William & Dorothy Wordsworth Read online

  William & Dorothy Wordsworth

  A Miscellany

  Introduction and selection

  by Gavin Herbertson

  Rucksack Editions

  Galileo Publishers, Cambridge

  Published by Galileo Publishers

  16 Woodlands Road, Great Shelford,

  Cambridge, UK, CB22 5LW

  www.galileopublishing.co.uk

  Galileo Publishers is an imprint of Galileo Multimedia Ltd.

  Selection and editorial material © Gavin Herbertson, 2017

  The moral right of the editor of the selection has been asserted.

  Illustrations © 2017 by Susan Glassford

  isbn 978-1-903385-59-3

  Text design by James Shurmer

  Cover design by NamdesignUK

  Cover illustration by Francis Towne

  Rucksack Editions are based on an original concept by Erlend Clouston

  All rights reserved.This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Printed in Lithuania

  Also in the same series:

  John Muir: A Miscellany edited by Laurie Battle

  Edward Thomas: A Miscellany edited by Anna Stenning

  Contents

  Introduction by Gavin Herbertson

  William Wordsworth

  Prose:

  From “Description of the Scenery of the Lakes” in A Guide Through the District of the Lakes

  Poetry:

  Anecdote for Fathers, Showing How the Practice of Lying May Be Taught

  Lines Written in Early Spring

  To My Sister

  Expostulation and Reply

  The Tables Turned: An Evening Scene on the Same Subject

  Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey

  The Old Cumberland Beggar

  Animal Tranquillity and Decay

  The Simplon Pass

  Nutting

  She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways

  I Travelled Among Unknown Men

  A Poet’s Epitaph

  The Fountain

  Lucy Gray

  Michael: A Pastoral Poem

  The Idle Shepherd-Boys

  The Waterfall and the Eglantine

  Song for the Wandering Jew

  Lines Written with a Slate Pencil upon a Stone

  To a Butterfly

  The Redbreast Chasing the Butterfly

  It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free

  Composed After a Journey Across the Hambleton Hills

  The Sun Has Long Been Set

  Yew-Trees

  Dorothy Wordsworth

  From Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland, A.D. 1803

  William Wordsworth

  Poetry (continued)

  Stepping Westward

  The Solitary Reaper

  To the Cuckoo

  I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

  To the Supreme Being

  To a Sky-Lark

  Louisa

  Admonition

  “Beloved Vale!” I Said, “When I Shall Con”

  Composed by the Side of Grasmere Lake

  With Ships the Sea was Sprinkled Far and Nigh

  Lines Composed at Grasmere During a Walk

  The Pass of Kirkstone

  Composed Upon an Evening of Extraordinary Splendour and Beauty

  Gordale

  The Wild Duck’s Nest

  To a Snow-Drop

  There is a Little Unpretending Rill

  The Stars Are Mansions Built By Nature’s Hand

  Sole Listener, Duddon! To the Breeze that Played

  Who Swerves From Innocence, Who Makes Divorce

  Conclusion (of the Duddon Sonnets)

  Thought on the Seasons

  The Brownie

  To the Planet Venus, an Evening Star

  Calm is the Fragrant Air, and Loth to Lose

  Rural Illusions

  A Wren’s Nest

  On a High Part of the Coast of Cumberland

  Why Should the Enthusiast, Journeying Through this Isle

  By the Sea-Shore, Isle of Man

  Most Sweet it is with Unuplifted Eyes

  Not in the Lucid Intervals of Life

  By the Side of Rydal Mere

  Ode Composed on May Morning

  Airey-Force Valley

  To the Clouds

  On the Projected Kendal and Windermere Railway

  Glad Sight Wherever New With Old

  So Fair, so Sweet, Withal so Sensitive

  Introduction by Gavin Herbertson

  With the sun high in the sky, at the dawn of a new century, a young poet strolled along the shores of a vast lake. In quiet contemplation, his eyes washed over the horizon, meandering along the curves of the water. With a weary head, he lay his limbs down on the bank, anticipating the onset of a gentle slumber. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, he was struck by the most beautiful sight he had yet beheld. Mustering his racing mind, he scrambled for his pencil, scrawling, in barely legible verse, the most famous lines in the English language:

  I wandered lonely as a cloud

  That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

  When all at once I saw a crowd,

  A host, of golden daffodils

  This is perhaps how we imagine William Wordsworth, the poet of solitary walks and rustic bliss. It was, in no small way, the image which he also projected of himself. And yet, in reality, things were very different. For one thing, when he composed ‘Daffodils’, he was sitting at home. For another, over two years had passed since he had seen them. Although the poem was certainly inspired by a real-life stroll through Ullswater, there was nothing solitary about its composition. Like most clouds, William did not wander alone.

  As was their habit, on a ‘threatening misty morning’ in April 1802, William and his sister Dorothy accompanied one another on a walk. A keen diarist, she would go on to record the day’s events in her journal. For any modern reader of her prose, one passage in particular stands out:

  I never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones about and about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness and the rest tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake, they looked so gay ever glancing ever changing.

  Given the chronology, we know that Dorothy did not write her account after reading her brother’s poem. Instead, it is very likely that, when composing his most famous lines, William had just reread his sister’s description.

  Born in Cockermouth on April 7th 1770, William was around a year older than his sister, and the second of their parent’s five children. The two spent much of their early childhood together, but were separated in 1778 when Dorothy was sent to live with relatives in Halifax. Despite their fondness for one another, the two would remain apart for the vast majority of the next nine years. In 1795, Wordsworth met Samuel Taylor Coleridge, his lifelong friend, and co-author of the Lyrical Ballads (1798). The collection would kick-start the so-called “Romantic” strain in English poetry, having been composed at Alfoxton House, in Somerset, where Dorothy also wrote the first of her major journals. One of the most significan
t collections of poetry in any language, the major works of the Lyrical Ballads – from ‘Michael’ to ‘Tintern Abbey’ – have been included in this volume.

  In the latter poem, William alludes to the importance of Dorothy directly, terming her a ‘dear, dear Friend’, in whom he may behold what he ‘once was’. Critics are divided as to whether this representation of Dorothy is favourable, because William turns to her, or patriarchal, since he does not let her speak. Nevertheless, in either case, her great importance for the poem is recognised. To return the favour, over thirty years later, in one of her twenty seven extant poems (entitled ‘Thoughts on my sick-bed’), Dorothy went on to laud the great ability of her ‘Friend from infancy’. Long considered an important textual- biographical source for William’s life and work, the stand-alone merit of Dorothy’s writing, and the reciprocal influence of the siblings’ work on each other, is beginning to be recognised. In truth, that this has been overlooked is relatively surprising since, right at the beginning of her Grasmere Journal (1800–1803), in which we find the daffodils anecdote, Dorothy made explicitly clear that she hoped to ‘give William pleasure’ by writing it.

  In this collection, to highlight the interconnectedness of the two authors’ work, Dorothy’s most compelling narrative – ‘Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland’ – bisects William’s verse, having been placed immediately before ‘Stepping Westward’, the first of the poems which William composed on their shared journey. For the sake of narrative completion, only two sections have been omitted from the journal. A short section has been removed from the end of the second week, and the text relating to events after the fourth week has been cut, since it was composed much later, and is not as detailed in its description. William’s verse has been selected according to its appropriateness as an accompaniment for a country ramble, or a leisurely hike through the hills. Poems depicting nature have been preferred over those concerned with contemporary politics, while the Prelude has not been included, owing to regrettable limitations of space. The collection has been ordered chronologically, according to date of composition, rather than publication. And, since William substantially revised many of his poems throughout his life, in all cases, the last versions he produced have been printed. Only the prose taken from the Guide Through the District of the Lakes appears out of sequence: the anonymous first version having appeared in 1810, with the fifth, fully revised edition published twenty-five years later. Since the introductory material has been reprinted, it is only fitting to place it at the beginning of the book.

  It is my hope that the present volume will provide an overview of William’s verse and prose, having been sourced from all stages of his diverse and storied career. At the same time, by reprinting the work alongside that of his sister, the collaborative process of their composition should be made clear. Whether the verse is self-aggran- dising, and guilty of what Keats pejoratively termed Wordsworth’s “egotistical sublime”, remains up for debate. But, in terms of composition, there is no doubt that solitude and egoism were far from the driving forces. Overall, in a very real sense, I hope this book will provide a sibling’s comfort during long country walks.

  William Wordsworth

  From “Description of the Scenery of the Lakes” in A Guide Through the District of the Lakes

  Section First: View of the Country as Formed by Nature

  At Lucerne, in Switzerland, is shewn a Model of the Alpine country which encompasses the Lake of the four Cantons. The Spectator ascends a little platform, and sees mountains, lakes, glaciers, rivers, woods, waterfalls, and vallies, with their cottages, and every other object contained in them, lying at his feet; all things being represented in their appropriate colours. It may be easily conceived that this exhibition affords an exquisite delight to the imagination, tempting it to wander at will from valley to valley, from mountain to mountain, through the deepest recesses of the Alps. But it supplies also a more substantial pleasure: for the sublime and beautiful region, with all its hidden treasures, and their bearings and relations to each other, is thereby comprehended and understood at once.

  Something of this kind, without touching upon minute details and individualities which would only confuse and embarrass, will here be attempted, in respect to the Lakes in the north of England, and the vales and mountains enclosing and surrounding them. The delineation, if tolerably executed, will, in some instances, communicate to the traveller, who has already seen the objects, new information; and will assist in giving to his recollections a more orderly arrangement than his own opportunities of observing may have permitted him to make; while it will be still more useful to the future traveller, by directing his attention at once to distinctions in things which, without such previous aid, a length of time only could enable him to discover. It is hoped, also, that this Essay may become generally serviceable, by leading to habits of more exact and considerate observation than, as far as the writer knows, have hitherto been applied to local scenery.

  To begin, then, with the main outlines of the country;—I know not how to give the reader a distinct image of these more readily, than by requesting him to place himself with me, in imagination, upon some given point; let it be the top of either of the mountains, Great Gavel, or Scawfell; or, rather, let us suppose our station to be a cloud hanging midway between those two mountains, at not more than half a mile’s distance from the summit of each, and not many yards above their highest elevation; we shall then see stretched at our feet a number of vallies, not fewer than eight, diverging from the point, on which we are supposed to stand, like spokes from the nave of a wheel. First, we note, lying to the south-east, the vale of Langdale, which will conduct the eye to the long lake of Winandermere, stretched nearly to the sea; or rather to the sands of the vast bay of Morcamb, serving here for the rim of this imaginary wheel;—let us trace it in a direction from the south-east towards the south, and we shall next fix our eyes upon the vale of Coniston, running up likewise from the sea, but not (as all the other vallies do) to the nave of the wheel, and therefore it may be not inaptly represented as a broken spoke sticking in the rim. Looking forth again, with an inclination towards the west, we see immediately at our feet the vale of Duddon, in which is no lake, but a copious stream winding among fields, rocks, and mountains, and terminating its course in the sands of Duddon. The fourth vale, next to be observed, viz. that of the Esk, is of the same general character as the last, yet beautifully discriminated from it by peculiar features. Its stream passes under the woody steep upon which stands Muncaster Castle, the ancient seat of the Penningtons, and after forming a short and narrow estuary enters the sea below the small town of Ravenglass. Next, almost due west, look down into, and along the deep valley of Wastdale, with its little chapel and half a dozen neat dwellings scattered upon a plain of meadow and corn-ground intersected with stone walls apparently innumerable, like a large piece of lawless patch-work, or an array of mathematical figures, such as in the ancient schools of geometry might have been sportively and fantastically traced out upon sand. Beyond this little fertile plain lies, within a bed of steep mountains, the long, narrow, stern, and desolate lake of Wastdale; and, beyond this, a dusky tract of level ground conducts the eye to the Irish Sea. The stream that issues from Wast-water is named the Irt, and falls into the estuary of the river Esk. Next comes in view Ennerdale, with its lake of bold and somewhat savage shores. Its stream, the Ehen or Enna, flowing through a soft and fertile country, passes the town of Egremont, and the ruins of the castle,—then, seeming, like the other rivers, to break through the barrier of sand thrown up by the winds on this tempestuous coast, enters the Irish Sea. The vale of Buttermere, with the lake and village of that name, and Crummock-water, beyond, next present themselves. We will follow the main stream, the Coker, through the fertile and beautiful vale of Lorton, till it is lost in the Derwent, below the noble ruins of Cockermouth Castle. Lastly, Borrowdale, of which the vale of Keswick is only a continuation, stretching due north, brings us to
a point nearly opposite to the vale of Winandermere with which we began. From this it will appear, that the image of a wheel, thus far exact, is little more than one half complete; but the deficiency on the eastern side may be supplied by the vales of Wytheburn, Ulswater, Hawswater, and the vale of Grasmere and Rydal; none of these, however, run up to the central point between Great Gavel and Scawfell. From this, hitherto our central point, take a flight of not more than four or five miles eastward to the ridge of Helvellyn, and you will look down upon Wytheburn and St. John’s Vale, which are a branch of the vale of Keswick; upon Ulswater, stretching due east:—and not far beyond to the south-east (though from this point not visible) lie the vale and lake of Hawswater; and lastly, the vale of Grasmere, Rydal, and Ambleside, brings you back to Winandermere, thus completing, though on the eastern side in a somewhat irregular manner, the representative figure of the wheel.

  Such, concisely given, is the general topographical view of the country of the Lakes in the north of England; and it may be observed, that, from the circumference to the centre, that is, from the sea or plain country to the mountain stations specified, there is—in the several ridges that enclose these vales, and divide them from each other, I mean in the forms and surfaces, first of the swelling grounds, next of the hills and rocks, and lastly of the mountains—an ascent of almost regular gradation, from elegance and richness, to their highest point of grandeur and sublimity. It follows therefore from this, first, that these rocks, hills, and mountains, must present themselves to view in stages rising above each other, the mountains clustering together towards the central point; and next, that an observer familiar with the several vales, must, from their various position in relation to the sun, have had before his eyes every possible embellishment of beauty, dignity, and splendour, which light and shadow can bestow upon objects so diversified. For example, in the vale of Winandermere, if the spectator looks for gentle and lovely scenes, his eye is turned towards the south; if for the grand, towards the north: in the vale of Keswick, which (as hath been said) lies almost due north of this, it is directly the reverse. Hence, when the sun is setting in summer far to the north-west, it is seen, by the spectator from the shores or breast of Winandermere, resting among the summits of the loftiest mountains, some of which will perhaps be half or wholly hidden by clouds, or by the blaze of light which the orb diffuses around it; and the surface of the lake will reflect before the eye correspondent colours through every variety of beauty, and through all degrees of splendour. In the vale of Keswick, at the same period, the sun sets over the humbler regions of the landscape, and showers down upon them the radiance which at once veils and glorifies,—sending forth, meanwhile, broad streams of rosy, crimson, purple, or golden light, towards the grand mountains in the south and south-east, which, thus illuminated, with all their projections and cavities, and with an intermixture of solemn shadows, are seen distinctly through a cool and clear atmosphere. Of course, there is as marked a difference between the noontide appearance of these two opposite vales. The bedimming haze that overspreads the south, and the clear atmosphere and determined shadows of the clouds in the north, at the same time of the day, are each seen in these several vales, with a contrast as striking. The reader will easily conceive in what degree the intermediate vales partake of a kindred variety.