While I am lying on the grass At once far off, and near.1 Though babbling only to the Vale, Thou bringest unto me a tale 2 Of visionary hours. Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring! No bird, but an invisible thing,3 A voice, a mystery ; The same whom in my school-boy days While I am lying on the grass, I hear thy restless shout: 5 ΙΟ 15 1807. * Barron Field remonstrated with Wordsworth about this reading, and he agreed to restore that of 1820; saying, at the same time, that he had " made the change to record a fact observed by himself."-ED. 1815. 1820. 1807. Which made me look a thousand ways To seek thee did I often rove Still longed for, never seen. And I can listen to thee yet; That golden time again. O blessèd Bird! the earth we pace An unsubstantial, faery place; That is fit home for Thee! In the chronological lists of his poems, published in 1815 and 1820, Wordsworth left a blank opposite this one, in the column containing the year of composition. From 1836 to 1849, the date assigned by him was 1804. But in Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal the following occurs under date Tuesday, 22nd March 1802 :-"A mild morning. William worked at the Cuckoo poem. At the closing in of day, went to sit in the orchard. William came to me, and walked backwards and forwards. W. repeated the poem to me. I left him there; and in 20 minutes he came in, rather tired with attempting to write." 'Friday (March 25).—A beautiful morning. William worked at The Cuckoo." It is therefore evident that it belongs to the year 1802; although it may have been altered and readjusted in 1804. The connection of the seventh stanza of this poem with the first of that which follows it, " My heart leaps up,” etc., and of both with the Ode, Intimations of Immortality (vol. viii.), is obvious.—ED. "MY HEART LEAPS UP WHEN I BEHOLD" Composed March 26, 1802.-Published 1807 [Written at Town-end, Grasmere.-I. F.] One of the "Poems referring to the Period of Childhood." In 1807 it was No. 4 of the series called "Moods of my own Mind."-ED. "March 26, 1802.—While I was getting into bed he" (W.) "wrote "The Rainbow."" "May 14th. ... William very nervous. After he was in bed, haunted with altering 'The Rainbow."". -(Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal.) This poem was known familiarly in the household as “The Rainbow,” although not printed under that title. The text was never changed. In The Friend, vol. i. p. 58 (ed. 1818), Coleridge writes: "Men laugh at the falsehoods imposed on them during their childhood, because they are not good and wise enough to contemplate the past in the present, and so to produce that continuity in their self-consciousness, which Nature has made the law of their animal life. Men are ungrateful to others, only when they have ceased to look back on their former selves with joy and tenderness. They exist in fragments." He then quotes the above poem, and adds-"I am informed that these lines have been cited as a specimen of despicable puerility. So much the worse for the citer; not willingly in his presence would I behold the sun setting behind our mountains. But let the dead bury their dead! The poet sang for the living. . I was always pleased with the motto placed under the figure of the rosemary in old herbals 'Sus, apage! Haud tibi spiro.'' * Compare Milton's phrase in Paradise Regained (book iv. l. 220)— The childhood shews the man, As morning shews the day. Dryden's All for Love, act IV. scene 1 Men are but children of a larger growth. And Pope's Essay on Man, Ep. iv. l. 175— The boy and man an individual makes. Also Chatterton's Fragment (Aldine edition, vol. i. p. 132)— ED. Compare the passage in The Excursion (book ix. 1. 36) beginning Ah! why in age Do we revert so fondly, etc. also that in The Prelude (book v. 1. 507) beginning Our childhood sits. WRITTEN IN MARCH, WHILE RESTING ON THE BRIDGE AT THE FOOT OF BROTHERS WATER Composed April 16, 1802.-Published 1807 [Extempore. This little poem was a favourite with Joanna Baillie.-I. F.] One of the "Poems of the Imagination.”—ED. THE Cock is crowing, The stream is flowing, The green field sleeps in the sun; The oldest and youngest Are at work with the strongest ; Their heads never raising; There are forty feeding like one! Like an army defeated The snow hath retreated, 5 10 And now doth fare ill On the top of the bare hill; The Ploughboy is whooping-anon-anon : There's joy in the mountains ; There's life in the fountains; *This line was an afterthought.-ED. * 15 Small clouds are sailing, The rain is over and gone! 20 The text of this poem was never altered. It was not "written in March" (as the title states), but on the 16th of April (Good Friday) 1802. The bridge referred to crosses Goldrill Beck, a little below Hartsop in Patterdale. The following, from Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal, records the walk from Ullswater, over Kirkstone Pass, to Ambleside :Friday, 16th April (Good Friday). When we came to the foot of Brothers Water, I left William sitting on the bridge, and went along the path on the right side of the lake through the wood. I was delighted with what I saw : the water under the boughs of the bare old trees, the simplicity of the mountains, and the exquisite beauty of the path. There was one grey cottage. I repeated The Glowworm as I walked along. I hung over the gate, and thought I could have stayed for ever. When I returned, I found William writing a poem descriptive of the sights and sounds we saw and heard. There was the gentle flowing of the stream, the glittering lively lake, green fields, without a living creature to be seen on them; behind us, a flat pasture with forty-two cattle feeding; to our left, the road leading to the hamlet. No smoke there, the sun shone on the bare roofs. The people were at work, ploughing, harrowing, and sowing; lasses working; a dog barking now and then; cocks crowing, birds twittering; the snow in patches at the top of the highest hills; yellow palms, purple and green twigs on the birches, ashes with their glittering stems quite bare. The hawthorn a bright green, with black stems under the oak. The moss of the oaks glossy. As we went up the vale of Brothers Water, more and more cattle feeding, a hundred of them. William finished his poem before we got to the foot of Kirkstone. There were hundreds of cattle in the vale. The walk up Kirkstone was very interesting. The becks among the rocks were all alive. William shewed me the little mossy streamlet which he had before loved, when he saw its bright green track in the snow. The view above Ambleside very beautiful. There we sate, and looked down on the green vale. We watched the crows at a little distance from us become white as silver, as they flew in the sunshine; and, when they went still farther, they looked like shapes of water passing over the green fields."-ED. |