transcription of the manuscripts in the Wordsworth Library at Dove Cottage (Oxford University Press, 1991). Dorothy Wordsworth's poems, written mainly for children in her brother's household and surviving as manuscripts in one or another family commonplace book, were not collected until 1987, when Susan M. Levin edited thirty of them in an appendix ('The Collected Poems of Dorothy Wordsworth') to her Dorothy Wordsivorth and Romanticism. The two poems included here are reprinted from this source.
From The Alfoxden Journal Jan. 31, 1798. Set forward to Stowey1 at half-past five. A violent storm in
the wood; sheltered under the hollies. When we left home the moon
immensely large, the sky scattered over with clouds. These soon closed in,
contracting the dimensions of the moon without concealing her.2 The sound
of the pattering shower, and the gusts of wind, very grand. Left the wood when
nothing remained of the storm but the driving wind, and a few scattering drops
of rain. Presently all clear, Venus first showing herself between the struggling
clouds; afterwards Jupiter appeared. The hawthorn hedges, black and pointed,
glittering with millions of diamond drops; the hollies shining with broader
patches of light. The road to the village of Holford glittered like another
1. I.e., to Coleridge's cottage at Nether Stowey, 2. Cf. Coleridge's Christabel, lines 16?19 three miles from Alfoxden. (p. 450).
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THE ALFOXDEN JOURNAL / 391
stream. On our return, the wind high?a violent storm of hail and rain at the
Castle of Comfort.3 All the Heavens seemed in one perpetual motion when
the rain ceased; the moon appearing, now half veiled, and now retired behind
heavy clouds, the stars still moving, the roads very dirty.
$ * *
Feb. 3. A mild morning, the windows open at breakfast, the redbreasts sing
ing in the garden. Walked with Coleridge over the hills. The sea at first
obscured by vapour; that vapour afterwards slid in one mighty mass along the
sea-shore; the islands and one point of land clear beyond it. The distant coun
try (which was purple in the clear dull air), overhung by straggling clouds that
sailed over it, appeared like the darker clouds, which are often seen at a great
distance apparently motionless, while the nearer ones pass quickly over them,
driven by the lower winds. I never saw such a union of earth, sky, and sea.
The clouds beneath our feet spread themselves to the water, and the clouds
of the sky almost joined them. Gathered sticks in the wood; a perfect stillness.
The redbreasts sang upon the leafless boughs. Of a great number of sheep in
the field, only one standing. Returned to dinner at five o'clock. The moonlight still and warm as a summer's night at nine o'clock.
Feb. 4. Walked a great part of the way to Stowey with Coleridge. The morning warm and sunny. The young lasses seen on the hill-tops, in the villages and roads, in their summer holiday clothes?pink petticoats and blue. Mothers with their children in arms, and the little ones that could just walk, tottering by their side. Midges or small flies spinning in the sunshine; the songs of the lark and redbreast; daisies upon the turf; the hazels in blossom; honeysuckles budding. I saw one solitary strawberry flower under a hedge. The furze gay with blossom. The moss rubbed from the pailings by the sheep, that leave locks of wool, and the red marks with which they are spotted, upon the wood.4
* * *
Feb. 8. Went up the Park, and over the tops of the hills, till we came to a
new and very delicious pathway, which conducted us to the Coombe.5 Sat a
considerable time upon the heath. Its surface restless and glittering with the
motion of the scattered piles of withered grass, and the waving of the spiders'
threads.6 On our return the mist still hanging over the sea, but the opposite
coast clear, and the rocky cliffs distinguishable. In the deep Coombe, as we
stood upon the sunless hill, we saw miles of grass, light and glittering, and the insects passing.
Feb. 9. William gathered sticks.
Feb. 10. Walked to Woodlands, and to the waterfall. The adder's-tongue
and the ferns green in the low damp dell. These plants now in perpetual motion
from the current of the air; in summer only moved by the drippings of the
