THE POETICAL WORKS
OF
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
VOL. VIII

William Wordsworth

after Thomas Woolner

Printed by Ch Wittmann Paris

THE POETICAL WORKS
OF
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

EDITED BY
WILLIAM KNIGHT

VOL. VIII

Gallow Hill

Yorkshire

London
MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd.
New York: Macmillan & Co.
1896

All rights reserved.

CONTENTS

PREFATORY NOTE

The American Bibliography is almost entirely the work of Mrs. St. John of Ithaca, and is the result of laborious and careful critical research on her part. The French Bibliography is not so full. I have been assisted in it mainly by M. Legouis at Lyons, and by workers at the British Museum. I have also collected a German Bibliography, but it is in too incomplete a state for publication in its present form.

The English Bibliography is fuller than any of its predecessors; but there is no such thing as finality in such work, especially when an addition to the literature of the subject is made nearly every week. Many kind friends, and coadjutors, have assisted me in it, amongst whom I may mention Dr. Garnett of the British Museum, and very specially Mr. Tutin, of Hull, and also Mr. John J. Smith, St. Andrews, and Mr. Maclauchlan, Dundee. If I omit, either here or elsewhere, to record the assistance which I have received from any one, in my efforts to make this edition of Wordsworth as perfect as is possible at this stage of literary criticism and editorship, I sincerely regret it; but many of my correspondents have specially requested that no mention should be made of their names or their services.

In the Preface to the first volume of this edition there was an unfortunate omission. In returning the final proofs to press, I accidentally transmitted an uncorrected one, in which two names did not appear. They were those of Mr. Thomas Hutchinson, Dublin, and Mr. S. C. Hill, of Hughli College, Bengal. The former kindly revised most of the sheets of Volumes I. and II., and corrected errors, besides making other valuable suggestions and additions. When his own Clarendon Press edition of Wordsworth was being prepared for press, Mr. Hutchinson asked permission to incorporate in it materials which were not afterwards inserted. This I granted cordially, as a similar permission had been given to Professor Dowden for his Aldine edition. The unfortunate omission of Mr. Hutchinson’s name was not discovered by me till after the issue of volumes I. and II. (which appeared simultaneously), and it was first brought under my notice by Mr. Hutchinson’s own letters to the newspapers. My debt to Mr. Hutchinson is great; and, although I have already thanked him for the services which he has rendered to the world in connection with Wordsworthian literature, I may perhaps be allowed to repeat the acknowledgment now. The revised sheets of Vols. I. and II. of this edition were, however, submitted to others at the same time that they were sent to Mr. Hutchinson; more especially to the late Mr. Dykes Campbell, and on his death to Mr. Belinfante, and then to the late Mr. Kinghorn, all of whom were engaged by my publishers to assist in the work entrusted to me. They “turned on the microscope” on my own work, and Mr. Hutchinson’s; and to them I have been indebted in many ways.

Mr. Hill’s services, in tracing the sources of numerous quotations from other poets which occur in Wordsworth’s text, have been great. He sent me his discoveries, unsolicited, and I wish to express very cordially my indebtedness to him. To discover some of these quotations—there are several hundreds of them—cost me much labour, before I had the pleasure of hearing from, or knowing, Mr. Hill; and his assistance in this matter has been greater than that of any other person. It will be seen that I have failed—after much study and extensive correspondence—to discover them all.

In addition to actual quotations—indicated by Wordsworth by inverted commas in his poems—to trace parallel passages from other poets, or phrases which may have suggested to him what he recast and glorified, has seemed to me work not unworthy of accomplishment. At the same time, and in the same connection, to discover the somewhat similar debts of later poets to Wordsworth, and to indicate this here and there in footnotes, may not be wholly useless to posterity.

My obligations to my friend, Mr. Dykes Campbell, are greater than I can adequately express. He supplied me with much material, drawn from many quarters; and, although he did not always mention his sources, I had implicit confidence in him, both as a literary man and a friend. After his death, through the kindness of Mrs. Campbell, I examined some MS. volumes of Wordsworthiana written by him, which were of much use to me.

Some of these were from unknown sources, which I should perhaps have traced out before making use of them, but, in all my Wordsworth work, I have acted from first to last on the legal opinion of a distinguished Judge, that the heir of the writer of literary work could alone authorise its subsequent publication; and, since the heirs of the Poet had kindly given me permission to collect and publish his works, I did so, with a view to the benefit of posterity.

Some of Mr. Campbell’s material was derived from MSS. now in the possession of Mr. T. Norton Longman, and I have to express my sincere regret that in the earlier volumes I copied from Mr. Campbell’s transcripts of these MSS.—which were lent to him on the condition that no public use should be made of them without Mr. Longman’s permission—some variations of the text, without mentioning the source whence they were derived.

I was unaware that these MSS. were lent to Mr. Campbell with the condition attached, and regret very much that I am unable to trust my memory to indicate now what variations of text I have quoted from them. But I may add that Mr. Longman is about to publish a work which will enable Wordsworth students to become practically acquainted with the contents of his MSS.

In reference to the poems not published by Wordsworth or his sister during their lifetime, I have included in this volume not only fugitive pieces printed in Magazines and elsewhere, but also those which have been since recovered from numerous manuscript sources. They are of varying merit. It would be interesting to know, and to record in every instance, where these manuscripts now are; but this is impossible. In many cases the manuscripts have recently changed ownership. I have obtained a sight of many of them, and have been granted permission to transcribe them, from the fortunate possessors of large autograph collections, and also from dealers in autographs; but, after the sale of manuscripts at public auction-rooms, it is, as a rule, impossible to trace them.

In many cases the MS. variants which have been published in previous volumes occur in copies of the poems, transcribed by the Wordsworth household in private letters to friends. I have occasionally indicated this in footnotes; but, to have done so always would have disfigured the pages, and frequently the notes would have been longer than the text. To trace the present possessors of the MSS. would be well-nigh impossible. It is perhaps worth mentioning that in several cases Wordsworth entered as “misprints” in future editions, what some of his editors have considered “new readings.” E.g. in The Excursion, book ix. l. 679, “wild” demeanour, instead of “mild” demeanour.

On Nov. 4, 1893, Mr. Aubrey de Vere wrote to me—

“I earnestly hope that, in your ‘monumental edition,’ you will restore the Ode, Intimations of Immortality, to the place which Wordsworth always assigned to it, that of the High Altar of his poetic Cathedral; remitting Quillinan’s laureate Ode on an unworthy, because ‘occasional,’ subject to an Appendix, as a work that at the time of publication was attributed to Wordsworth, but was written by another, though it probably was seen by him, and had a line or two of his in it, and corrections by him.

“This is certainly the truth; and I should think that he probably himself told all that truth to the officials, when transmitting the Ode; but that they concealed the circumstance; and that Wordsworth, then profoundly depressed in spirits, gave no more thought to the subject, and soon forgot all about it.…

“Yours very sincerely,

“Aubrey de Vere.”

It was in compliance with Mr. Aubrey de Vere’s request that, in this edition, I departed, in a single instance, from the chronological arrangement of the poems.

It may not be too trivial a detail to mention that I gladly gave permission to other editors of Wordsworth to make use of any of the material which I discovered, and brought together, in former editions; e.g. to Mr. George, in Boston, for his edition of The Prelude (in which, if the reader, or critic, compares my original edition with his notes, he will see what Mr. George has done); and to Professor Dowden, Trinity College, Dublin, for his most admirable Aldine edition. For the latter—which will always hold a high place in Wordsworth literature—I placed everything asked from me at the disposal of Mr. Dowden.

While these sheets are passing through the press, Dr. Garnett, of the British Museum—one of the kindest and ablest of bibliographers—has forwarded to me a contribution, previously sent by him to The Academy, and printed in its issue of January 2, 1897.

I have no means of knowing—or of ultimately discovering—whether that sonnet, printed as Wordsworth’s, is really his. Dr. Garnett says, in his letter to me, “The verses were undoubtedly in Wordsworth’s hand”; and, he adds, “I think they should be preserved, because they are Wordsworth’s, and as an additional proof of his regard for Camoens, whom he enumerates elsewhere among great sonnet-writers. I have added a version of the quatrains, that the piece may be complete. From the character of the handwriting, the lines would seem to have been written down in old age; and I am not quite certain of the word which I have transcribed as ‘Austral.’”

Vasco, whose bold and happy mainyard spread

Sunward thy sails where dawning glory dyed

Heaven’s Orient gate; whose westering prow the tide

Clove, where the day star bows him to his bed:

Not sterner toil than thine, or strife more dread,

Or nobler laud to nobler lyre allied,

His, who did baffled Polypheme deride;

Or his, whose scaring shaft the Harpy fled.

Camoens, he the accomplished and the good,

Gave to thy fame a more illustrious flight

Than that brave vessel, though she sailed so far.

Through him her course along the Austral flood

Is known to all beneath the polar star,

Through him the Antipodes in thy name delight.

William Knight.

WORDSWORTH’S POETICAL WORKS

1834

LINES
Suggested by a Portrait from the Pencil of F. Stone

Composed 1834.—Published 1835

[This Portrait has hung for many years in our principal sitting-room, and represents J. Q.[1] as she was when a girl. The picture, though it is somewhat thinly painted, has much merit in tone and general effect: it is chiefly valuable, however, from the sentiment that pervades it. The anecdote of the saying of the monk in sight of Titian’s picture was told in this house by Mr. Wilkie, and was, I believe, first communicated to the public in this poem, the former portion of which I was composing at the time. Southey heard the story from Miss Hutchinson, and transferred it to the Doctor; but it is not easy to explain how my friend Mr. Rogers, in a note subsequently added to his Italy, was led to speak of the same remarkable words having many years before been spoken in his hearing by a monk or priest in front of a picture of the Last Supper, placed over a Refectory-table in a convent at Padua.—I.F.]

One of the “Poems of Sentiment and Reflection.”—Ed.

Beguiled into forgetfulness of care

Due to the day’s unfinished task; of pen

Or book regardless, and of that fair scene

In Nature’s prodigality displayed

Before my window, oftentimes and long 5

I gaze upon a Portrait whose mild gleam

Of beauty never ceases to enrich

The common light; whose stillness charms the air,

Or seems to charm it, into like repose;

Whose silence, for the pleasure of the ear, 10

Surpasses sweetest music. There she sits

With emblematic purity attired

In a white vest, white as her marble neck

Is, and the pillar of the throat would be

But for the shadow by the drooping chin 15

Cast into that recess—the tender shade,

The shade and light, both there and every where,

And through the very atmosphere she breathes,

Broad, clear, and toned harmoniously, with skill

That might from nature have been learnt in the hour 20

When the lone shepherd sees the morning spread

Upon the mountains. Look at her, whoe’er

Thou be that, kindling with a poet’s soul,

Hast loved the painter’s true Promethean craft

Intensely—from Imagination take 25

The treasure,—what mine eyes behold see thou,

Even though the Atlantic ocean roll between.

A silver line, that runs from brow to crown

And in the middle parts the braided hair,

Just serves to show how delicate a soil 30

The golden harvest grows in; and those eyes,

Soft and capacious as a cloudless sky

Whose azure depth their colour emulates,

Must needs be conversant with upward looks,

Prayer’s voiceless service; but now, seeking nought 35

And shunning nought, their own peculiar life

Of motion they renounce, and with the head

Partake its inclination towards earth

In humble grace, and quiet pensiveness

Caught at the point where it stops short of sadness. 40

Offspring of soul-bewitching Art, make me

Thy confidant! say, whence derived that air

Of calm abstraction? Can the ruling thought

Be with some lover far away, or one

Crossed by misfortune, or of doubted faith? 45

Inapt conjecture! Childhood here, a moon

Crescent in simple loveliness serene,

Has but approached the gates of womanhood,

Not entered them; her heart is yet unpierced

By the blind Archer-god; her fancy free: 50

The fount of feeling, if unsought elsewhere,

Will not be found.

Her right hand, as it lies

Across the slender wrist of the left arm

Upon her lap reposing, holds—but mark

How slackly, for the absent mind permits 55

No firmer grasp—a little wild-flower, joined

As in a posy, with a few pale ears

Of yellowing corn, the same that overtopped

And in their common birthplace sheltered it

’Till they were plucked together; a blue flower 60

Called by the thrifty husbandman a weed;

But Ceres, in her garland, might have worn

That ornament, unblamed. The floweret, held

In scarcely conscious fingers, was, she knows,

(Her Father told her so) in youth’s gay dawn 65

Her Mother’s favourite; and the orphan Girl,

In her own dawn—a dawn less gay and bright,

Loves it, while there in solitary peace

She sits, for that departed Mother’s sake.

—Not from a source less sacred is derived 70

(Surely I do not err) that pensive air

Of calm abstraction through the face diffused

And the whole person.

Words have something told

More than the pencil can, and verily

More than is needed, but the precious Art 75

Forgives their interference—Art divine,

That both creates and fixes, in despite

Of Death and Time, the marvels it hath wrought.

Strange contrasts have we in this world of ours!

That posture, and the look of filial love 80

Thinking of past and gone, with what is left

Dearly united, might be swept away

From this fair Portrait’s fleshly Archetype,

Even by an innocent fancy’s slightest freak

Banished, nor ever, haply, be restored 85

To their lost place, or meet in harmony

So exquisite; but here do they abide,

Enshrined for ages. Is not then the Art

Godlike, a humble branch of the divine,

In visible quest of immortality, 90

Stretched forth with trembling hope?—In every realm,

From high Gibraltar to Siberian plains,

Thousands, in each variety of tongue

That Europe knows, would echo this appeal;

One above all, a Monk who waits on God 95

In the magnific Convent built of yore

To sanctify the Escurial palace. He—

Guiding, from cell to cell and room to room,

A British Painter (eminent for truth

In character,[2] and depth of feeling, shown 100

By labours that have touched the hearts of kings,

And are endeared to simple cottagers)—

Came, in that service, to a glorious work,[3]

Our Lord’s Last Supper, beautiful as when first

The appropriate Picture, fresh from Titian’s hand, 105

Graced the Refectory: and there, while both

Stood with eyes fixed upon that masterpiece,

The hoary Father in the Stranger’s ear

Breathed out these words:—“Here daily do we sit,

Thanks given to God for daily bread, and here 110

Pondering the mischiefs of these restless times,

And thinking of my Brethren, dead, dispersed,

Or changed and changing, I not seldom gaze

Upon this solemn Company unmoved

By shock of circumstance, or lapse of years, 115

Until I cannot but believe that they—

They are in truth the Substance, we

the Shadows.”[4]

So spake the mild Jeronymite, his griefs

Melting away within him like a dream

Ere he had ceased to gaze, perhaps to speak: 120

And I, grown old, but in a happier land,

Domestic Portrait! have to verse consigned

In thy calm presence those heart-moving words:

Words that can soothe, more than they agitate;

Whose spirit, like the angel that went down 125

Into Bethesda’s pool, with healing virtue

Informs the fountain in the human breast

Which[5] by the visitation was disturbed.

——But why this stealing tear? Companion mute,

On thee I look, not sorrowing; fare thee well, 130

My Song’s Inspirer, once again farewell![6]

[1] Jemima Quillinan, the eldest daughter of Edward Quillinan, Wordsworth’s future son-in-law. The portrait was taken when she was a school-girl, and while her father resided at Oporto.—Ed.

[2] Wilkie. See the Fenwick note.—Ed.

[3] 1837.

Left not unvisited a glorious work,

1835.

[4] “When Wilkie was in the Escurial, looking at Titian’s famous picture of the Last Supper, in the Refectory there, an old Jeronymite said to him: ‘I have sate daily in sight of that picture for now nearly three score years; during that time my companions have dropt off, one after another—all who were my seniors, all who were my contemporaries, and many, or most of those who were younger than myself; more than one generation has passed away, and there the figures in the picture have remained unchanged! I look at them till I sometimes think that they are the realities, and we but shadows!’

I wish I could record the name of the monk by whom that natural feeling was so feelingly and strikingly expressed.

The shows of things are better than themselves,

says the author of the tragedy of Nero, whose name also I could wish had been forthcoming; and the classical reader will remember the lines of Sophocles:

ὁρῶ γὰρ ἡμᾶς οὐδὲν ὄντας ἄλλο, πλὴν

εἴδωλ’, ὅσοιπερ ζῶμεν, ὴ κούφην σκιάν.

These are reflections which should make us think

Of that same time when no more change shall be

But steadfast rest of all things, firmly stayd

Upon the pillars of Eternity,

That is contrain to mutability;

For all that moveth doth in change delight:

But henceforth all shall rest eternally

With Him that is the God of Sabaoth hight,

O that great Sabaoth God grant me that Sabbath’s sight.

Spenser.”

(Southey, The Doctor, vol. iii. p. 235.)—Ed.

[5] 1837.

That …

1835.

[6] The pile of buildings, composing the palace and convent of San Lorenzo, has, in common usage, lost its proper name in that of the Escurial, a village at the foot of the hill upon which the splendid edifice, built by Philip the Second, stands. It need scarcely be added, that Wilkie is the painter alluded to.—W.W. 1835.

THE FOREGOING SUBJECT RESUMED

Composed 1834.—Published 1835.

One of the “Poems of Sentiment and Reflection.”—Ed.

Among a grave fraternity of Monks,

For One, but surely not for One alone,

Triumphs, in that great work, the Painter’s skill,

Humbling the body, to exalt the soul;

Yet representing, amid wreck and wrong 5

And dissolution and decay, the warm

And breathing life of flesh, as if already

Clothed with impassive majesty, and graced

With no mean earnest of a heritage

Assigned to it in future worlds. Thou, too, 10

With thy memorial flower, meek Portraiture!

From whose serene companionship I passed

Pursued by thoughts that haunt me still; thou also—

Though but a simple object, into light

Called forth by those affections that endear 15

The private hearth; though keeping thy sole seat

In singleness, and little tried by time,

Creation, as it were, of yesterday—

With a congenial function art endued

For each and all of us, together joined 20

In course of nature under a low roof

By charities and duties that proceed

Out of the bosom of a wiser vow.

To a like salutary sense of awe

Or sacred wonder, growing with the power 25

Of meditation that attempts to weigh,

In faithful scales, things and their opposites,

Can thy enduring quiet gently raise

A household small and sensitive,—whose love,

Dependent as in part its blessings are 30

Upon frail ties dissolving or dissolved

On earth, will be revived, we trust, in heaven.[7]

[7] In the class entitled “Musings,” in Mr. Southey’s Minor Poems, is one upon his own miniature picture, taken in childhood, and another upon a landscape painted by Gaspar Poussin. It is possible that every word of the above verses, though similar in subject, might have been written had the author been unacquainted with those beautiful effusions of poetic sentiment. But, for his own satisfaction, he must be allowed thus publicly to acknowledge the pleasure those two poems of his Friend have given him, and the grateful influence they have upon his mind as often as he reads them, or thinks of them.—W.W. 1835.

TO A CHILD
Written in her Album[8]

Composed 1834.—Published 1835

[This quatrain was extempore on observing this image, as I had often done, on the lawn of Rydal Mount. It was first written down in the Album of my God-daughter, Rotha Quillinan.—I.F.]

In 1837 this was one of the “Inscriptions.” In 1845 it was transferred to the “Miscellaneous Poems.”—Ed.

Small service is true service while it lasts:

Of humblest Friends, bright Creature! scorn not one![9]

The Daisy, by the shadow that it casts,

Protects the lingering dew-drop from the Sun.[10]

[8] The original title (1835) was “Written in an Album.” In 1837 it was “Written in the Album of a Child.” In 1845 the title was reconstructed as above.

[9] 1845.

Of Friends, however humble, scorn not one:

1835.

[10] Compare the lines, written in 1845, beginning—

So fair, so sweet, withal so sensitive.

Ed.

LINES
Written in the Album of the Countess of Lonsdale,[11] Nov. 5, 1834

Composed 1834.—Published 1835

[This is a faithful picture of that amiable Lady, as she then was. The youthfulness of figure and demeanour and habits, which she retained in almost unprecedented degree, departed a very few years after, and she died without violent disease by gradual decay before she reached the period of old age.—I.F.]

This was placed, in 1845, among the “Miscellaneous Poems.”—Ed.

Lady! a Pen (perhaps with thy regard,

Among the Favoured, favoured not the least)

Left, ’mid the Records of this Book inscribed,

Deliberate traces, registers of thought

And feeling, suited to the place and time 5

That gave them birth:—months passed, and still this hand,

That had not been too timid to imprint

Words which the virtues of thy Lord inspired,

Was yet not bold enough to write of Thee.

And why that scrupulous reserve? In sooth 10

The blameless cause lay in the Theme itself.