"Ο NIGHTINGALE! THOU SURELY ART" Composed 1807 (probably). -Published 1807 [Written at Town-end, Grasmere. (Mrs. W. says, in a note, -"At Coleorton.")-I. F.] One of the "Poems of the Imagination."-ED. O NIGHTINGALE! thou surely art A creature of a "fiery heart : "___ * 1 Tumultuous harmony and fierce ! Thou sing'st as if the God of wine Had helped thee to a Valentine; † A song in mockery and despite 5 Of shades, and dews, and silent night; I heard a Stock-dove sing or say His homely tale, this very day; His voice was buried among trees, He did not cease ; but cooed—and cooed ; 15 And somewhat pensively he wooed : Slow to begin, and never ending; 1 1807. A Creature of ebullient heart : 1815. The text of 1820 returns to that of 1807. * See Shakespeare's King Henry VI., Part III., act 1. scene iv. 1. 87.-ED. † Compare the lines in The Cuckoo and the Nightingale, vol. ii. p. 255 return to the text of 1807.-ED. ED. Henry Crabb Robinson, in his Diary (May 9, 1815), anticipates this Of serious faith, and inward glee; 20 Mrs. Wordsworth corrected her husband's note to Miss Fenwick, by adding in the MS., "at Coleorton"; and at Coleorton the Wordsworths certainly spent the winter of 1806, the Town-end Cottage at Grasmere being too small for their increasing household. It is more likely that Wordsworth wrote the poem at Coleorton than at Grasmere, and it looks as if it had been an evening impromptu, after hearing both the nightingale and the stock-dove. There are no nightingales at Grasmere, they are not heard further north than the Trent valley, — while they used to abound in the "peaceful groves" of Coleorton. If the locality was as Mrs. Wordsworth states-Coleorton, and if the lines were written after hearing the nightingale, the year would be 1807, and not 1806 (the poet's own date). The nightingale is a summer visitor in this country, and could not have been heard by Wordsworth at Coleorton in 1806, as he did not go south to Leicestershire till November in that year. But it is quite possible that it was "the stock-dove's voice " that alone suggested the lines, and that they were written either in 1806, or (as I think more likely), very early in 1807. In the month of January Wordsworth was corresponding with Scott about the poems in this edition of 1807.-ED. "THOUGH NARROW BE THAT OLD MAN'S CARES, AND NEAR” Composed 1807.-Published 1807 "gives to airy nothing [Written at Coleorton. This old man's name was Mitchell. He was, in all his ways and conversation, a great curiosity, both individually and as a representative of past times. His chief employment was keeping watch at night by pacing round the house, at that time building, to keep off depredators. He has often told me gravely of having seen the Seven Whistlers, and the Hounds as here described. Among the groves of Coleorton, where I became familiar with the habits and notions of old Mitchell, there was also a labourer of whom, I regret, I had no personal knowledge; for, more than forty years after, when he was become an old man, I learned that while I was composing verses, which I usually did aloud, he took much pleasure, unknown to me, in following my steps that he might catch the words I uttered; and, what is not a little remarkable, several lines caught in this way kept their place in his memory. My volumes have lately been given to him by my informant, and surely he must have been gratified to meet in print his old acquaintances.—I. F.] In 1815 this sonnet was one of the "Poems belonging to the Period of Old Age"; in 1820 it was transferred to the "Miscellaneous Sonnets."-ED. THOUGH narrow be that old Man's cares, and near, 5 The region of his inner spirit teems To bring all the poems referring to Coleorton together, so far as possible, this and the next sonnet are transferred from their places in the chronological list, and placed beside the Coleorton "Inscriptions." I am indebted to Mr. William Kelly of Leicester for the following note on the Leicestershire superstition of the Seven Whistlers. * Both these superstitions are prevalent in the midland Counties of England: that of "Gabriel's Hounds" appears to be very general over Europe; being the same as the one upon which the German Poet, Bürger, has founded his Ballad of The Wild Huntsman.-W. W. 1807. "There is an old superstition, which it is not easy to get to the bottom of, concerning a certain cry or sound heard in the night, supposed to be produced by the Seven Whistlers. What or who those whistlers are is an unsolved problem. In some districts they are popularly believed to be witches, in others ghosts, in others devils, while in the Midland Counties they are supposed to be birds, either plovers or martins some say swifts. In Leicestershire it is deemed a bad omen to hear the Seven Whistlers, and our old writers supply many passages illustrative of the popular credulity. Spenser, in his Faërie Queene, book II. canto xii. stanza 36, speaks of The whistler shrill, that whoso hears doth die. Sir Walter Scott, in The Lady of the Lake, names the bird with which his character associated the cry And in the plover's shrilly strain "When the colliers of Leicestershire are flush of money, we are told, and indulge in a drinking bout, they sometimes hear the warning voice of the Seven Whistlers, get sobered and frightened, and will not descend the pit again till next day. Wordsworth speaks of a countryman who the seven birds hath seen, that never part, Seen the Seven Whistlers in their nightly rounds, "A few years ago, during a thunderstorm which passed over Leicestershire, and while vivid lightning was darting through the sky, immense flocks of birds were seen flying about, uttering doleful, affrighted cries as they passed, and keeping up for a long time a continual whistling like that made by some kinds of sea-birds. The number must have been immense, for the local newspapers mentioned the same phenomenon in different parts of the neighbouring counties of Northampton, Leicester, and Lincoln. A gentleman, conversing with a countryman on the following day, asked him what kind of birds he supposed them to have been. The man answered, 'They are what we call the Seven Whistlers,' and added that 'whenever they are heard it is considered a sign of some great calamity, and that the last time he had heard them was on the night before the deplorable explosion of fire damp at the Hartley Colliery." In Notes and Queries there are several allusions to this local superstition. In the Fifth Series (vol. ii. p. 264), Oct. 3, 1874, the editor gives a summary of several notes on the subject in vol. viii. of the Fourth Series (pp. 68, 134, 196, and 268), with additional information. He says "record was made of their having been heard in Leicestershire; and that the develin or martin, the swift, and the plover were probably of the whistling fraternity that frightened men. At p. 134 it was shown that Wordsworth had spoken of one who the seven birds hath seen, that never part, Seen the Seven Whistlers in their nightly rounds, On the same page, the swift is said to be the true whistler (but, as noted at page 196, the swifts never make nightly rounds), and the superstition is said to be common in our Midland Counties. At page 268, Mr. Pearson put on record that in Lancashire the plovers, whistling as they fly, are accounted heralds of ill, though sometimes of trivial accident, and that they are there called 'Wandering Jews,' and are said to be, or to carry with them, the ever-restless souls of those Jews who assisted at the Crucifixion. At page 336, the whistlers are chronicled as having been the harbingers of the great Hartley Colliery explosion. A correspondent, VIATOR, added, that on the Bosphorus there are flocks of birds, the size of a thrush, which fly up and down the channel, and are never seen to rest on land or water. The men who rowed Viator's caique told him that they were the souls of the damned, condemned to perpetual motion. The Seven Whistlers have not furnished chroniclers with later circumstances of their tuneful and awful progresses till a week or two ago. The whistlers are also heard and feared in Portugal. See The New Quarterly for July 1874, for a record of some travelling experience in that country." Another extract from Notes and Queries is to the following effect : .. “Your Excellency laughs at ghosts. But there is no lie about the Seven Whistlers. Many a man besides me has heard them.' ،،، Who are the Seven Whistlers? and have you seen them yourself?' "Not seen, thank Heaven; but I have heard them plenty of times. Some say they are the ghosts of children unbaptized, who are to know no rest till the judgment day. Once last |