UPON PERUSING THE FOREGOING EPISTLE THIRTY YEARS AFTER ITS COMPOSITION
Reading edition
Composed 1841.—Published 1842
Included among the "Miscellaneous Poems."—Ed.
Soon did the Almighty Giver of all rest Take those dear young Ones to a fearless nest; And in Death's arms has long reposed the Friend For whom this simple Register was penned. Thanks to the moth that spared it for our eyes; 5 And Strangers even the slighted Scroll may prize, Moved by the touch of kindred sympathies. For—save the calm, repentance sheds o'er strife Raised by remembrances of misused life, The light from past endeavours purely willed 10 And by Heaven's favour happily fulfilled; Save hope that we, yet bound to Earth, may share The joys of the Departed—what so fair As blameless pleasure, not without some tears, Reviewed through Love's transparent veil of years?[A]15
The mighty tumults of the House of Keys;
The Isle of Man has a constitution of its own, independent of the Imperial Parliament. The House of twenty-four Keys is the popular assembly, corresponding to the British House of Commons; the Lieutenant-Governor and Council constitute the Upper House. All legislative measures must be first considered and passed by both branches, and afterwards transmitted to the English Sovereign for the Royal Assent before becoming law.
Mona from our Abode is daily seen, But with a wilderness of waves between;
In a letter written from Bootle to Sir George Beaumont on the 28th August 1811, Wordsworth says:—
"This is like most others, a bleak and treeless coast, but abounding in corn fields, and with a noble beach, which is delightful either for walking or riding. The Isle of Man is right opposite our window; and though in this unsettled weather often invisible, its appearance has afforded us great amusement. One afternoon above the whole length of it was stretched a body of clouds, shaped and coloured like a magnificent grove in winter, when whitened with snow and illuminated, by the morning sun, which, having melted the snow in part, has intermingled black masses among the brightness. The whole sky was scattered over with fleecy dark clouds, such as any sunshiny day produces, and which were changing their shapes and positions every moment. But this line of clouds was immovably attached to the island, and manifestly took their shape from the influence of its mountains. There appeared to be just span enough of sky to allow the hand to slide between the top of Snâfell, the highest peak in the island, and the base of this glorious forest, in which little change was noticeable for more than the space of half an hour."
In the Fenwick note, Wordsworth tells us that this Epistle was written in 1804; and by referring to the note prefixed to the first poem in the "Memorials of a Tour in Scotland," 1803, (see vol. ii. p. 377), it will be seen that the lines entitled Departure from the Vale of Grasmere, August, 1803, beginning—
The gentlest Shade that walked Elysian plains,
were "not actually written for the occasion, but transplanted from my Epistle to Sir George Beaumont."
It does not follow from this, however, that the lines belong to the year 1803 or 1804; because they were not published along with the earlier "Memorials" of the Scotch Tour, but appeared for the first time in the edition of 1827. It is certain that Wordsworth travelled down with his household from the Grasmere Parsonage to Bootle in August 1811—mainly to get some sea-air for his invalid children—and that he lived there for some time during the autumn of that year. He may have also gone down to the south-west coast of Cumberland in 1804, and then written a part of the poem; but we have no direct evidence of this; and I rather think that the mention of the year 1804 to Miss Fenwick is just another instance in which Wordsworth's memory failed him while dictating these memoranda. If the poem was not written at different times, but was composed as a whole in 1811, we may partly account for the date he gave to Miss Fenwick, when we remember that in the year 1827 he transferred a part of it (viz. the introduction) to these "Memorials" of the Scotch Tour of 1803.
Up many a sharply-twining road and down, And over many a wide hill's craggy crown, Through the quick turns of many a hollow nook, And the rough bed of many an unbridged brook.
Their route would be from Grasmere by Red Bank, over by High Close to Elter Water, by Colwith into Yewdale, on to Waterhead; then probably, from Coniston over Walna Scar, into Duddondale, and thence to Bootle.
Like a gaunt shaggy Porter forced to wait In days of old romance at Archimago's gate.
See Spenser's Faërie Queene, book i. canto i. stanza 8.
... the liveliest bird That in wild Arden's brakes was ever heard.
Compare As you like it, act II. scene 5.
And soon approach Diana's Looking-glass! To Loughrigg-tarn, etc.
See the note appended by Wordsworth to the sequel to this poem.
A glimpse I caught of that Abode, by Thee Designed to rise in humble privacy.
He imagines the house which Sir George Beaumont intended to build at Loughrigg Tarn, but which he never erected, to be really built by his friend, very much as in the sonnet named Anticipation, October, 1803, he supposes England to have been invaded, and the battle fought in which "the Invaders were laid low."
... behold a Peasant stand On high, a kerchief waving in her hand!
See the Fenwick note preceding the poem.
... a barren ridge we scale; Descend and reach, in Yewdale's depths, a plain.
They went up Little Langdale, I think, past the Tarn to Fell Foot, and crossed over the ridge of Tilberthwaite, into Yewdale by the copper mines.
Under a rock too steep for man to tread, Where sheltered from the north and bleak north-west Aloft the Raven hangs a visible nest, Fearless of all assaults that would her brood molest.
There is a Raven crag in Yewdale, evidently the one referred to in this passage, and also in the passage in the first book of The Prelude (see vol. iii. p. 142), beginning—
Oh! when I have hung Above the raven's nest, by knots of grass And half-inch fissures in the slippery rock But ill sustained, etc. ... toward the lowly Grange Press forward,
To Waterhead at the top of Coniston Lake.
In connection with Loughrigg Tarn, compare the note to the poem beginning—
So fair, so sweet, withal so sensitive,
and also the Biographical Sketch of Professor Archer Butler, prefixed to his Sermons, vol. i.—Ed.
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