1833 1835
Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg1
When first, descending from the moorlands,
I saw the Stream of Yarrow2 glide
Along a bare and open valley,
The Ettrick Shepherd3 was my guide. 5 When last along its banks I wandered,
Through groves that had begun to shed
Their golden leaves upon the pathways,
My steps the Border-minstrel4 led. The mighty Minstrel breathes no longer,
io 'Mid mouldering ruins low he lies;
And death upon the braes5 of Yarrow,
Has closed the Shepherd-poet's eyes: Nor has the rolling year twice measured,
From sign to sign, its stedfast course,
15 Since every mortal power of Coleridge
Was frozen at its marvellous source; The rapt One, of the godlike forehead,
The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth:
And Lamb,6 the frolic and the gentle,
20 Has vanished from his lonely hearth. Like clouds that rake the mountain-summits,
Or waves that own no curbing hand,
1. Wordsworth's niece relates how he was deeply 2. A river in the southeast of Scotland. moved by finding unexpectedly in a newspaper an 3. I.e., Hogg, who was born in Ettrick Forest (an
account of the death of the poet James Hogg. 'Half area in southeast Scotland near the border with
an hour afterwards he came into the room where England) and worked as a shepherd. He was dis-
the ladies were sitting and asked Miss Hutchinson covered as a writer by Sir Walter Scott and became
[his sister-in-law] to write down some lines which well known as a poet, essayist, editor, and novelist.
he had just composed.' All the writers named here, 4. Sir Walter Scott.
several of Wordsworth's closest friends among 5. The sloping banks of a stream.
them, had died between 1832 and 1835. 6. The essayist Charles Lamb.
.
322 / WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
How fast has brother followed brother, From sunshine to the sunless land!
25 Yet I, whose lids from infant slumber Were earlier raised, remain to hear A timid voice, that asks in whispers, 'Who next will drop and disappear?'
Our haughty life is crowned with darkness,
30 Like London with its own black wreath, On which with thee, O Crabbe!7 forth-looking, I gazed from Hampstead's breezy heath.
As if but yesterday departed, Thou too art gone before; but why, 35 O'er ripe fruit, seasonably gathered, Should frail survivors heave a sigh?
Mourn rather for that holy Spirit, Sweet as the spring, as ocean deep; For Her8 who, ere her summer faded,
40 Has sunk into a breathless sleep.
No more of old romantic sorrows, For slaughtered Youth or love-lorn Maid! With sharper grief is Yarrow smitten, And Ettrick mourns with her their Poet dead.
Nov. 21, 1835 1835
The Prelude The Prelude, now regarded as Wordsworth's crowning achievement, was unknown to the public at the time of his death in April 1850. When, three months later, it was published from manuscript by Wordsworth's literary executors, its title was given to it by the poet's wife, Mary. Wordsworth had referred to it variously as 'the poem to Coleridge,' 'the poem on the growth of my own mind,' and 'the poem on my own poetical education.'
For some seventy-five years this posthumous publication of 1850 was the only known text. Then in 1926 Ernest de Selincourt, working from manuscripts, printed an earlier version of the poem that Wordsworth had completed in 1805. Since that time other scholars have established the existence of a still earlier and much shorter version of The Prelude, in two parts, that Wordsworth had composed in 1798?99. The following seems to have been the process of composition that produced the three principal versions of the poem:
1. The Two-Part Prelude of 1799. Wordsworth originally planned, early in 1798, to include an account of his own development as a poet in his projected but never- completed philosophical poem The Recluse. While living in Germany during the autumn and winter of 1798?99, he composed a number of passages about his early experiences with nature. What had been intended to be part of The Recluse, however, 7. George Crabbe, the poet of rural and village 8. The poet Felicia Hemans, who died at forty- life, with whom Wordsworth contrasts himself in two.
