The Reverie of Poor Susan
Reading edition
Composed 1797.—Published 1800.
The Poem
Written 1801 or 1802. This arose out of my observations of the affecting music of these birds, hanging in this way in the London streets during the freshness and stillness of the spring morning.—I. F.
Placed by Wordsworth among his "Poems of the Imagination."—Ed. The preceding Fenwick note to this poem is manifestly inaccurate as to date, since the poem is printed in the "Lyrical Ballads" of 1800. In the edition of 1836 the date of composition is given as 1797, and this date is followed by Mr. Carter, the editor of 1857. Miss Wordsworth's Journal gives no date; and, as the Fenwick note is certainly incorrect—and the poem must have been written before the edition of 1800 came out— it seems best to trust to the date sanctioned by Wordsworth himself in 1836, and followed by his literary executor in 1857. I think it probable that the poem was written during the short visit which Wordsworth and his sister paid to their brother Richard in London in 1797, when he tried to get his tragedy, The Borderers, brought on the stage. The title of the poem from 1800 to 1805 was Poor Susan.—Ed.
The Poem
text variant footnote line number
At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears, Hangs a Thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years: Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard In the silence of morning the song of the Bird. 'Tis a note of enchantment; what ails her? She sees A mountain ascending, a vision of trees; Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide, And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside. Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale, Down which she so often has tripped with her pail; And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's, The one only dwelling on earth that she loves. She looks, and her heart is in heaven: but they fade, The mist and the river, the hill and the shade: The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise, And the colours have all passed away from her eyes! 1 2 3 A 5 10 15
Variant 1:
1820
There's a Thrush ... 1800
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Variant 2:
1802
The only one ... 1800
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Variant 3:
The following stanza, in the edition of 1800, was omitted in subsequent ones:
Poor Outcast! return—to receive thee once more The house of thy Father will open its door, And thou once again, in thy plain russet gown, May'st hear the thrush sing from a tree of its owni.
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Footnote A:
Wordsworth originally wrote "sees." S.T.C. suggested "views."—Ed.
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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.
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