TAM O' SHANTER

Written in 1790.

498. 1. chapman billies, peddler fellows.

4. tak the gate, leave town, take the road, g: home.

5. nappy, ale.

6. unco, very.

7. lang Scots miles. The ancient Scottish mie

was 1.976 yards.

8. slaps, openings.

16. bonie, see 497. a. 3, note.

19. skellum, scamp.

20. blellum, 'loud-mouth,' blow-hard.'

23. ilka melder, every grist.

24. siller, 497. b. 11, note.

25. ev'ry naig, etc. Every horse that was shoc ca'd, driven.

28. Kirkton, the village near any church. 30. Doon, a charming little river near Burns? birthplace. Compare Bonie Doon, p. 501.

31. warlocks, see 495. b. 49, note. 33. gars me greet, makes me grieve. 39. ingle, see 492. 23, note. 499. 40. reamin swats, foaming ale. 41. Souter, cobbler.

WORDSWORTH: PREFACE TO LYRICAL BALLADS

This preface, in which Wordsworth sets forth his theory of poetry, was prefixed to the second edi tion of Lyrical Ballads in 1800, and enlarged and modified in subsequent issues to the shape in which it is here given.

504. b. 27-9. Catullus (87-47 B. C.), Terence (c. 195-158 B. C.) and Lucretius (95-55 B. C.) belong to the earlier or classical period of Roman poetry; Statius (61-96 A. D.) and Claudian (fl. c. 400 A. D.) to the later or Silver Age.'

510. b. 26. Shakspere hath said. Hamlet IV, iv, 37. 513. a. 5. Clarissa Harlowe (1748), Richardson's novel.

6. The Gamester (1753). A tragedy by Edward Moore portraying the horrors of gambling.

THE PRELUDE

This poem is so called because it was intended to be introductory to a great philosophical poem Wordsworth planned on retiring to the Lake District in 1799, with the hope of being enabled to construct a literary work that might live.' As a preliminary it seemed to him a reasonable thing that he should take a review of his own mind, and examine how far Nature and education had qualified him for such an employment. The philosophical poem was to be divided into three parts, and only one of these, The Excursion, was ever finished. the introductory work, in which Wordsworth dertook to record, in verse, the origin and progress of his own powers, as far as he was acquainted with

But

un

them,' was completed in 1805, although it was not published till 1850, after the poet's death, when it was given the title, The Prelude, or Growth of a Poet's Mind; an Autobiographical Poem. Our extract is taken from Book I, which was begun at Goslar, in Germany, and finished in the first year or two of Wordsworth's settlement at Grasmere. Lines 101-163 were published in 1809 in Coleridge's periodical The Friend. The whole poem was addressed to Coleridge as a dear friend, most distinguished for his knowledge and genius, and to whom the author's intellect is deeply indebted.' 516 2-4. Wordsworth was born at Cockermouth, in Cumberland, and in his ninth year was sent to Hawkshead Grammar School in the Vale of

101-114. The nominative of this whole sentence is 'thou,' referring to the Wisdom and Spirit of the universe,' addressed in the opening lines; the verb is didst intertwine'; and lines 108-114 are an extension of this predicate. By intertwining the passions with Nature, the Divine Spirit purifies and ennobles them; the very emotions of pain and fear, awakened by contact with Nature, gain a touch of Nature's grandeur.

133-7. What is meant exactly by shod with steel' and 'games confederate '?

143. an alien sound. The weird echo from the distant hills seemed to come from another world. 150. reflex, the reflection of a star in the ice. 155. spinning still. To the swift skater, aided by the wind, the banks seem to be moving in the contrary direction, and their motion seems to continue for a moment or two even after he has stopped, the mental impression being retained.

LINES COMPOSED ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY Wordsworth wrote of this poem, originally published in Lyrical Ballads: -No poem of mine was composed under circumstances more pleasant for me to remember than this. I began it upon leaving Tintern, after crossing the Wye, and concluded it just as I was entering Bristol in the evening, after a ramble of four or five days with my sister. Not

a line of it was altered, and not any part of written down till I reached Bristol.'

The importance of this poem as an illustration f Wordsworth's view of Nature has been already touched on in the Introduction; but it cannot be urged too strongly. Myers says: To compar small things with greator, rather, to compare great things with things vastly greater the esse tial spirit of the Lines near Tintern Abbey was in practical purposes as new to mankind as the essen tial spirit of the Sermon on the Mount. Not the isolated expression of moral ideas, but their fusion into a whole in one memorable personality, is th which connects them for ever with a single name Therefore it is that Wordsworth is venerated; cause to so many men - indifferent, it may be, t literary or poetical effects, as such he has show by the subtle intensity of his own emotion how the contemplation of Nature can be made a revealing agency, like Love or Prayer an opening, if it deed there be any opening, into the transcendent world.'

518. 1-2. Wordsworth's earlier visit alone and on foot, in 1793.

was made

3-5. The Wye Valley, above Tintern Abbey, is perhaps, the most beautiful river scenery in Eng land. Although only a few miles from the sea, the stream is free from the influence of the tide; and rocks, meadows, and wooded cliffs combine to make the scene one of romantic loveliness.

23-50. The memory has been a consolation to the poet amid the noise and loneliness of city life (2331); it has given him, too, feelings of pleasure, which he no longer remembers, but which, he is sure, have had their influence on his moral char acter (31-36); and, finally, when perplexed by the mysteries of human life, he has been uplifted by the recollection of Nature's loveliness to a mood. in which the soul, endowed with spiritual insight, penetrates beyond material things to the secret e life, and sees with joy the divine harmony underly ing the apparent contradictions of the world (3650).

56. Have oppressed my spirits.

66-111. Wordsworth in this passage distinguishes three periods in his relation to Nature. In the first, Nature merely offered opportunity for boyist pleasures, such as bird-nesting, rowing, and ska ing, described in the extract from The Prelude; the second he took delight in the forms and colors of the woods and mountains and the sound of the waterfalls-a delight of ey and ear only, for be was as yet insensible

to the moods

Of time and season, to the moral power, The affections and the spirit of the place. In the third period, Nature had a moral and spir itual significance and helped him to understand th mystery of human life. The best commentary is a passage in The Prelude (Book VIII, 340-356), in which he sets forth the same succession of his de light in Nature-first, animal, second, sensuous. third, moral and contemplative.

519. 90-104. In this, which we have called the moral or contemplative period, Wordsworth see

every object in Nature as pervaded by the Spirit of God. The Prelude, Book II, 396-409.

108. Wordsworth noted the resemblance of this line to Young's Night-Thoughts, in which it is said that 'Our senses, as our reason, are divine,'' And half-create the wondrous world they see.'

110. In nature as revealed and interpreted by the

senses.

114-122. Dorothy Wordsworth was a little younger than her brother, and even in her childhood was a refining influence in his life. See what he writes of her in The Sparrow's Nest, p. 527. From childhood they were separated until they were both over twenty, when Dorothy became, not only her brother's constant companion and helper, but a hallowing influence in the crisis of his life.

128. inform, mold, inspire.

152. Of past existence, of my own past life. Cf.

119-123.

STRANGE FITS OF PASSION

This and the four following poems belong to what is known as the Lucy' group of lyrics, written in Germany in 1799. Nothing is known of the English maiden so beautifully and devoutly enshrined; she may have existed only in the poet's imagination. 520. 2. Dove, a river in the English Midlands. 6. diurnal course, daily revolution.

MICHAEL

This poem was written in Oct.-Dec., 1800,

'Michael was

largely at the sheep-fold in Green-head Ghyll, round which the subject is centered. Wordsworth said to Mr. Justice Coleridge that there was some foundation in fact, however slight, for every poem he had ever written of a narrative kind. founded on the son of an old couple having become dissolute, and run away from his parents; and on an old shepherd having been seven years in building up a sheep-fold in a solitary valley.' He wrote on another occasion: In the two poems, The Brothers and Michael, I have attempted to draw a picture of the domestic affections, as I know they exist amongst a class of men who are now almost confined to the north of England. They are small independent proprietors of land, here called statesmen,' men of respectable education, who daily labor on their own little properties. The domestic affections will always be strong amongst men who live in a country not crowded with population, if these men are placed above poverty. But if they are proprietors of small estates which have descended to them from their ancestors, the power which these affections acquire amongst such men is inconceivable by those who have only had an opportunity of observing hired laborers, farmers, and the manufacturing poor.

Their little tract of land serves as a kind of permanent rallying point for their domestic feelings, as a tablet on which they are written, which makes them objects of memory in a thousand instances, when they would otherwise be forgotten. It is a fountain fitted to the nature of social man, from which supplies of affection, as pure as his heart was intended for, are daily drawn. This class of men is rapidly disappearing.'

MY HEART LEAPS UP WHEN I BEHOLD Wordsworth adopted the last three lines of this little poem (written in 1802) as the motto of the great Ode on Immortality, which was begun about a year later. Piety' is used in its original sense of reverence, affection.' The meaning is that the man should cherish the love of Nature he feels as a child, so that it may be a continuous inspiration, running through all his life. The sense in which the child is father of the man' is explained more fully in the Ode. (See p. 535.)

THE SPARROW'S NEST

Written at Grasmere in 1801. The nest was in the hedge of the garden at Cockermouth in which William and Dorothy Wordsworth played as children. In the poem as originally composed, 1. 9 read: My sister Dorothy and I.' As to Dorothy Wordsworth see note on Tintern Abbey, 114-122, above.

RESOLUTION AND INDEPENDENCE

Written at Grasmere, 1802. This old man I met a few hundred yards from my cottage; and the account of him is taken from his own mouth. I was in the state of feeling described in the beginning of the poem, while crossing over Barton fell from Mr. Clarkson's, at the foot of Ullswater, towards Askham. The image of the hare I then observed on the ridge of the fell.' (Wordsworth's note.)

528. 12. plashy, marshy, swampy, boggy. 43. Chatterton. See pp. 377 and 390. 45. Him. Burns. See p. 490.

TO A YOUNG LADY

Written 1802. The poem refers either to Dorothy Wordsworth or to Mary Hutchinson - probably to the former.

530. 17. a Lapland night. In the far north at a certain season of the year the sun does not sink below the horizon. The winter nights are often calm and still.

THE SOLITARY REAPER

Suggested to Wordsworth by the following sentence in the MS. of his friend Wilkinson's Tours to the British Mountains: 'Passed a female who was reaping along; she sang in Erse, as she bended over her sickle; the sweetest human voice I ever heard; her strains were tenderly melancholy, and felt delicious long after they were heard no more.'

YARROW UNVISITED

'At Clovenford, being so near to the Yarrow, we could not but think of the possibility of going thither, but came to the conclusion of reserving the pleasure for some future time, in consequence of which, after our return, William wrote the poem which I shall here transcribe.'- From Dorothy Wordsworth's Recollections of a Tour made in Scotland, 1803.

When Scott sent The Lay of the Last Minstrel to Wordsworth, the latter returned a copy of these verses by way of acknowledgment. Scott in reply