And this recalls the first verse of "Expostulation and Reply", written at Alfoxden in 1798;
"Why, William, on that old grey stone, Thus for the length of half a day, Why, William, sit you thus alone, And dream your time away?"
The retreat where "apple-trees in blossom made a bower," and where he so often "slept himself away," was evidently the same as that described in the poem "The Green Linnet":
"Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed Their snow white blossoms on my head."
On the other hand, the "low-hung lip" and "profound" forehead of the other, the "noticeable Man with large grey eyes," mark him out as S. T.
C.; "the rapt One, of the G.o.d-like forehead," described in the "Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg". The description "Noisy he was, and gamesome as a boy," is verified by what the poet and his wife said to Mr. Justice Coleridge in 1836. In addition, Mr.
Hutchinson of Kimbolton tells me he "often heard his father say that Coleridge was uproarious in his mirth."
Matthew Arnold wrote me an interesting letter some years ago about these stanzas, from which I make the following extract:
"When one looks uneasily at a poem it is easy to fidget oneself further, and neither the Wordsworth nor the Coleridge of our common notions seem to be exactly hit off in the "Stanzas"; still, I believe that the first described is Wordsworth and that the second described is Coleridge. I have myself heard Wordsworth speak of his prolonged exhausting wanderings among the hills. Then Miss Fenwick"s notes show that Coleridge is certainly one of the two personages of the poem, and there are points in the description of the second man which suit him very well. The "profound forehead" is a touch akin to the "G.o.d-like forehead" in the mention of Coleridge in a later poem.
"I have a sort of recollection of having heard something about the "inventions rare," and Coleridge is certain to have dabbled, at one time or other, in natural philosophy."
In 1796 Coleridge wrote to his friend Cottle from Nether Stowey:
" ... I should not think of devoting less than 20 years to an Epic Poem: ten to collect materials and warm my mind with universal science. I would be a tolerable Mathematician, I would thoroughly know Mechanics, Hydrostatics, Optics, and Astronomy, Botany, Metallurgy, Fossilism, Chemistry, Geology, Anatomy, Medicine--then the "mind of man"--then the "minds of men"--in all Travels, Voyages, and Histories.
So I would spend ten years--the next five to the composition of the poem--and the last five to the correction of it. So would I write, haply not unhearing of the divine and rightly whispering Voice," etc.
Mr. T. Hutchinson (Dublin) writes in "The Athenaeum", Dec. 15, 1894:
"I take it for granted these lines were written, not only on the fly-leaf of Wordsworth"s copy of the "Castle of Indolence", but also by way of Supplement to that poem; i. e. as an "addendum" to the descriptive list of the denizens of the Castle given in stanzas LVII-LXIX of Canto I.; that, in short, they are meant to be read as though they were an after-thought of James Thomson"s. Their author, therefore, has rightly imparted to them the curiously blended flavour of "romantic melancholy and slippered mirth," of dreamlike vagueness and smiling hyperbole, which forms the distinctive mark of Thomson"s poem; and thus the Poet and the Philosopher-Friend of Wordsworth"s stanzas, like Thomson"s companion sketches of the splenetic Solitary, the "bard more fat than bard beseems," and the "little, round, fat, oily Man of G.o.d," are neither more nor less than gentle caricatures."
It has been suggested by Coleridge"s grandson that Wordsworth was describing S. T. C. in all the stanzas of this poem; that he drew two separate pictures of him; in the first four stanzas a realistic "character portrait," and in the last four a "companion picture, figuring the outward semblance of Coleridge, but embodying characteristics drawn from a third person"; so that we have a "fancy sketch" mixed up with a real one. I cannot agree with this. The evidence against it is
(1) Dorothy Wordsworth"s Journal; (2) the poet"s and his wife"s remarks to Mr. Justice Coleridge; (3) the fact that Wordsworth was not in the habit of "pa.s.sing from realism into artistic composition," except where he distinctly indicated it, as in the case of the Hawkshead Schoolmaster, in the "Matthew" poems. Such composite or conglomerate work was quite foreign to Wordsworth"s genius.
Ed.
RESOLUTION AND INDEPENDENCE
Begun May 3, finished July 4, 1802.--Published 1807
[Written at Town-end, Grasmere. This old man I met a few hundred yards from my cottage; and the account of him is taken from his own mouth. I was in the state of feeling described in the beginning of the poem, while crossing over Barton Fell from Mr. Clarkson"s, at the foot of Ullswater, towards Askham. The image of the hare I then observed on the ridge of the Fell.--I.F.]
This poem was known in the Wordsworth household as "The Leech-Gatherer,"
although it never received that name in print. An entry in Dorothy Wordsworth"s Journal of Friday, 3rd October 1800, may preface what she wrote in 1802 about the composition of the poem.
"When William and I returned from accompanying Jones, we met an old man almost double. He had on a coat thrown over his shoulders above his waistcoat and coat. Under this he carried a bundle, and had an ap.r.o.n on, and a night-cap. His face was interesting. He had dark eyes, and a long nose. John, who afterwards met him at Wytheburn, took him for a Jew. He was of Scotch parents, but had been born in the army. He had had a wife, "and a good woman, and it pleased G.o.d to bless him with ten children." All these were dead but one, of whom he had not heard for many years, a sailor. His trade was to gather leeches; but now leeches were scarce, and he had not strength for it. He lived by begging, and was making his way to Carlisle where he would buy a few books to sell. He said leeches were very scarce, partly owing to this dry season; but many years they had been scarce. He supposed it was owing to their being much sought after; that they did not breed fast; and were of slow growth. Leeches were formerly 2s. 6d. the 100; now they were 30s. He had been hurt in driving a cart, his leg broken, his body driven over, his skull fractured. He felt no pain till he recovered from his first insensibility. It was late in the evening, when the light was just going away."
It is most likely that this walk of William and Dorothy Wordsworth "accompanying Jones," was on the day of Jones"s departure from Dove Cottage, viz. 26th September.
The Journal continues:
"Tuesday, 4th May, 1802.--Though William went to bed nervous and jaded in the extreme, he rose refreshed. I wrote out "The Leech-Gatherer"
for him, which he had begun the night before, and of which he wrote several stanzas in bed this morning...."
(They started to walk up the Raise to Wytheburn.)
"It was very hot; we rested several times by the way, read, and repeated "The Leech-Gatherer.""
"Friday, 7th May.--William had slept uncommonly well, so, feeling himself strong, he 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."
"Sunday morning, 9th May.--William worked at "The Leech-Gatherer"
almost incessantly from morning till tea-time. I copied "The Leech-Gatherer" and other poems for Coleridge. I was oppressed and sick at heart, for he wearied himself to death."
"Sunday, 4th July.--... William finished "The Leech-Gatherer" to-day."
"Monday, 5th July.--I copied out "The Leech-Gatherer" for Coleridge, and for us."
From these extracts it is clear that Dorothy Wordsworth considered the poem as "finished" on the 7th of May, and on the 9th she sent a copy to Coleridge; but that it was not till the 4th of July that it was really finished, and then a second copy was forwarded to Coleridge. It is impossible to say from which of the two MSS. sent to him Coleridge transcribed the copy which he forwarded to Sir George Beaumont. From that copy of a copy (which is now amongst the Beaumont MSS. at Coleorton) the various readings given, on Coleridge"s authority, in the notes to the poem, were obtained some years ago.
The Fenwick note to the poem ill.u.s.trates Wordsworth"s habit of blending in one description details which were originally separate, both as to time and place. The scenery and the incidents of the poem are alike composite. As he tells us that he met the leech-gatherer a few hundred yards from Dove Cottage, the "lonely place" with its "pool, bare to the eye of heaven," at once suggests White Moss Common and its small tarn; but he adds that, in the opening stanzas of the poem, he is describing a state of feeling he was in, when crossing the fells at the foot of Ullswater to Askam, and that the image of the hare "running races in her mirth," with the glittering mist accompanying her, was observed by him, not on White Moss Common, but in one of the ridges of Moor Divock. To H.
C. Robinson he said of the "Leech-Gatherer" (Sept. 10, 1816), that "he gave to his poetic character powers of mind which his original did not possess." (Robinson"s "Diary", etc., vol. ii. p. 24.)
One of the "Poems of the Imagination."--Ed.
I There was a roaring in the wind all night; The rain came heavily and fell in floods; But now the sun is rising calm and bright; The birds are singing in the distant woods; Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods; 5 The Jay makes answer as the Magpie chatters; And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.
II All things that love the sun are out of doors; The sky rejoices in the morning"s birth; The gra.s.s is bright with rain-drops;--on the moors 10 The hare is running races in her mirth; And with her feet she from the plashy earth Raises a mist; that, [1] glittering in the sun, Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run.
III I was a Traveller then upon the moor; 15 I saw the hare that raced about with joy; I heard the woods and distant waters roar; Or heard them not, as happy as a boy: The pleasant season did my heart employ: My old remembrances went from me wholly; 20 And all the ways of men, so vain and melancholy.
IV But, as it sometimes chanceth, from the might Of joy in minds that can no further go, As high as we have mounted in delight In our dejection do we sink as low; 25 To me that morning did it happen so; And fears and fancies thick upon me came; Dim sadness--and blind thoughts, I knew not, nor could name.
V I heard the sky-lark warbling [2] in the sky; And I bethought me of the playful hare: 30 Even such a happy Child of earth am I; Even as these blissful [3] creatures do I fare; Far from the world I walk, and from all care; But there may come another day to me-- Solitude, pain of heart, distress, and poverty. 35
VI My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought, As if life"s business were a summer mood; As if all needful things would come unsought To genial faith, still rich in genial good; [4]
But how can He expect that others should 40 Build for him, sow for him, and at his call Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all? [A]
VII I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy, The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride; [5]