“I saw the figure of a lovely maid,
Seated, alone, beneath a darksome tree,
Whose fondly-overhanging canopy
Set off her brightness with a pleasing shade.
No spirit was she; that my heart betrayed,
For she was one I loved exceedingly;
But while I gazed in tender reverie
(Or was it sleep that with my fancy played?),
The bright corporeal presence--form and face--
Remaining still distinct, grew thin and rare,
Like sunny mists; at length the golden hair,
Shape, limbs, and heavenly features, keeping pace,
Each with the other, in a lingering race
Of dissolution, melted into air.”
In 1823, Wordsworth again visited the Continent, making a short tour,
with his wife, in Belgium and Holland. As usual, a journal of travel was
kept by the poet, and is printed, partly at least, in the “Memoirs.” At
the close of the summer, in the next year, he made a short excursion in
North Wales, the records of which are contained in a letter to Sir
George Beaumont, dated Hindwell, Radnor, September 20, 1824.[L] Again,
in 1828, the poet, accompanied by his daughter, Dora, made an excursion
to see Coleridge, through Belgium, and up the Rhine. And it was at this
time that the “Incident at Bruges” was written, concerning which the
poet says:--“Dora and I, while taking a walk along a retired part of the
town, heard the voice as here described, and were afterwards informed
that it was a Convent, in which were many English. We were both much
touched, I may say, affected, and Dora moved, as appears in the verses.”
The “Lines on a Jewish Family,” were likewise written on this tour. The
poet, his daughter, and Coleridge were at St. Goar, when they first saw
this family. They had provided themselves with a basket of provisions
for the day, and offered the poor people a share of them. The mother
refused for the rest, because it was a fast-day, adding, that whether
such observances were right or wrong, it was her duty to keep them. They
were all poor, ragged, and hungry, but exceedingly beautiful, and the
self-command, self-respect, and self-sacrifice of the woman is the moral
of this little story, I think, although no allusion is made to it in the
poem.
In 1829, Wordsworth made a tour in Ireland, with J. Marshall, Esq., M.P.
of Leeds. All through his life Wordsworth had a horror of Popery; and
this journey, with his Continental tours, tended to confirm it with
still greater intensity. He hated Popery because it was the avowed enemy
of freedom, and he would not sanction the Catholic Emancipation Bill,
because he thought that by giving freedom to the Catholic religion, the
Government were but paving the way for a frightful domination over the
souls and bodies of men. Still he loved freedom--as his sonnets to
“Liberty,” and his enthusiastic sympathies with republican France, at
the outbreak of the first revolution sufficiently show. He was a
Churchman, however, devotedly attached to the traditions, forms, and
doctrines of the Church, and there was no moving him from these
foundations. He attributed the distress and misery of Ireland to the
priests--Catholic, of course--and to the false tenures of the land. The
country, he said, had never been fully conquered, and this was another
and a chief cause of the degradation of Ireland. The people were under
the control--absolute control--of the priests, ready to do their
bidding, let that bidding be what it might. And he trembled--as well he
might--for the power of the Irish Church! God forgive us, we are all at
the best but short-sighted mortals, and few can see the truth, save
through the medium of prejudice. The Irish Church, if _my_ vision be
clear, is one of the many stumbling blocks, and rubbish heaps in the way
of Irish civilization; and certainly the Roman Catholic Church is
another.
This tour supplied Wordsworth with very few materials for poetry. The
lines, however, in the fine poem on the “Power of Sound,” one of the
_finest_ poems which Wordsworth has written, commencing
“Thou too be heard, lone eagle!”
were, he says, suggested near the Giant’s Causeway, where he saw a pair
of eagles wheel over his head, and then dart off “as if to hide
themselves in a blaze of sky made by the setting sun.”
It was about this time also that the sweet poem, entitled “The Triad,”
was written, in which the daughters of Southey, Wordsworth, and
Coleridge, are bound together in the most musical and flowery forms, as
the three Graces. Wordsworth often promised these fair children to send
them down to immortality in his verses, but it was long before the mood
seized him, and the _modus operandi_ was made plain to him. At last the
ideas embodied in “The Triad” struck him, and the result is something
finer than the most vivid sculpture. The poet commences--
“Shew me the noblest youth of present time,
Whose trembling fancy would to love give birth;
Some god or hero from the Olympian clime
Returned to seek a consort upon earth;
Or, in no doubtful prospect let me see,
The brightest star of ages yet to be,
And I will mate and match him blissfully.”
So confident is he of the beauty and virtue of the three fair girls
hidden amongst the recesses of the hills, that he boasts of their
worthiness to match even the noblest of gods or heroes. And then he
invokes them to appear, whilst a youth expectant at his side, and
breathless as they,
“Looks to the earth and to the vacant air;
And with a wandering air that seems to chide,
Asks of the clouds what occupants they hide.”
And now the poet will fulfil his promise, and show the golden youth this
beautiful triad of Graces.
“Fear not a constraining measure!
--Yielding to the gentle spell,
Lucida! from domes of pleasure,
Or from cottage-sprinkled dell,
Comes to regions solitary,
Where the eagle builds her aery,
Above the hermit’s long-forsaken cell!
--She comes!--behold
That figure, like a ship with silver sail!
Nearer she draws; a breeze uplifts her veil;
Upon her coming wait
As pure a sunshine, and as soft a gale,
As e’er, on herbage-covering earthly mold,
Tempted the bird of Juno to unfold
His richest splendour,--when his veering gait,
And every motion of his starry train,
Seem governed by a strain
Of music, audible to him alone.”