The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth Volume I Part 81

FOOTNOTE ON THE TEXT

[Footnote A: Wordsworth originally wrote "sees." S.T.C. suggested "views."--Ed.]

SUB-FOOTNOTE ON VARIANT 3

[Sub-Footnote i:

"Susan stood for the representative of poor '_Rus in urbe_.' There was quite enough to stamp the moral of the thing never to be forgotten; 'bright volumes of vapour,' etc. The last verse of Susan was to be got rid of, at all events. It threw a kind of dubiety upon Susan's moral conduct. Susan is a servant maid. I see her trundling her mop, and contemplating the whirling phenomenon through blurred optics; but to term her 'a poor outcast' seems as much as to say that poor Susan was no better than she should be, which I trust was not what you meant to express."

Charles Lamb to Wordsworth. See 'The Letters of Charles Lamb', edited by Alfred Ainger, vol. i., p. 287.--Ed.]

1798

A NIGHT PIECE

Composed 1798.--Published 1815.

[Composed on the road between Nether Stowey and Alfoxden, extempore. I distinctly recollect the very moment when I was struck, as described,--'He looks up, the clouds are split,' etc.--I. F.]

Cla.s.sed by Wordsworth among his "Poems of the Imagination."--Ed.

--The sky is overcast With a continuous cloud of texture close, Heavy and wan, all whitened by the Moon, Which through that veil is indistinctly seen, A dull, contracted circle, yielding light 5 So feebly spread, that not a shadow falls, Chequering the ground--from rock, plant, tree, or tower.

At length a pleasant instantaneous gleam Startles the pensive traveller while [1] he treads His lonesome path, with un.o.bserving eye 10 Bent earthwards; he looks up--the clouds are split Asunder,--and above his head he sees The clear Moon, and the glory of the heavens.

There, in a black-blue vault she sails along, Followed by mult.i.tudes of stars, that, small 15 And sharp, and bright, [A] along the dark abyss Drive as she drives: how fast they wheel away, Yet vanish not!--the wind is in the tree, But they are silent;--still they roll along Immeasurably distant; and the vault, 20 Built round by those white clouds, enormous clouds, Still deepens its unfathomable depth.

At length the Vision closes; and the mind, Not undisturbed by the delight it feels, Which slowly settles into peaceful calm, 25 Is left to muse upon the solemn scene.

VARIANT ON THE TEXT

[Variant 1:

1827

... as ... 1815.]

FOOTNOTE ON THE TEXT

[Footnote A: The indebtedness of the Poet to his Sister is nowhere more conspicuous than in this Poem. In Dorothy Wordsworth's Alfoxden Journal the following occurs, under date 25th January 1798:

"Went to Poole's after tea. The sky spread over with one continuous cloud, whitened by the light of the moon, which, though her dim shape was seen, did not throw forth so strong a light as to chequer the earth with shadows. At once the clouds seemed to cleave asunder, and lift her in the centre of a black-blue vault. She sailed along, followed by mult.i.tudes of stars, small, and bright, and sharp; their brightness seemed concentrated."

Ed.]

WE ARE SEVEN

Composed 1798.--Published 1798.

[Written at Alfoxden in the spring of 1798, under circ.u.mstances somewhat remarkable. The little girl who is the heroine, I met within the area of Goodrich Castle in the year 1793. Having left the Isle of Wight, and crost Salisbury Plain, as mentioned in the preface to 'Guilt and Sorrow', I proceeded by Bristol up the Wye, and so on to N.

Wales to the Vale of Clwydd, where I spent my summer under the roof of the father of my friend, Robert Jones.

In reference to this poem, I will here mention one of the most remarkable facts in my own poetic history, and that of Mr. Coleridge.

In the spring of the year 1798, he, my sister, and myself, started from Alfoxden pretty late in the afternoon, with a view to visit Linton and the Valley of Stones near it; and as our united funds were very small, we agreed to defray the expense of the tour by writing a poem, to be sent to the 'New Monthly Magazine', set up by Philips, the bookseller, and edited by Dr. Aikin. Accordingly we set off, and proceeded along the Quantock Hills, towards Watchet; and in the course of this walk was planned the poem of 'The Ancient Mariner', founded on a dream, as Mr. Coleridge said, of his friend Mr. Cruikshank. Much the greatest part of the story was Mr. Coleridge's invention; but certain parts I myself suggested: for example, some crime was to be committed which should bring upon the Old Navigator, as Coleridge afterwards delighted to call him, the spectral persecution, as a consequence of that crime, and his own wanderings. I had been reading in Shelvocke's 'Voyages', a day or two before, that, while doubling Cape Horn, they frequently saw albatrosses in that lat.i.tude, the largest sort of sea-fowl, some extending their wings twelve or thirteen feet.

'Suppose,' said I, 'you represent him as having killed one of these birds on entering the South Sea, and that the tutelary spirits of these regions take upon them to avenge the crime.' The incident was thought fit for the purpose, and adopted accordingly. I also suggested the navigation of the ship by the dead men, but do not recollect that I had anything more to do with the scheme of the poem. The gloss with which it was subsequently accompanied was not thought of by either of us at the time; at least not a hint of it was given to me, and I have no doubt it was a gratuitous after-thought. We began the composition together, on that to me memorable evening: I furnished two or three lines at the beginning of the poem, in particular--

And listen'd like a three years' child; The Mariner had his will.

These trifling contributions, all but one (which Mr. C. has with unnecessary scrupulosity recorded), slipt out of his mind, as well they might. As we endeavoured to proceed conjointly (I speak of the same evening), our respective manners proved so widely different, that it would have been quite presumptuous in me to do anything but separate from an undertaking upon which I could only have been a clog.