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THE

POETICAL WORKS

OF

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

TO SIR GEORGE HOWLAND BEAUMONT, BART.

MY DEAR SIR George,

ACCEPT my thanks for the permission given me to dedicate these Poems to you.-In addition to a lively pleasure derived from general considerations, I feel a particular satisfaction; for, by inscribing them with your Name, I seem to myself in some degree to repay, by an appropriate honour, the great obligation which I owe to one part of the Collection-as having been the means of first making us personally known to each other. Upon much of the remainder, also, you have a peculiar claim,-for several of the best pieces were composed under the shade of your own groves, upon the classic ground of Coleorton; where I was animated by the recollection of those illustrious Poets of your Name and Family, who were born in that neighbourhood; and, we may be assured, did not wander with indifference by the dashing stream of Grace-Dieu, and among the rocks that diversify the forest of Charnwood.-Nor is there any one to whom such parts of this Collection as have been inspired or coloured by the beautiful Country from which I now address you, could be presented with more propriety than to yourself-who have composed so many admirable Pictures from the suggestions of the same scenery. Early in life, the sublimity and beauty of this Region excited your admiration; and I know that you are bound to it in mind by a stillstrengthening attachment.

Wishing and hoping that these Poems may survive as a lasting memorial of a friendship, which I reckon among the blessings of my life,

I have the honour to be, my dear Sir George,

Rydal Mount, Westmoreland, February 1, 1815.

Yours most affectionately and faithfully,

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

PREFACE.

Tag observations prefixed to that portion of this work which was published many years ago, under the title of Lyrical Ballads,» have so little of a special application to the greater part of the present enlarged and diversified collection, that they could not with propriety stand as an Introduction to it. Not deeming it, however, expedient to suppress that exposition, slight and imperfect as it is, of the feelings which had determined the choice of the subjects, and the principles which had regulated the composition of those Pieces, I have placed it so as to form an essay supplementary to the Preface, to be attended to, or not, at the pleasure of the Reader.

In the Preface to that part of « The Recluse,» lately published under the title of « The Excursion,» I have alluded to a meditated arrangement of my minor Poems, which should assist the attentive Reader in perceiving their connexion with each other, and also their subordination to that Work. I shall here say a few words explanatory of this arrangement, as carried into effect in the present Work.

The powers requisite for the production of poetry are, first, those of observation and description; i. e. the abihity to observe with accuracy things as they are in themselves, and with fidelity to describe them, unmodified

by any passion or feeling existing in the mind of the Describer; whether the things depicted be actually present to the senses, or have a place only in the memory. This power, although indispensable to a Poet, is one which he employs only in submission to necessity, and never for a continuance of time: as its exercise supposes all the higher qualities of the mind to be passive, and in a state of subjection to external objects, much in the same way as the Translator or Engraver ought to be to his Original. 2dly, Sensibility,-which, the more exquisite it is, the wider will be the range of a Poet's perceptions; and the more will he be incited to observe objects, both as they exist in themselves and as re-acted upon by his own mind. (The distinction between poetic and human sensibility has been marked in the character of the Poet delineated in the original preface, before mentioned.) 3dly, Reflection,-which makes the Poet acquainted with the value of actions, images, thoughts, and feelings; and assists the sensibility in perceiving their connexion with each other. 4thly, Imagination and Fancy,—to modify, to create, and to associate. 5thly, Invention,-by which characters are composed out of materials supplied by observation-whether of the Poet's own heart and mind, or of exter

nal life and nature; and such incidents and situations comprehending sufficient of the general in the indiviproduced as are most impressive to the imagination, dual to be dignified with the name of poetry. and most fitted to do justice to the characters, senti- Out of the three last has been constructed a comments, and passions, which the Poet undertakes to il-posite order, of which Young's Night Thoughts, and lustrate. And lastly, Judgment,-to decide how and Cowper's Task, are excellent examples. where, and in what degree, each of these faculties It is deducible from the above, that poems, apought to be exerted; so that the less shall not be sacri-parently miscellaneous, may with propriety be arranged ficed to the greater; nor the greater, slighting the less, either with reference to the powers of mind predoarrogate, to its own injury, more than its due. By minant in the production of them; or to the mould judgment, also, is determined what are the laws and in which they are cast; or, lastly, to the subjects to appropriate graces of every species of composition. which they relate. From each of these considerations, The materials of Poetry, by these powers collected the following Poems have been divided into classes; and produced, are cast, by means of various moulds, which, that the work may more obviously correspond into divers forms. The moulds may be enumerated, with the course of human life, and for the sake of and the forms specified, in the following order. 1st, exhibiting in it the three requisites of a legitimate the Narrative, including the Epoporia, the Historic whole, a beginuing, a middle, and an end, have been Poem, the Tale, the Romance, the Mock-heroic, and, if also arranged, as far as it was possible, according to the spirit of Homer will tolerate such neighbourhood, an order of time, commencing with Childhood, and that dear production of our days, the metrical Novel. terminating with Old Age, Death, and Immortality. My Of this Class, the distinguishing mark is, that the Nar- guiding wish was, that the small pieces thus discrirator, however liberally his speaking agents be intro- minated, might be regarded under a two-fold view; as duced, is himself the source from which every thing composing an entire work within themselves, and as primarily flows. Epic Poets, in order that their mode adjuncts to the philosophical Poem, « The Recluse.» of composition may accord with the elevation of their This arrangement has long presented itself habitually subject, represent themselves as singing from the to my own mind. Nevertheless, I should have preinspiration of the Muse, Arma virumque cano; but ferred to scatter the little poems alluded to at random, this is a fiction, in modern times, of slight value: the if I had been persuaded that, by the plan adopted, any Iliad or the Paradise Lost would gain little in our esti-thing material would be taken from the natural effect of mation by being chanted. The other poets who belong the pieces, individually, on the mind of the unreflecting to this class are commonly content to tell their tale; Reader. I trust there is a sufficient variety in each class to so that of the whole it may be affirmed that they neither prevent this; while, for him who reads with reflection, the require nor reject the accompaniment of music. arrangement will serve as a commentary unostentatiously directing his attention to my purposes, both particular and general. But, as I wish to guard against the possi bility of misleading by this classification, it is proper first to remind the Reader, that certain poems are placed according to the powers of mind, in the Author's conception, predominant in the production of them; predominant, which implies the exertion of other faculties in less degree. Where there is more imagination than fancy in a poem, it is placed under the head of imagination, and vice versa. Both the above Classes might without impropriety have been enlarged from that consisting of « Poems founded on the Affections; >> as might this latter from those, and from the class « Proceeding from Sentiment and Reflection.»> The most striking characteristics of each piece, mutual illustration, variety, and proportion, have governed me throughout.

adly, The Dramatic,-consisting of Tragedy, Historic Drama, Comedy, and Masque, in which the poet does not appear at all in his own person, and where the whole action is carried on by speech and dialogue of the agents; music being admitted only incidentally and rarely. The Opera may be placed here, inasınuch as it proceeds by dialogue; though, depending, to the degree that it does, upon music, it has a strong claim to be ranked with the Lyrical. The characteristic and impassioned Epistle, of which Ovid and Pope have given examples, considered as a species of monodrama, may, without impropriety, be placed in this class.

3dly, The Lyrical,-containing the Hymn, the Ode, the Elegy, the Song, and the Ballad; in all which, for the production of their full effect, an accompaniment of music is indispensable.

It may be proper in this place to state, that the Extracts in the second Class, entitled «Juvenile Pieces,» are in many places altered from the printed copy, chiefly by omission and compression. The slight alterations of another kind were for the most part made not long after the publication of the Poems from which the Extracts are taken. 1 These Extracts seem to have a title to be placed here, as they were the productions of youth, and represent implicitly some of the features

4thly, The Idyllium,-descriptive chiefly either of the processes and appearances of external nature, as the << Seasons>> of Thomson; or of characters, manners, and sentiments, as are Shenstone's School-mistress, The Cotter's Saturday Night of Burns, The Twa Dogs of the same Author; or of these in conjunction with the appearances of Nature, as most of the pieces of Theocritus, the Allegro and Penseroso of Milton, Beattie's Minstrel, Goldsmith's « Deserted Village.» The Epitaph, the Inscription, the Sonnet, most of the epistles of poets writing in their own persons, and all loco-de-of a youthful mind, at a time when images of nature scriptive poetry, belong to this class.

5thly, Didactic,-the principal object of which is direct instruction; as the Poem of Lucretius, the Georgics of Virgil, «the Fleece of Dyer, Mason's «English Garden,» etc.

And, lastly, philosophical satire, like that of Horace and Juvenal; personal and occasional Satire rarely

supplied to it the place of thought, sentiment, and almost of action; or, as it will be found expressed, of a state of mind when

the sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,

These Poems are now printed entire.

The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms were then to me
An appetite, a feeling, and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, or any interest
Unborrow'd from the eye.—

I will own that I was much at a loss what to select of these descriptions; and perhaps it would have been better either to have reprinted the whole, or suppressed what I have given.

But a

All

greatest

None of the other Classes, except those of Fancy and Imagination, require any particular notice. remark of general application may be made. Poets, except the dramatic, have been in the practice of feigning that their works were composed to the music of the harp or lyre: with what degree of affectation this has been done in modern times, I leave to. the judicious to determine. For my own part, I have not been disposed to violate probability so far, or to make such a large demand upon the Reader's charity. Some of these pieces are essentially lyrical; and, therefore, cannot have their due force without a supposed musical accompaniment; but, in much the part, as a substitute for the classic lyre or romantic harp, I require nothing more than an animated or impassioned recitation, adapted to the subject. Poems, however humble in their kind, if they be good in that kind, cannot read themselves: the law of long syllable and short must not be so inflexible,—the letter of metre must not be so impassive to the spirit of versification, -as to deprive the Reader of a voluntary power to modulate, in subordination to the sense, the music of the poem;-in the same manner as his mind is left at liberty, and even summoned, to act upon its thoughts and images. But, though the accompaniment of a musical instrument be frequently dispensed with, the true Poet does not therefore abandon his privilege distinct from that of the mere Proseman;

He murmurs near the running brooks

A music sweeter than their own.

is

he takes up the original word as his guide and escort, and too often does not perceive how soon he becomes its prisoner, without liberty to tread in any path but that to which it confines him. It is not easy to find out how imagination, thus explained, differs from distinct remembrance of images; or fancy from quick and vivid recollection of them: each is nothing more than a mode of memory. If the two words bear the above meaning, and no other, what term is left to designate that Faculty of which the Poet is « all compact;» he whose eye glances from earth to heaven, whose spiritual attributes body forth what his pen prompt in turning to shape; or what is left to characterise fancy, as insinuating herself into the heart of objects with creative activity?—-Imagination, in the sense of the word as giving title to a Class of the following Poems, has no reference to images that are merely a faithful copy, existing in the mind, of absent external objects; but is a word of higher import, denoting operations of the mind upon those objects, and processes of creation or of composition, governed by certain fixed laws. I proceed to illustrate my meaning by instances. A parrot hangs from the wires of his cage by his beak or by his claws; or a monkey from the bough of a tree by his paws or his tail. Each creature does so literally and actually. In the first Eclogue he is to take leave of his Farm, thus addresses his of Virgil, the Shepherd, thinking of the time when

Goats;

Non ego vos posthac viridi projectus in antro
Dumosa pendere procul de rupe videbo.

balf way down

Hangs one who gathers samphire,

is the well-known expression of Shakspeare, delineating an ordinary image upon the Cliffs of Dover. In these two instances is a slight exertion of the faculty which I denominate imagination, in the use of one word: neither the goats nor the samphire-gatherer do literally hang, as does the parrot or the monkey; but, present

As when far off at Sea a Fleet descried
Hangs in the clouds, by equinoctial winds
Close sailing from Bengala, or the Isles

Of Ternate or Tydore, whence Merchants bring
Their spicy drugs; they on the trading flood
Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape

Ply, stemming nightly toward the Pole: so seemed
Far off the flying Fiend.

I come now to the consideration of the words Fancying to the senses something of such an appearance, and Imagination, as employed in the classification of the mind in its activity, for its own gratification, conthe following Poems. A man,» says an intelligent templates them as hanging. Author, has imagination in proportion as he can distinctly copy in idea the impressions of sense: it is the faculty which images within the mind the phenomena of sensation. A man has fancy in proportion as he can call up, connect, or associate, at pleasure, those internal images (pzvta【ery is to cause to appear) so as to complete ideal representations of absent objects. Imagination is the power of depicting, and fancy of evoking and combining. The imagination is formed by patient observation; the fancy by a voluntary activity in shifting the scenery of the mind. The more accurate the imagination, the more safely may a painter, or a poet, undertake a delineation, or a des-its appearance to the senses, the Poet dares to reprecription, without the presence of the objects to be characterized. The more versatile the fancy, the more original and striking will be the decorations produced.» -British Synonyms discriminated, by W. Taylor.

Here is the full strength of the imagination involved in the word hangs, and exerted upon the whole image: First, the Fleet, an aggregate of many Ships, is represented as one mighty Person, whose track, we know and feel, is upon the waters; but, taking advantage of

sent it as hanging in the clouds, both for the gratifi-
cation of the mind in contemplating the image itself,
and in reference to the motion and appearance of the
sublime object to which it is compared.
From images of sight we will pass to those of sound:
Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods;

Is not this as if a man should undertake to supply an account of a building, and be so intent upon what he had discovered of the foundation as to conclude his task without once looking up at the superstructure? of the same bird, Here, as in other instances throughout the volume, the judicions Author's mind is enthralled by Etymology;

His voice was buried among trees,
Yet to be come at by the breeze;

O, Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird,
Or but a wandering Voice?

The Stock-dove is said to coo, a sound well imitating the note of the bird; but, by the intervention of the metaphor broods, the affections are called in by the imagination to assist in marking the manner in which the Bird reiterates and prolongs her soft note, as if herself delighting to listen to it, and participating of a still and quiet satisfaction, like that which may be supposed inseparable from the continuous process of incubation. << His voice was buried among trees,» a metaphor expressing the love of seclusion by which this Bird is marked; and characterising its note as not partaking of the shrill and the piercing, and therefore more easily deadened by the intervening shade; yet a note so peculiar, and withal so pleasing, that the breeze, gifted with that love of the sound which the poet feels, penetrates the shade in which itis entombed and conveys

it to the ear of the listener.

Shall I call thee Bird,

Or but a wandering Voice?

This concise interrogation characterises the seeming ubiquity of the voice of the Cuckoo, and dispossesses the creature almost of a corporeal existence; the imagination being tempted to this exertion of her power by a consciousness in the memory that the Cuckoo is almost perpetually heard throughout the season of Spring, but seldom becomes an object of sight.

Thus far of images independent of each other, and immediately endowed by the mind with properties that do not inhere in them, upon an incitement from properties and qualities the existence of which is inherent and obvious. These processes of imagination are carried on either by conferring additional properties upon an object, or abstracting from it some of those which it actually possesses, and thus enabling it to re-act upon | the mind which hath performed the process, like a new existence.

I pass from the Imagination acting upon an individual image to a consideration of the same faculty employed upon images in a conjunction by which they modify each other. The Reader has already had a fine instance before him in the passage quoted from Virgil, where the apparently perilous situation of the Goat, hanging upon the shaggy precipice, is contrasted with that of the Shepherd, contemplating it from the

seclusion of the Cavern in which he lies stretched at

ease and in security. Take these images separately, and how unaffecting the picture compared with that produced by their being thus connected with, and op

posed to, each other!

As a huge Stone is sometimes seen to lie
Couched on the bald top of an eminence,
Wonder to all who do the same espy

By what means it could thither come, and whence,
So that it seems a thing endued with sense,
Like a Sea-beast crawled forth, which on a shelf
Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun himself.

Such seemed this Man; not all alive or dead,
Nor all asleep, in his extreme old age.
Motionless as a cloud the old Man stood,
That beareth not the loud winds when they call,
And moveth altogether if it move at all.

In these images, the conferring, the abstracting, and
the modifying powers of the Imagination, immediately
and mediately acting, are all brought into conjunction.

The Stone is endowed with something of the power of life to approximate it to the Sea-beast; and the Seabeast stripped of some of its vital qualities to assimilate it to the stone; which intermediate image is thus treated for the purpose of bringing the original image, that of the stone, to a nearer resemblance to the figure and condition of the aged Man; who is divested of so much of the indications of life and motion as to bring him to the point where the two objects unite and coalesce in just comparison. After what has been said, the image of the Cloud need not be commented upon.

Thus far of an endowing or modifying power: but the Imagination also shapes and creates; and how? By innumerable processes; and in none does it more delight than in that of consolidating numbers into unity, and dissolving and separating unity into number, sublime consciousness of the soul in her own mighty -alternations proceeding from, and governed by, a and almost divine powers. Recur to the passage already cited from Milton. When the compact Fleet, as one Person, has been introduced « Sailing from Bengala,» « They,» i. e. the « Merchants,» representing the Fleet resolved into a Multitude of Ships, «ply » their voyage towards the extremities of the earth : « So» (referring to the word « As» in the commencement) «seemed the flying Fiend;» the image of his Person acting to recombine the multitude of Ships into one body, the point from which the comparison set out. << So seemed,» and to whom seemed? To the heavenly Muse who dictates the poem, to the eye of the Poet's mind, and to that of the Reader, present at one moment in the wide Ethiopian, and the next in the solitudes, then first broken in upon, of the infernal regions!

Modo me Thebis, modo ponit Athenis.

Hear again this mighty Poet,-speaking of the Messiah
going forth to expel from Heaven the rebellious Angels,

Attended by ten thousand, thousand Saints
He onward came: far off his coming shone,-

the retinue of Saints, and the Person of the Messiah
himself, lost almost and merged in the splendour of

that indefinite abstraction, « His coming!»

As I do not mean here to treat this subject further than to throw some light upon the present Edition, and especially upon one division of it, I shall spare myself and the Reader the trouble of considering the Imagination as it deals with thoughts and sentiments, as it regulates the composition of characters, and de(more than I have already done by implication) as that termines the course of actions: I will not consider it power which, in the language of one of my most esteemed Friends, « draws all things to one, which makes things animate or inanimate, beings with their attributes, subjects with their accessaries, take one colour and serve to one effect.» The grand store-houses of enthusiastic and meditative Imagination, of poetical, as contradistinguished from human and dramatic Imagination, are the prophetic and lyrical parts of the Holy Scriptures, and the works of Milton, to which I cannot forbear to add those of Spenser. I select these writers in preference to those of ancient Greece and Rome, because the anthropomorphitism of the Pagan religion subjected the minds of the greatest poets in those

1 Charles Lamb upon the genius of Hogarth.

countries too much to the bondage of definite form; from which the Hebrews were preserved by their abhorrence of idolatry. This abhorrence was almost as strong in our great epic Poet, both from circumstances of his life, and from the constitution of his mind. However imbued the surface might be with classical literature, he was a Hebrew in soul; and all things tended in him towards the sublime. Spenser, of a gentler nature, maintained his freedom by aid of his allegorical spirit, at one time inciting him to create persons out of abstractions; and, at another, by a superior effort of genius, to give the universality and permanence of abstractions to his human beings, by means of attributes and emblems that belong to the highest moral truths and the purest sensations,-of which his character of Una is a glorious example. Of the human and dramatic Imagination the works of Shakspeare are an inexhaustible source.

I tax not you, ye Elements, with unkindness;

I never gave you Kingdoms, called you Daughters! And if, bearing in mind the many Poets distinguished by this prime quality, whose names I omit to mention; yet justified by a recollection of the insults which the Ignorant, the Incapable, and the Presumptuous, have heaped upon these and my other writings, I may be permitted to anticipate the judgment of posterity upon myself; I shall declare (censurable, I grant, if the notoriety of the fact above stated does not justify me) that I have given, in these unfavourable times, evidence of exertions of this faculty upon is worthiest objects, the external universe, the moral and religious sentiments of Man, his natural affections, and his acquired passions; which have the same ennobling tendency as the productions of men, in this kind, worthy to be holden in undying remembrance.

I dismiss this subject with observing-that, in the series of Poems placed under the head of Imagination, I have begun with one of the earliest processes of Nature in the development of this faculty. Guided by one of my own primary consciousnesses, I have represented a commutation and transfer of internal feelings, co-operating with external accidents to plant, for immortality, images of sound and sight, in the celestial soil of the Imagination. The Boy, there introduced, is listening, with something of a feverish and restless anxiety, for the recurrence of the riotous sounds which he had previously excited; and, at the moment when the intenseness of his mind is beginning to remit, he is surprised into a perception of the solemn and tranquillizing images which the Poem describes.-The Poems next in succession exhibit the faculty exerting itself upon various objects of the external universe; then follow others, where it is employed upon feelings, characters, and actions; and the Class is concluded with imaginative pictures of moral, political, and religious sentiments.

To the mode in which Fancy has already been characterised as the Power of evoking and combining, or, as my friend Mr Coleridge has styled it, a the aggregative and associative Power,» my objection is only that the definition is too general. To aggregate and to associate, to evoke and to combine, belong as well to the Imagi

In the present edition, such of these as were furnished by

&sttish subjects are incorporated with a class entitled, Memorials of a Tour in Scotland,

nation as to the Fancy; but either the materials evoked and combined are different; or they are brought together under a different law, and for a different purpose. Fancy does not require that the materials which she makes use of should be susceptible of change in their constitution, from her touch: and, where they admit of modification, it is enough for her purpose if it be slight, limited, and evanescent. Directly the reverse of these, are the desires and demands of the Imagination. She recoils from every thing but the plastic, the pliant, and the indefinite. She leaves it to Fancy to describe Queen Mab as coming,

In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an Alderman.

"

Having to speak of stature, she does not tell you that her gigantic Angel was as tall as Pompey's Pillar; much less that he was twelve cubits, or twelve hundred cubits high; or that his dimensions equalled those of Teneriffe or Atlas;-because these, and if they were a million times as high, it would be the same, are bounded: The table firmament!-When the Imagination frames a expression is, «< His stature reached the sky!» the illimicomparison, if it does not strike on the first presentation, a sense of the truth of the likeness, from the moment that it is perceived, grows-and continues to grow-upon the mind; the resemblance depending less upon outline of form and feature than upon expression and effect, less upon casual and outstanding, than upon inherent and internal, properties : — moreover, the images invariably modify each other. The law under which the processes of Fancy are carried on is as capricious as the accidents of things, and the effects are surprising, playful, ludicrous, amusing, tender, or pathetic, as the objects happen to be appositely produced or fortunately combined. Fancy depends upon the rapidity and profusion with which she scatters her thoughts and images, trusting that their number, and the felicity with which they are linked together, will make amends for the want of individual value or she prides herself upon the curious subtilty and the successful elaboration with which she can detect their lurking affinities. If she can win you over to her purpose, and impart to you her feelings, she cares not how unstable or transitory may be her influence, knowing that it will not be out of her power to resume it upon an apt occasion. But the Imagination is conscious of an indestructible dominion;-the Soul may fall away from it, not being able to sustain its grandeur; but, if once felt and acknowledged, by no act of any other faculty of the mind can it be relaxed, impaired, or diminished.-Fancy is given to quicken and to beguile the temporal part of our Nature, Imagination to incite and to support the eternal.-Yet is it not the less true that Fancy, as she is an active, is also, under her own laws and in her own spirit, a creative faculty. In what manner Fancy ambitiously aims at a rivalship with the Imagination, and Imagination stoops to work with the materials of Fancy, might be illustrated from the compositions of all eloquent writers, whether in prose or verse; and chiefly from those of our own Country. Scarcely a page of the impassioned parts of Bishop Taylor's Works can be opened that shall not afford examples.-Referring the Reader to those inestimable Volumes, I will content myself with placing a conceit (ascribed to Lord Chesterfield) in contrast with a passage from the Paradise Lost;

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