Tricked out in proud disguise of cast-off weeds0 clothes 10 Which for that service had been husbanded,
By exhortation of my frugal Dame2?
Motley accoutrement, of power to smile
At thorns, and brakes, and brambles,?and, in truth,
More ragged than need was! O'er pathless rocks,
15 Through beds of matted fern, and tangled thickets,
Forcing my way, I came to one dear nook
Unvisited, where not a broken bough
Drooped with its withered leaves, ungracious sign
Of devastation; but the hazels rose
20 Tall and erect, with tempting clusters hung,
A virgin scene!?A little while I stood,
Breathing with such suppression of the heart
As joy delights in; and, with wise restraint
Voluptuous, fearless of a rival, eyed
25 The banquet;?or beneath the trees I sate
I. Wordsworth said in 1843 that these lines, writ-in the second edition of Lyrical Ballads, 1800. ten in Germany in 1798, were 'intended as part of 2. Ann Tyson, with whom Wordsworth lodged
a poem on my own life [T7ze Prelude], but struck while at Hawkshead grammar school.
out as not being wanted there.' He published them
.
28 0 / WILLIA M WORDSWORT H 3035404550Among the flowers, and with the flowers I played; A temper known to those, who, after long And weary expectation, have been blest With sudden happiness beyond all hope. Perhaps it was a bower beneath whose leaves The violets of five seasons re-appear And fade, unseen by any human eye; Where fairy water-breaks3 do murmur on For ever; and I saw the sparkling foam, And?with my cheek on one of those green stones That, fleeced with moss, under the shady trees, Lay round me, scattered like a flock of sheep? I heard the murmur and the murmuring sound, In that sweet mood when pleasure loves to pay Tribute to ease; and, of its joy secure, The heart luxuriates with indifferent things, Wasting its kindliness on stocks4 and stones, And on the vacant air. Then up I rose, And dragged to earth both branch and bough, with crash And merciless ravage: and the shady nook Of hazels, and the green and mossy bower, Deformed and sullied, patiently gave up Their quiet being: and, unless I now Confound my present feelings with the past, Ere from the mutilated bower I turned 55Exulting, rich beyond the wealth of kings, I felt a sense of pain when I beheld The silent trees, and saw the intruding sky.? Then, dearest Maiden,5 move along these shades In gentleness of heart; with gentle hand Touch?for there is a spirit in the woods. 1798 1800
The Ruined Cottage1
First Part
'Twas summer and the sun was mounted high.
Along the south the uplands feebly glared
3. Places where the flow of a stream is broken by The text reprinted here is from 'MS. D,' dated rocks. 1799, as transcribed by James Butler in the Cornell
4. Tree stumps. ('Stocks and stones' is a conven-Wordsworth volume, 'The Ruined Cottage' and tional expression for 'inanimate things.') 'The Pedlar' (1979).
5. In a manuscript passage originally intended to Concerning the principal narrator, introduced in lead up to 'Nutting,' the maiden is called Lucy. line 33, Wordsworth said in 1843, 'had I been born 1. Wordsworth wrote The Ruined Cottage in in a class which would have deprived me of what 1797?98, then revised it several times before he is called a liberal education, it is not unlikely that finally published an expanded version of the story being strong in body; I should have taken to a way as book I of The Excursion, in 1814. The Ruined of life such as that in which my Pedlar passed the Cottage was not published as an independent poem greater part of his days. . . . [T]he character I have until 1949, when it appeared in the fifth volume represented in his person is chiefly an idea of what of The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, I fancied my own character might have become in edited by Ernest de Selincourt and Helen Darbi-his circumstances.'
shire, who printed a version known as 'MS. B.'
.
THE RUINED COTTAGE / 281
Through a pale steam, and all the northern downs
In clearer air ascending shewed far off
Their surfaces with shadows dappled o'er
Of deep embattled clouds: far as the sight
Could reach those many shadows lay in spots
Determined and unmoved, with steady beams
Of clear and pleasant sunshine interposed;
