The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth Volume Ii Part 103

Dryden's 'All for Love', act IV. scene I:

'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. 1. p. 132):

'Nature in the infant marked the man.'

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 t.i.tle. 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 the pa.s.sage in 'The Excursion' (book ix. l. 36) beginning:

'... Ah! why in age Do we revert so fondly, etc.'

also that in 'The Prelude' (book v. l. 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 c.o.c.k is crowing, The stream is flowing, The small birds twitter, The lake doth glitter, The green field sleeps in the sun; 5 The oldest and youngest Are at work with the strongest; The cattle are grazing, Their heads never raising; There are forty feeding like one! 10

Like an army defeated The snow hath retreated, And now doth fare ill On the top of the bare hill; The Ploughboy is whooping--anon--anon: [A] 15 There's joy in the mountains; There's life in the fountains; Small clouds are sailing, Blue sky prevailing; The rain is over and gone! 20

FOOTNOTE ON THE TEXT

[Footnote A: This line was an afterthought.--Ed.]

The text of this poem was never altered. It was not "written in March"

(as the t.i.tle 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 Pa.s.s, 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; la.s.ses working; a dog barking now and then; c.o.c.ks 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 pa.s.sing over the green fields."

Ed.

THE REDBREAST CHASING THE b.u.t.tERFLY [A]

Composed April 18, 1802.--Published 1807

[Observed, as described, in the then beautiful orchard, Town-end, Grasmere.--I.F.]