1802] A ROUND OF VISITS 23 and written "The Glow-worm "-i.e., the lines beginning Among all lovely things my love had been." The poet's nephew, in the "Memoirs " (Vol. I., p. 186), quotes from a letter, now lost, written by Wordsworth to Coleridge in April, 1802: "The incident of this poem took place about seven years ago between my sister and me." The verses were printed in 1807, but never again during Wordsworth's lifetime, which is remarkable, considering their beauty. They belong to the mysterious" Lucy poems." In her Journal, under date of the 20th, Dorothy, however, records with great particularity that he wrote them on horseback, on the 12th, near the town of Staindrop, on Monday, 12th April, 1802." It is very unusual for her to be so exact in giving a date. They walked home from Eusemere, by way of Kirkstone Pass, on the 15th and 16th. On the first of these days they saw the "host of golden daffodils" which suggested the lovely poem, "I wandered lonely as a cloud"; and on the second day, at the foot of Brothers Water, Dorothy "found William writing a poem descriptive of the sights and sounds we saw and heard," which must have been the joyous lines: The cock is crowing, The stream is flowing, etc. The place has not changed. The bridge, bristling with rue and spleenwort, still spans the rushing brook where William sat, and one can follow the shady path up which Dorothy strolled to have a peep at the arched windows of Hartsop Hall. Every particular of the clear-cut little poem remains as it was. How exactly the brother and sister saw things! The depth of their feelings can be measured by the truth of their perceptions. The precision of their expressions was due to the intensity of their experience, and this was intense because it was simple. The poem on the daffodils was not written until many months afterward, but, with the very great exception of its musical form and its indwelling thought, so amply illustrating" the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement," its elements are present in Dorothy's description, to which he no doubt turned. This is the locus classicus in her whole Journal, and is so often quoted to show the co-operation of their minds that I almost hesitate to copy it once more: "When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow Park we saw a few daffodils close to the water-side. We fancied that the sea had floated the seeds ashore, and that the little colony had so sprung up. But as we went along there were more and yet more; and at last, under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike road. I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grew among the mossy stones about and above them; some rested their heads on 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. There was here and there a little knot, and a few stragglers higher up; but they were so few as not to disturb the simplicity, unity, and life of that one busy highway.' Two days after their return to their own cottage and orchard, Wordsworth wrote the quaint little poem, somewhat in Blake's manner, called "The Redbreast Chasing the Butterfly." "We left out some lines," says his sister, as if she associated herself with him in its authorship. That week Coleridge, as usual, came to them. He " repeated the verses he wrote to Sara." I was affected by them," we read in the Journal, "and in miserable spirits. The sunshine, the green fields, and the fair sky made me sadder; even the little happy, sporting lambs seemed but sorrowful to me.” What poem was this? Professor Knight conjectures, but apparently without any evidence, that it may have been "the first draft of Dejection, an Ode, in its earliest and afterwards abandoned form." Probably it has not been preserved. We must again remind ourselves that the Sara from whom letters were constantly arriving, and 1802] SARA HUTCHINSON 25 often in connection with Coleridge's, and of whom, for example, Dorothy writes, during this visit of his, "We wished for Mary and Sara. . . . C. received a letter from Sara," was Sara Hutchinson. While Sara Hutchinson belonged to the inmost circle, poor Mrs. Coleridge's company was never sought by the Wordsworths, for its own sake, and rarely indeed by her husband. An entry in the Journal for May 6 reads: "When we came in we found a magazine, and review, and a letter from Coleridge, verses to Hartley, and Sara H." Whoever thinks it necessary to see the discord and misery of Coleridge's home life has only to read that portion of his long letter to Southey written July 29, 1802, in which he refers to Mrs. Coleridge's "inveterate habits of puny thwarting and unintermitting dyspathy." They were an ill-mated pair, each no doubt trying to make up for an enormous disparity of tastes by repentances and sacrifice, which resulted in frequent reconcilement but no permanent happiness. On April 20 Wordsworth had added to his poem " To a Butterfly" the lines beginning I've watched you now a full half-hour," which have always been published separately, and have been improperly dated in a Fenwick note. After Coleridge's visit, which lasted five days, he composed "The Tinker "t and the lines entitled " Foresight." He was evidently, as his classification later goes to prove, trying to put into permanent form as many as possible of his childhood recollections, and this is one of the Poems referring to the Period of Childhood. On April 30 and May 1 he wrote "The Celandine," published in 1807 as two separate poems. On May 3 he began to compose "The Leech Gatherer,' known also by the less interesting title "Resolution and Independence," and continued it next morning. None of his poems exhausted him more than this, and no wonder, for it gave an outlet to those fears which nowhere else escaped him-fears of poverty, of futility, of madness even. In few of his poems does he attain E. H. Coleridge, "Letters of S. T. Coleridge," I. 389. so great perfection of form. In none is there a figure so elaborate and yet so finished as the double simile of the huge stone," like a sea-beast crawled forth." Considering the scrupulous principles of his art, his extreme care to preserve the lineaments of truth in every detail, and to harmonize the form of his poems to the particular mode they were intended to express, it is plain that this poem must have cost him dear in both emotion and artistic effort. Before it was finished, Coleridge joined them again, at the Rock of Names,* between Grasmere and Keswick, and they had an afternoon together. From him, perhaps, was caught the tone of melancholy, from which Wordsworth's other poems, written that happy spring-time, were conspicuously free. On March 7 Dorothy records that her brother "fell to work at The Leech Gatherer; he wrote hard at it till dinner-time, then he gave over, tired to death-he had finished the poem." His high-strung condition betrayed itself next day, for when she read "Henry V." to him in the orchard he wept. And the poem was not so soon finished, after all, for on the 9th he worked at it "almost incessantly from morning till tea-time." I was oppressed," she says, and sick at heart, for he wearied himself to death." But this time it was really done, and she copied it and other poems for Coleridge. As usual, however, Wordsworth, still in the glow of completing one task, began another, and that same evening he wrote two stanzas in the manner of Thomson's Castle of Indolence, and was tired out." The day closed with bad news from Coleridge. The two stanzas were no doubt a portion of that enigmatical poem beginning "Within our happy Castle there dwelt One." Considering the playful tone of these verses, it is astonishing to read of the toil Wordsworth bestowed on them. "William is still at work," his sister writes next day, though it is past ten o'clock; he will be tired out, I * The initials W. W., M. H., D. W., S. T. C., J. W., and S. H., were carved on a rock by the shore of Thirlmere. Owing to the change of level when the lake was made into a reservoir, this precious memorial was taken down and replaced at a higher point. Unfortunately, it was much damaged in the process, but some of the letters may still be seen. |