William Wordsworth Wanders Lonely

jenks

jenks

thread death
The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,

Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.

But O! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger ! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger's face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!

Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the intersperséd vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the night-thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
It makes me think of Prynne and this sense I get that he is sometimes matching externals very specifically to internals and the breeze here and the breeze-blown flame matching up very exactly to a definite state of mind and mode of experience.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
And also the modulations and modifications another, in this case his sleeping baby, causes to the auric field. How there's a merging, of peace into more perfect peace
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
Sea, hill and wood

Any run like this, and i think there's a Wordsworth example above, if not I'll post it, reminds me of


Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves

There's certainly a Keats version I can probably track down. A single phrase haunting the romantics, echoing against the walls
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
Im quite drunk what does by giving make it ask mean? Beyond the literal? Ask what?
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
Oh there is a blessing in this gentle breeze,
A visittant while it fans my cheek
Doth seem half conscious of the joy it brings
From the green fields
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
~Coquettish breeze~ is how I've sometimes rendered this particular sensation
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
"Nature placed England in the Gothic North, the region of magic and shadows, of elves and ghosts, and romantic legend."

The English Posts by Lord David Cecil.
 
jenks

jenks

thread death
I think I've read it about five times since posting last night and it keeps on revealing itself - there is that 'tight but loose' thing going on in there, i like the fact that both him and Ww aren't frightened of repetitions - rather than fishing for synonyms of getting caught in ornate figurative language they just repeat the right word. There's a bit in the 'stealing a boat' section of The Prelude where Ww says ' a huge peak, black and huge' - as if huge is the only word that will do and it adds to that overwhelming sensation over being frightened by nature - a realisation that awe is a double-edged sword.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Wordsworth wrote a poem about (or should that be guest starring?) owls:

There was a Boy; ye knew him well, ye cliffs
And islands of Winander! many a time,
At evening, when the earliest stars began
To move along the edges of the hills,
Rising or setting, would he stand alone,
Beneath the trees, or by the glimmering lake;
And there, with fingers interwoven, both hands
Pressed closely palm to palm and to his mouth
Uplifted, he, as through an instrument,
Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls
That they might answer him.—And they would shout
Across the watery vale, and shout again,
Responsive to his call,—with quivering peals,
And long halloos, and screams, and echoes loud
Redoubled and redoubled; concourse wild
Of jocund din! And, when there came a pause
Of silence such as baffled his best skill:
Then, sometimes, in that silence, while he hung
Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise
Has carried far into his heart the voice
Of mountain-torrents; or the visible scene
Would enter unawares into his mind
With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,
Its woods, and that uncertain heaven received
Into the bosom of the steady lake.

This boy was taken from his mates, and died
In childhood, ere he was full twelve years old.
Pre-eminent in beauty is the vale
Where he was born and bred: the churchyard hangs
Upon a slope above the village-school;
And through that churchyard when my way has led
On summer-evenings, I believe that there
A long half-hour together I have stood
Mute—looking at the grave in which he lies!
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
"And at length
His senses yielding to the sultry air
Sleep siez'd him, and he passed into a dream.
He saw before him an Arabian Waste,
A Desart; and he fancied that himself
Was sitting there in the wide wilderness,
Alone, upon the Sands. Distress of mind
Was growing in him when, behold! at once
To his great joy a Man was at his side,
Upon a Dromedary mounted high.
He seem'd an Arab of the Bedouin Tribes,
A Lance he bore, and underneath one arm
A Stone; and in the opposite hand, a Shell
Of a surpassing brightness. Much rejoiced
The dreaming Man, that he should have a Guide
To lead him through the Desart"
 
jenks

jenks

thread death
Tintern Abbey is another one of Wordworth's that i think is great - i like the poem moves, like a camera, zooming in and out and the way those leaps and transitions between sections are so cleverly done - it has much in common with Frost at Midnight but I think Ww doesnt quite have that same swing and swagger in his lines,
 
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