedence of Wordsworth. In liis larger poems his lanKua^e is sometimes slovenly, and occasionally, as Sir Walter Scott said, he chooses to walk on all-fours ; but this is rarely the case in the sonnets, and thoush he wrote upwards of four hundred, there are few, save those on the Punishment of Death and some of tliose called Eccfesiastical (for neither arK'iment or do^ma find a fitting place in verse) that we could willingly part with. Wordsworth's belief that the lans-uage of the common peo- ple may be used as the lanj-uage of poetr>- was totally inoperative when he composed a sonnet. He wrote at such times in the best diction he could command, and the lan- Kuaire, like the thought, is that of a groat master. The sonnets embrace almost everv theme, except the one to which this branch of the poetical art has been usually dedicated. Some ot the noblest are consecrated to liberty ; some describe with incompar- able felicity the personal feelin.yrs of the writer; some might be termed "simpiv descriptive, were it not that even these are raised above the rank of descriptive poetry by the pure and lofty imagination of the poet. The light that never was on sea or land perv.ides the humblest o( these pieces, and throughout them there is inculcated a cheerful, because divine, philosophy." INDEX Alfoxden, Wordsworth lives at, 113; marks turning: point in his career, 114, 115. Arnold, Matthew, estimate of Wordsworth, 103, 129, 130, 163. Ballad Poetry, 35-42. Ball, Sir Alexander, Coleridg'e the guest and secretary of, at Malta, 19. Beaumont, Sir George, his gift to Coleridge, 19. Beaupuy, Michel, his influence on Wordsworth, 109. Bowdon, Anne, the mother of Coleridge, 2. Bowles, Wm. Lisles, his influ- ence on Coleridge, 5, 6. Boyer, Coleridge's master at Christ's Hospital, 3, 4. Brandl, Alois, on the quality of sympathy in Coleridge's poe- try, 207. Brooke, Rev. Stopford, on Cole- ridge as a poet, 48, 49, 50; on Coleridge's descriptive pow- ers, 208. Browning, Robert, "Lost Lea- der" of, 104, Bullen, F. T., on Coleridge's poetry, 50, 51. Buller, Francis, obtains presen- tation for Coleridge to Christ's Hospital, 3. Burke, Edmund, 109. (241 Burnett, the pantisocrat, 1 1. Byron, Lord, his good offices to Coleridge, 14; lao. Calvert, Raisley, his legacy to Wordsworth, iii. Calvert, William, no. Campbell, Jas. Dykes, editor and biographer of Coleridge, 5, 18. Carlyle, Tho^ias, his description of Coleridgft, 24, 25; his des- cription of Wordsworth, 123, 124. Coleridge, Hartley, 13, Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, Aids to Reflection, 24; annuity, 15; as critic, 57, 58, 59, 126, 127, 128, 129; as poet, 46-54; as political philosopher, 54, 55; as religious philosopher and metaphysician, 55, 5C at Bris- tol, II, 22; at Cam^ -idge, 6- 10; at Christ's Hospital, 3-6; at Clevedon, 11, 12; at Gras- mere, 19; at Greta Hall, Kes- wick, 18; at Hammersmith, 21; at Highgate, 23; at Nether Stowey, 14; at Redcliffe Hill, 12; Biographia Literaria, 6, 23; birth of, I ; Bowles, W. L., influence of his sonnets on, 5,6; childhood of, 2; Chnstobel, 15, 16, 18, zy. Church and State, 24; conversation of, 24. 25, 26; death of, at Highgate, 27; 342 INDEX h" [it IS- ll I Dejection, An Ode, i6, i8; de- scriptions of, 3. 4, 5, i-\' ^5< •*7< 2S; enlistment in the Dra- goons, 7; in Germany, 16, 17; in London, 21; in Malta and Italy, 19; intimacy with Words- worth. 9, 14-22, 27, \i2,etseq.; his estimate of Wordsworth's poetry, 126-129; laudanum, 13, 14, 22, 23; lectures, 11, 19; Lyrical Ballads, 16, 43, 44, 45, 65, 66, 116; marries Sarah Fricker, 11; Morning Chron- icle, 12; Morning Post, 15, 17, 18; Osorio, or /Remorse, 14, 21; The Courier, 21; The Fall of Robespierre, 10; The Friend, 20; The Watchman, 12; Pan- tisocracy, 8, 9, 10; Second Lay Sermon, 24; The ^Eolian Harp, 12; The Ancient Mariner, 15, 59 f; has it a moral? 212; translates Wallenstein, 18. Cookson, William, of Penrith, the grandfather of Words- worth, 105. Cottle, Joseph, printer and pub- lisher, II, 22. Courier, Coleridge sub-editor of the, 21. Criticism in the XV'III century, 57- Davy, Sir H., 20. DeQuincey, his gift to C Meridge, 19; describes Coleridge's con- versation, 25, 26; his descrip- tion of Wordsworth, 123. Dowden, Professor Edward, his description of tendencies in poetry, 43, 44; his estimate of Wordsworth's poetry, 130, 131; on the grotesque element in Coleridge, 203, 204; on the quality of sympathy m Cole- ridge's poetry, 207. Evans. Mary, Coleridge's affec- tion for, 3, 10. Evans, Mrs., 12. Fricker, Sarah, 9, 10, 11. Gillman,Mr.and Mrs., Coleridge in charge of, at Highgate, 21, 23- Godwin, William, 10 .. Green, J. H., Coleridge's liter- ary executor, 27. Haydon, portrait of Words- worth, 122. Herford, Professor, his descrip- tion of tendencies in iH>etry, 45; on Coleridge as critic, 57, 58; on Coleridge as poet, 47, 48. Hunt, Leigh, his description of Wordsworth, 123. Hutchinson, Mary, 108; married to Wordsworth, 1 1 7. Jones, Robert, travels with Wordsworth, 108. Lamb, Charles, his description of Coleridge as a boy, 5 ; his opinion on the Ancient Mari- ner, 60-61. INDEX 243 Lang, Andrew, on Coleridge's poetry, 46, 47. Lloyd, Charles, lives with Cole- ridge, 12, 16. Lonsdale, Earl of, his debt to the Wordsworth estate, 105. Lonsdale, Lord (the second earl), 117,1 20. Lovell, the Pantisocrat, 9. Lowell, J. R., his estimate of Coleridge's descriptive faculty, 197, 198; on Coleridge as poet, 48. Lyrical Ballads, 16, 43, 44, 45, 65, 66, 116; preface to, 214, 2<5- Milton, John, sonnets of, 118. Montagu, Basil, causes breach between Coleridge and Word^' - worth, 21, in. Morgan, Mr. and Mrs., Cole- ridge the guest of, at Ham- mersmith, 21; at Bristol and Calne, 22. Morning Chronicle, 12. Momtng Post, Coleridge contri- butes to, 15, 17, 18, 19. Osorio, see Remorse. Fame, Thomas, 109. Pantisocracy. 8, 9, 10. Pater, Walter, on Coleridge poetry, 48; on the supernatu- ral in Coleridge, 204, 205. Quilinnan, Mrs. 121. Remorse, recast from Osorio in 181 2, and acted at DruryLane, 14, 21. Science, Wordsworth's relation to, 217. Scott, Sir Walter, on Coleridge's poetry, 46; 118. Southey, Robert, 8, 9, 10, 11; death of, 120. Stephen. Sir Leslie, on Words- worth's relation to science, 217. » Stuart, editor of the Morning Post, 17, 18. Swinburne, A. C, on Coleridge's poetry, 46. Taylor, Sir Henry, his descrip- tion • Wordsworth, 123. Tlie Rime of the A ncient Mariner, «5. 59 f-. 2'2- Traill, Life of Coleridge, 1 7. Vaughan, C. E., on Coleridge as critic, 58. Voltaire, " Philosophical Dic- tionary " of, 4. Wallenstein, Coleridge trans- lates. 18. '■'. rdsworth, William, appointed stributor of stamps, 120; ap- pointed Laureate, 120; Arnold's estimate of, in verse, 103; in prose, 129, 130, 163; PtAlfox- den, 113 ; at Allan Bank, 119; at Dove Cottag^e, Grasoierat 244 INDEX lili 117; at Hawkshead School, 105, 106; at the Parsonage, Grasmere, 120; at Racedown, hi; at Rydal Mount, Gras- mere, 120; at St. Johns Col- leg'e, Cambridg-e, 107; bom at Cockermouth, 104 ; Brown- ing-'-i view of, 104; character of, 121, 122; Coleridge's esti- mate of his poetry, 126, 127, 128, 1 29 ; conservatism of, 104; death of his daughter, Mrs. Quillinan, 121; death of his brother. Captain John Wordsworth, 118; Early Poems, no, 112; estimate of his own poetry, 119; German visit, 117; his im{K>rtance in the history of the English sonnet, 236; his philosophy of nature, 105, 106, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 238 ; his poetry of humble life, 106, 214, 215; intimacy with Coleridge, 112, et seq. (and see Coleridge) ; letter to Richard Watson, 1 10; marries Mary Hutchinson, 117; Matthew Arnold's estimate of his poetry, 103, 129, 130; offends his guardians, 108; optimism of, 103, 104; per- sonal appearance of, 122, 123, 124; Poems of 180J, 1.9; Professor Dowden's estimate of his poetry, 130, 131; re- ceives honorary degree from Oxford, 120; receives legacy from Raisley Calvert, in; re- publicanism of, 109, n3; resi- dence in France, 109; Shelley's view of, 104; takes his degr«»e, 108; Taylor, William, his mas- ter at Hawkshead, 106; The Excursion, completed, 1 20 ; The Prelude, 17; completed, n8; travels in France and on Continent, 108. Wordsworth, Anne, the poet's mother, 105. Wordsworth, John, the poet's father, 105. Wordsworth, Dorothy, 108, mo, ni, 112, n4. Wordsworth, John, the poet's brother, death of, nS. THE END WiiM.