poet Thomas Chatterton (1752?1770) became a is, a natural poet who died young and poor, without
prime symbol of neglected boy genius for the adequate recognition, and who seemed to have
Romantics. He came to public attention in his hastened his death through dissipation.
hometown of Bristol in the West of England as the 4. In Wordsworth's analysis of this passage he says
discoverer of the long-lost manuscripts of a local that the stone is endowed with something of life,
15th-century monk named 'Thomas Rowley.' the sea beast is stripped of some of its life to assim
Rowley's works?in fact Chatterton's own inven-ilate it to the stone, and the old man divested of
tions?included many poems. His pseudo-enough life and motion to make 'the two objects
Chaucerian 'An Excelente Balade of Charitie' unite and coalesce in just comparison.' He used
used the rhyme royal stanza form that Wordsworth the passage to demonstrate his theory of how the
employs here. Reports of the frustrations that 'conferring, the abstracting, and the modifying
Chatterton experienced in his attempts to interest powers of the Imagination . . . are all brought into
the London literary establishment in such 'discov-conjunction' (Preface to the Poems of 1815). Cf.
eries' provided the seed for that Romantic myth-Coleridge's brief definitions of the imagination in
making in which Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Biographia Literaria, chap. 13 (p. 477).
.
304 / WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
As if some dire constraint of pain, or rage
Of sickness felt by him in times long past,
70 A more than human weight upon his frame had cast.
11
Himself he propped, limbs, body, and pale face,
Upon a long grey staff of shaven wood:
And, still as I drew near with gentle pace,
Upon the margin of that moorish flood
75 Motionless as a cloud the old Man stood,
That heareth not the loud winds when they call;
And moveth all together, if it move at all.
12
At length, himself unsettling, he the pond
Stirred with his staff, and fixedly did look
so Upon the muddy water, which he conned,0 studied
As if he had been reading in a book:
And now a stranger's privilege I took;
And, drawing to his side, to him did say,
'This morning gives us promise of a glorious day.'
13
85 A gentle answer did the old Man make,
In courteous speech which forth he slowly drew:
And him with further words I thus bespake,
'What occupation do you there pursue?
This is a lonesome place for one like you.'
90 Ere he replied, a flash of mild surprise
Broke from the sable orbs of his yet-vivid eyes.
14
His words came feebly, from a feeble chest,
But each in solemn order followed each,
With something of a lofty utterance drest?
95 Choice word and measured phrase, above the reach
