I799

THE poems belonging to the year 1799 were chiefly, if not wholly, composed at Goslar, in Germany; and all, with three exceptions, appeared in the second edition of "Lyrical Ballads " (1800). The exceptions were the following :-The lyric beginning, "I travelled among unknown men," which was first published in the "Poems" of 1807; and two fragments from The Prelude, viz. The Influence of Natural Objects (which appeared in The Friend in 1809), and The Simplon Pass (first published in the 8vo edition of the Poems in 1845).

Wordsworth reached Goslar on the 6th of October 1798, and left it on the 10th of February 1799. It is impossible to determine the precise order in which the nineteen or twenty poems associated with that city were composed. But it is certain that the fragment on the immortal boy of Windermere -whom its cliffs and islands knew so well-was written in 1798, and not in 1799 (as Wordsworth himself states); because Coleridge sent a letter to his friend, thanking him for a MS. copy of these lines, and commenting on them, of which the date is "Ratzeburg, Dec. 10, 1798." For obvious reasons, however, I place the fragments originally meant to be parts of The Recluse together; and, since Wordsworth gave the date 1799 to the others, it would be gratuitous to suppose that he erred in reference to them all, because we know that his memory failed him in reference to one of the series. Therefore, although he spent more than twice as many days in 1798 as in 1799 at Goslar, I set down this group of poems as belonging to 1799, rather than to the previous year. It will be seen that, after placing all the poems of this Goslar period in the year to which they belong, it is possible also to group them according to their subject matter, without violating chronological order. I therefore put the fragments, afterwards incorporated in The Prelude, together. These are naturally followed by Nutting-a poem

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intended for The Prelude, but afterwards excluded, as inappropriate. The five poems referring to " Lucy" are placed in sequence, and the same is done with the four" Matthew" poems. A small group of four poems follows appropriately, viz. To a Sexton, The Danish Boy, Lucy Gray, and Ruth ; while the Fenwick note almost necessitates our placing the Poet's Epitaph immediately after the Lines Written in Germany; and, with Wordsworth's life at Goslar, we naturally associate five things-the cold winter, The Prelude, the "Lucy" and the "Matthew " poems, and the Poet's Epitaph.-ED.

INFLUENCE

OF NATURAL OBJECTS IN CALLING FORTH AND STRENGTHENING THE IMAGINATION IN BOYHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH

FROM AN UNPUBLISHED POEM

[This extract is reprinted from "THE FRIEND."*]

Composed 1799.-Published 1809

It was included by Wordsworth among the "Poems referring to the Period of Childhood."-ED.

1

WISDOM and Spirit of the universe!

Thou Soul, that art the Eternity of thought!
And giv'st to forms and images a breath
And everlasting motion! not in vain,

By day or star-light, thus from my first dawn
Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me

1809.

That givest

The Prelude, 1850.

5

*The title of the fragment, as it appeared in The Friend, No. 19, (Dec. 28, 1809,) was Growth of Genius from the Influences of Natural Objects on the Imagination, in Boyhood and Early Youth. It first appeared in Wordsworth's Poems in the edition of 1815. It was afterwards included in the first book of The Prelude, 1. 401.

The lake referred to with its "silent bays" and "shadowy banks" is that of Esthwaite; the village clock is that of Hawkshead (see the footnotes to The Prelude). The only physical accomplishment in which Wordsworth thought he excelled was skating, an accomplishment in which his brother poet and acquaintance, Klopstock, also excelled.-ED.

The passions that build up our human soul;
Not1 with the mean and vulgar works of Man :
But with high objects, with enduring things,
With life and nature; purifying thus
The elements of feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying by such discipline
Both pain and fear,-until we recognise
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.

Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me
With stinted kindness. In November days,
When vapours rolling down the valleys2 made
A lonely scene more lonesome; among woods
At noon; and 'mid the calm of summer nights,
When, by the margin of the trembling lake,
Beneath the gloomy hills, homeward I went 3
In solitude, such intercourse was mine:
Mine was it in the fields1 both day and night,
And by the waters, all the summer long.
And in the frosty season, when the sun
Was set, and, visible for many a mile,

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The cottage-windows through the twilight blazed,5
I heeded not the summons: happy time

It was indeed for all of us; for me 6

It was a time of rapture! Clear and loud

The village-clock tolled six-I wheeled about,

1 1815. Nor

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25

30

1809.

Proud and exulting like an untired horse

That cares not for his home.1-All shod with steel
We hissed along the polished ice, in games
Confederate, imitative of the chase

And woodland pleasures,-the resounding horn,
The pack loud-chiming,2 and the hunted hare.
So through the darkness and the cold we flew,
And not a voice was idle: with the din

3

Smitten, the precipices rang aloud ;
The leafless trees and every icy crag
Tinkled like iron; while far-distant hills 4
Into the tumult sent an alien sound

Of melancholy, not unnoticed while the stars,
Eastward, were sparkling clear, and in the west
The orange sky of evening died away.

Not seldom from the uproar I retired
Into a silent bay, or sportively

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45

Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng, To cut across the reflex 5 of a star;

50

Image, that, flying still before me, gleamed

Upon the glassy plain and oftentimes,"

When we had given our bodies to the wind,

(This line occupied the place of lines 51-52 of the final text. )

That fled, and, flying still before me, gleamed

Upon the glassy plain; and oftentimes,

The Prelude, 1850.

And all the shadowy banks on either side

Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still
The rapid line of motion, then at once

Have I, reclining back upon my heels,
Stopped short; yet still the solitary cliffs

Wheeled by me—even as if the earth had rolled
With visible motion her diurnal round!

Behind me did they stretch in solemn train,
Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watched
Till all was tranquil as a summer sea.1

THE SIMPLON PASS *

Composed 1799.-Published 1845

Included among the "Poems of the Imagination."-ED.

-BROOK and road

Were fellow-travellers in this gloomy Pass, 2
And with them did we journey several hours
At a slow step.3 The immeasurable height
Of woods decaying, never to be decayed,
The stationary blasts of waterfalls,
And in the narrow rent, at every turn,
Winds thwarting winds bewildered and forlorn,
The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky,
The rocks that muttered close upon our ears,
Black drizzling crags that spake by the wayside
As if a voice were in them, the sick sight
And giddy prospect of the raving stream,

1 1809.

as a dreamless sleep.

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The Prelude, 1850.

* This is an extract from the sixth book of The Prelude, 1. 621. It refers to Wordsworth's first experience of Switzerland, when he crossed the Alps by the Simplon route, in 1790, in company with his friend Robert Jones.-ED.