Alone I tread this path ;—for aught I know, Mingling most earnest wishes for the day When we, and others whom we love, shall meet This wish was not granted; the lamented Person, not long after, perished by shipwreck, in discharge of his duty as Commander of the Honourable East India Company's Vessel, the Earl of Abergavenny.-W. W. 1815. For the date of this poem in the Chronological Tables given in the editions of 1815 and 1820, Wordsworth assigned the year 1802. But, in the edition of 1836, he assigned it to the year 1805, the date retained by Mr. Carter in the edition of 1857. Captain Wordsworth perished on the 5th of February 1805; and if the poem was written in 1805, it must have been in the month of January of that year. The note to the poem is explicit—“Not long after” he “ 'perished by shipwreck," etc. Thus the poem may have been written in the beginning of 1805; but it is not at all certain that part of it at least does not belong to an earlier year. John Wordsworth lived with his brother and sister at the Town-end Cottage, Grasmere, during part of the winter, and during the whole of the spring, summer, and autumn of 1800, William and John going together on foot into Yorkshire from the 14th of May to the 7th of June. John left Grasmere on Michaelmas day (September 29th) 1800, and never returned to it again. The following is Miss Wordsworth's record of that day in her Journal of 1800:-" On Monday, 29th, John left us. William and I parted with him in sight of Ullswater. It was a fine day, showery, but with sunshine and fine clouds. Poor fellow, my heart was right sad, I could not help thinking we should see him again, because he was only going to Penrith." In the spring of 1801, John Wordsworth sailed for China in the Abergavenny. He returned from this voyage in safety, and the brothers met once again in London. He went to sea again in 1803, and returned to London in 1804, but could not visit Grasmere; and in the month of February 1805-shortly after he was appointed to the command of the Abergavenny— the ship was lost at the Bill of Portland, and every one on 66 board perished. It is clear that the latter part of the poem, When, to the attractions of the busy world," was written between John Wordsworth's departure from Grasmere and the loss of the Abergavenny, i.e. between September 1800 and February 1805, as there are references in it both to what his brother did at Grasmere and to his return to sea Back to the joyless Ocean thou art gone. There are some things in the earlier part of the poem that appear to negative the idea of its having been written in 1800. The opening lines seem to hint at an experience somewhat distant. He speaks of being "wont" to do certain things. But, on the other hand, I find an entry in Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal, which leads me to believe that the poem may have been begun in 1800, and that the first part, ending (as it did then) with the line While she is travelling through the dreary sea, may have been finished before John Wordsworth left Grasmere ; the second part being written afterwards, while he was at sea; and that this is the explanation of the date given in the editions of 1815 and 1820, viz. 1802. دو Passages occur in Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal to the following effect :-" Monday Morning, 1st September.—We walked in the wood by the lake. William read Joanna and 'the Firgrove' to Coleridge.' A little earlier there is the record, "Saturday, 22nd August.-William was composing all the morning. William read us the poem of Joanna beside the Rothay by the roadside." Then, on Friday, the 28th August, there is the entry, "We walked over the hill by the Firgrove, I sate upon a rock and observed a flight of swallows gathering together high above my head. We walked through the wood to the stepping stones, the lake of Rydale very beautiful, partly still. I left William to compose an inscription, that about the path. Then, next day, Saturday morning, 30th August. William finished his inscription of the Pathway, then walked in the wood, and when John returned he sought him, and they bathed together." To what poem Dorothy Wordsworth referred under the name of the "Inscription of the Pathway" has puzzled me much. There is no poem amongst his "Inscriptions" (written in or before August 1800) that corresponds to it in the least. But, if my conjecture is right that this "Poem on the Naming of Places," beginning— When, to the attractions of the busy world, was composed at two different times, it is quite possible that "the Firgrove " which was read-along with Joanna-to Coleridge on September 1st, 1800, was the first part of this very poem. If this supposition is correct, some light is cast both on the "Inscription of the Pathway," and on the date assigned by Wordsworth himself to the poem. There is a certain fitness, however, in this poem being placed-as it now is-in sequence to the Elegiac Verses in memory of John Wordsworth, beginning, "The Sheep-boy whistled loud," and near the fourth poem To the Daisy, beginning, "Sweet Flower! belike one day to have.' The "Fir-grove" still exists. It is between Wishing Gate and White Moss Common, and almost exactly opposite the former. Standing at the gate and looking eastwards, the grove is to the left, not forty yards distant. Some of the firs (Scotch ones) still survive, and several beech trees, not "a single beech-tree," as in the poem. From this, one might infer that the present colony had sprung up since the beginning of the century, and that the special tree, in which was the thrush's nest, had perished; but Dr. Cradock wrote to me that "Wordsworth pointed out the tree to Miss Cookson a few days before Dora Wordsworth's death. The tree is near the upper wall and tells its own tale." The Fir-grove-"John's Grove" --can easily be entered by a gate about a hundred yards beyond the Wishing-gate, as one goes toward Rydal. The view from it, the "visionary scene," the spectacle is now much interfered with by the new larch plantations immediately below the firs. It must have been very different in Wordsworth's time, and is constantly referred to in his sister's Journal as a favourite retreat, resorted to when cloudless suns Shone hot, or wind blew troublesome and strong. In the absence of contrary testimony, it might be supposed that "the track" which the brother had " worn,' By pacing here, unwearied and alone, faced Silver-How and the Grasmere Island, and that the single Had been so thickly planted, and had thriven That vainly did I seek, beneath their stems Dr. Cradock remarks, "As to there being more than one beech, Wordsworth would not have hesitated to sacrifice servile exactness to poetical effect." He had a fancy for " one Fair as a star when only one Is shining in the sky; "One abode, no more; "Grasmere's "one green island;' "one green field.” Since the above note was printed, new light has been cast on the "Inscription of the Pathway," for which see volume viii. of this edition. -ED. THE COTTAGER TO HER INFANT BY MY SISTER Composed 1805.-Published 1815 [Suggested to her, while beside my sleeping children.—I. F.] One of the "Poems founded on the Affections."-ED. THE days are cold, the nights are long, Then hush again upon my breast; All merry things are now at rest, The kitten sleeps upon the hearth, The crickets long have ceased their mirth; 5 Save one wee, hungry, nibbling mouse, Nay start not at that sparkling light; And wake when it is day. This poem underwent no change in successive editions. The title in all the earlier ones (1815 to 1843) was The Cottager to her Infant. By a Female Friend; and in the preface to the edition of 1815, Wordsworth wrote, “Three short pieces (now first published) are the work of a Female Friend; if any one regard them with dislike, or be disposed to condemn them, let the censure fall upon him, who, trusting in his own sense of their merit, and their fitness for the place which they occupy, extorted them from the Authoress." In the edition of 1845, he disclosed the authorship; and gave the more natural title, By my Sister. Other two poems by her were introduced into the edition of 1815, and subsequent ones, viz. the Address to a Child, and The Mother's Return. In an appendix to a MS. copy of the Recollections of a Tour made in Scotland, by Dorothy Wordsworth, transcribed by Mrs. Clarkson, I find the poem The Cottager to her Infant with two additional stanzas, which are there attributed to Wordsworth. The appendix runs thus "To my Niece Dorothy, a sleepless Baby THE COTTAGER TO HER INFANT (The third and fourth stanzas which follow by W. W.) I should not grieve with thee to play; Right gladly would I lie awake Thy lively spirits to partake, And ask no better cheer. But, Babe! there's none to work for me, And I must rise to industry; Soon as the cock begins to crow Thy mother to the fold must go To tend the sheep and kine." ED. |