"I TRAVELLED AMONG UNKNOWN MEN." Written in 1799, probably on returning from Germany, but not published until 1807. Other poems connected with Lucy appeared in 1800. Sara Coleridge writes of the last stanza as one "in which the poet, as it were, spreads day and night over the object of his affections, and seems, under the influence of his passionate feeling, to think of England, whether in light or darkness, only as Lucy's play-place and verdant home." In 1807 Wordsworth directed his printer to insert the poem after "A Slumber did my Spirit Seal." "THREE YEARS SHE GREW." Composed in the Hartz Forest in 1799 and published in 1800; printed also in The Morning Post, Mar. 2, 1801. With the exception of one line, the 23d, the poem is now as originally published. Line 23 in 1800 was A beauty that shall mould her form"; grace of motion is correct, and the repetition of beauty in two successive stanzas is avoided. The change was made in 1802. At the same time Wordsworth altered 11. 7, 8, reading: Her Teacher I myself will be, She is my darling;— and with me Happily he reverted in 1805 to the earlier texts; the conception of Nature as pedagogue is far less suitable and less significant than that of Nature as "law and impulse." In the account of Ruth's lover (p. 64) we read of Nature as an impulse, but without the restraining law. The third stanza expounds the meaning of "law and impulse"; the fourth tells of education through visible beauty; the fifth of impulses from sound; the sixth of the vital joy communicated by the life of Nature. Prof. Knight says that 1. 23 of ed. 1800 is replaced in the errata by the present reading. It is not so in the errata of my copy of that edition. "A SLUMBER DID MY SPIRIT SEAL." Written in Germany in 1799; published in 1800. The text was never altered. One of the "Lucy" group of poems. Mr. Aubrey de Vere calls this poem "a dirge, which those who confound the passionate with the exclamatory will do well to pass by, but which to others will represent, in its stern brevity, the tragic rising to the terrible." A POET'S EPITAPH. Composed in the winter of 1798-99, in Germany, during Wordsworth's walks on the ramparts of Goslar; published in 1800. I. Statist substituted in 1837 for the earlier "Statesman," doubtless to avoid the jingle of man and "van." 6-8. Before 1820: ee Go, carry to some other place The hardness of thy coward eye, The falsehood of thy sallow face. See Lamb's comment below. 9-12. The "Doctor" of this stanza is not a physician, but a divine, accustomed to kneel at prayers on a luxurious "cushion." 13. Before 1820: Art thou a man of gallant pride"; altered to vary from the opening words of the preceding stanza. 14. The soldier is represented as less alien to the poet than the other typical personages. 18. Is the Philosopher" the same person as the "Physician"? Observe the note of exclamation, not of interrogation, after " Philosopher!" But the query is not repeated in 1. 25. 24. In 1837 this replaced the reading of 1815-32: "That abject thing, thy soul, away," which itself replaced the reading of 1800-5, "Thy pin-point of a soul away." See Lamb's comment below. 30. Great or small, a correction of 1837; previously "nor." 31. Self-sufficing. So in 1800, but in 1802 and 1805 "self-sufficient"; "self-sufficing" restored in 1815. ९९ 38. The "russet brown " is probably a reminiscence from Thomson's Castle of Indolence," where the bard is "in russet brown bedight." Lamb, in a letter of 1801, wrote: "The 'Poet's Epitaph' is disfigured, to my taste, by the common satire upon parsons and lawyers in the beginning, and the coarse epithet of 'pin-point' in the sixth stanza. All the rest is eminently good, and your own." LUCY GRAY. Written in 1799 at Goslar in Germany; published in the second volume of " Lyrical Ballads," 1800. "It was founded," says Wordsworth, on a circumstance told me by my Sister, of a little girl, who, not far from Halifax in Yorkshire, was bewildered in a snowstorm. Her footsteps were traced by her parents to the middle of the lock of a canal, and no other vestige of her, backward or forward, could be traced. The body, however, was found in the canal." In Crabb Robinson's Diary, Sept. 11, 1816, the writer, recording a conversation with Wordsworth, notes that the poet's object was "to exhibit poetically entire solitude, and he represents the child as observing the day-moon, which no town or village girl would ever notice." Wordsworth remarks that the way in which the incident was treated and "the spiritualizing of the character" might furnish hints for contrasting the imaginative influences which he endeavoured to throw over common life with Crabbe's matter-of-fact style of treating subjects of the same kind. In 1827 Wordsworth altered, in 1. 45, the words "Then downward” to 'Half breathless," but restored" Then downwards" at a later date. १९ The chief departure from the real incident is that Lucy Gray's body is not found; this gives opportunity for the rumours that she is still alive, and the supposed confirmation of these rumours by her apparition on the wild. For Wordsworth's treatment of the supernatural, compare his poem "The Danish Boy," where the spirit walks or sits at noonday in a moorland dell, warbling songs of war that seem songs of love : For calm and gentle is his mien; "The Danish Boy," like "Lucy Gray," was written in Germany in 1799. If in either poem there be terror, the terror is almost lost in beauty. RUTH. Written in Germany in 1799; published in 1800. "Suggested," says Wordsworth, "by an account I had of a wanderer in Somersetshire.” The changes of text are many and perplexing. In 1802 Wordsworth rehandled the poem. Stanza 3 (l. 13-18) was then added, with the reading in ll. 17, 18 (altered in 1827): She passed her time; and in this way Stanza 39 (11. 229–234) was also then added, with the reading in 11. 229, 230 (altered in 1805): The neighbours grieve for her, and say That she will, long before her day, But the chief change in 1802 was an insertion between stanza 10 and stanza II (ie., between 1. 60 and 1. 61). Three stanzas (now ll. 127-144) were altered from third to first person, and were removed from their place in 1800, a place which they resumed in 1805, — and these three stanzas were preceded by two new stanzas, and followed by two also new. Of these four new stanzas two have been retained and two were omitted from all the editions after 1805. The retained stanzas are now the 28th (11. 163–168) and the 30th (ll. 175-180); they came as second and sixth of the insertion of 1802, and the two stanzas not now retained, which stood first and last in the inserted passage, were as follows: Of march and ambush, siege and fight, But 't was a thing of heaven to hear When of himself he spake. (Stanza 11 of 1802.) "It is a purer, better mind: O Maiden innocent and kind What sights I might have seen! Even now upon my eyes they break!" And he again began to speak Of Lands where he had been. (Stanza 17 of 1802.) In 1805 the three transposed stanzas (11. 127-144) were put back in their former place; a new stanza, now the 29th (l. 169-174), was written for the inserted passage between 1. 60 and 1. 61, and it was placed as the third stanza of the insertion, the order being (1) " Of march and ambush," (2) "Sometimes most earnestly," (3) "Before me shone," (4) "No more of this,” (5) “It is a purer." In 1815 these five stanzas were omitted. In 1820 those numbered 2, 3, 4, were restored and placed as now, while I and 5 were never restored. 3, 4. In 1800 (only): 26. Before 1836: "Ah, no !"- the pathetic "Ah" being inappropriate here. In 1. 27, "bore" before 1805 was "bare." 73. He spake of plants divine and strange That every hour [1802; "day" 1800] their blossoms change, 999 Before 1836: " And then he said, ' How sweet it were.' "Sweet" had been over-used by Wordsworth in early editions, and was banished from many passages. See 1. 79 and 1. 98. 75-77. Before 1836: "A gardener in the shade, Still wandering with an easy mind, The ideas of 'a gardener" and of "wandering" did not harmonize; edition 1836 read" In sunshine or through shade" (altered as now, 1845). 79. Before 1836: "sweet years." See notes on 1. 73 and 1. 98. 86. Before 1832 : "Dear thoughts"; altered because "dearer in 1. 90. occurs 98. Before 1820: "Sweet Ruth alone"; altered to avoid repetition of 1. 91. 133. In 1802 (only): "unhallow'd" replaced "voluptuous." 135. Before 1845: "lovely flowers." And at the same time, 1845, in 1. 138, "gorgeous bowers" (1815-43) — itself a substitute for the earlier "magic bowers". - became favoured bowers," thus allowing the change to be made in 1. 135. १९ 140. 'Sometimes" in 1805 replacing" often," 1802, returned to the reading of 1800. So also in 1. 142, "linked to " replaced "amid," and needs must have" replaced "wanted not," returning to the original text. in 1. 143 145. In 1802 (only): "Ill did he live." 167, 168. In 1802 (only): " thoughtlessness " in place of " confidence." From 1820 to 1836: "When first, in confidence and pride, 169-171. Before 1840: 175-180. "It was a fresh and glorious world A banner bright that was ['shone,' 1836] unfurled Before me suddenly: " This stanza, written in 1802 for the insertion between 1. 60 and 1. 61, was originally : |