LAODAMIA
Composed 1814.—Published 1815.
[Written at Rydal Mount. The incident of the trees growing and withering put the subject into my thoughts, and I wrote with the hope of giving it a loftier tone than, so far as I know, has been given to it by any of the Ancients who have treated of it. It cost me more trouble than almost anything of equal length I have ever written.—I.F.]
In 1815 and 1820 this poem was one of those "founded on the Affections"; afterwards it was classed among the "Poems of the Imagination."—Ed.
"With sacrifice before the rising morn
Vows have I made by fruitless hope inspired;
And from the infernal Gods, 'mid shades forlorn
Of night, my slaughtered Lord have I required:[1]
Celestial pity I again implore;—
Restore him to my sight—great Jove, restore!"
So speaking, and by fervent love endowed
With faith, the Suppliant heaven-ward lifts her hands;
While, like the sun emerging from a cloud,
Her countenance brightens—and her eye expands;
Her bosom heaves and spreads, her stature grows;
And she expects the issue in repose.
O terror! what hath she perceived?—O joy!
What doth she look on?—whom doth she behold?
Her Hero slain upon the beach of Troy?
His vital presence? his corporeal mould?
It is—if sense deceive her not—'tis He!
And a God leads him, wingèd Mercury!
Mild Hermes spake—and touched her with his wand
That calms all fear; "Such grace hath crowned thy prayer,
Laodamía! that at Jove's command
Thy Husband walks the paths of upper air:
He comes to tarry with thee three hours' space;
Accept the gift, behold him face to face!"
Forth sprang the impassioned Queen her Lord to clasp;
Again that consummation she essayed;
But unsubstantial Form eludes her grasp
As often as that eager grasp was made.
The Phantom parts—but parts to re-unite,
And re-assume his place before her sight.
"Protesiláus, lo! thy guide is gone!
Confirm, I pray, the vision with thy voice:
This is our palace,—yonder is thy throne;
Speak, and the floor thou tread'st on will rejoice.
Not to appal me have the gods bestowed
This precious boon; and blest a sad abode."
"Great Jove, Laodamía! doth not leave
His gifts imperfect:—Spectre though I be,
I am not sent to scare thee or deceive;
But in reward of thy fidelity.
And something also did my worth obtain;
For fearless virtue bringeth boundless gain.
"Thou knowest, the Delphic oracle foretold
That the first Greek who touched the Trojan strand
Should die; but me the threat could[2] not withhold:
A generous cause a victim did demand;
And forth I leapt upon the sandy plain;
A self-devoted chief—by Hector slain."
"Supreme of Heroes—bravest, noblest, best!
Thy matchless courage I bewail no more,
Which[3] then, when tens of thousands were deprest
By doubt, propelled thee to the fatal shore;
Thou found'st—and I forgive thee—here thou art—
A nobler counsellor than my poor heart.
55
"But thou, though capable of sternest deed,
Wert kind as resolute, and good as brave;
And he, whose power restores thee, hath decreed
Thou should'st elude[4] the malice of the grave:
Redundant are thy locks, thy lips as fair
As when their breath enriched Thessalian air.
"No Spectre greets me,—no vain Shadow this;
Come, blooming Hero, place thee by my side!
Give, on this well known couch, one nuptial kiss
To me, this day, a second time thy bride!"
Jove frowned in heaven: the conscious Parcæ threw
Upon those roseate lips a Stygian hue.
"This visage tells thee that my doom is past:
Nor should the change be mourned, even if the joys[5]
Of sense were able to return as fast
And surely as they vanish. Earth destroys
Those raptures duly—Erebus disdains:
Calm pleasures there abide—majestic pains.
"Be taught, O faithful Consort, to control
Rebellious passion: for the Gods approve
The depth, and not the tumult, of the soul;
A fervent, not ungovernable, love.[6]
Thy transports moderate; and meekly mourn
When I depart, for brief is my sojourn—"
"Ah, wherefore?—Did not Hercules by force
Wrest from the guardian Monster of the tomb
Alcestis, a reanimated corse,
Given back to dwell on earth in vernal bloom?[7]
Medea's spells dispersed the weight of years,
And Æson stood a youth 'mid youthful peers.
85
"The Gods to us are merciful—and they
Yet further may relent: for mightier far
Than strength of nerve and sinew, or the sway
Of magic potent over sun and star,
Is love, though oft to agony distrest,
And though his favourite seat be feeble woman's breast.
"But if thou goest, I follow—" "Peace!" he said,—
She looked upon him and was calmed and cheered;
The ghastly colour from his lips had fled;
In his deportment, shape, and mien, appeared
Elysian beauty, melancholy grace,
Brought from a pensive though a happy place.
He spake of love, such love as Spirits feel
In worlds whose course is equable and pure;
No fears to beat away—no strife to heal—
The past unsighed for, and the future sure;
Spake of heroic arts in graver mood
Revived, with finer harmony pursued;[8]
Of all that is most beauteous—imaged there
In happier beauty; more pellucid streams,
An ampler ether, a diviner air,
And fields invested with purpureal gleams;
Climes which the sun, who sheds the brightest day
Earth knows, is all unworthy to survey.
Yet there the Soul shall enter which hath earned
That privilege by virtue.—"Ill," said he,
"The end of man's existence I discerned,
Who from ignoble games and revelry
Could draw, when we had parted, vain delight,
While tears were thy best pastime, day and night;
115
"And while my youthful peers before my eyes
(Each hero following his peculiar bent)
Prepared themselves for glorious enterprise
By martial sports,—or, seated in the tent,
Chieftains and kings in council were detained;
What time the fleet at Aulis lay enchained.[A]
"The wished-for wind was given:—I then revolved
The oracle, upon the silent sea;[9]
And, if no worthier led the way, resolved
That, of a thousand vessels, mine should be
The foremost prow in pressing to the strand,—
Mine the first blood that tinged the Trojan sand.
"Yet bitter, oft-times bitter, was the pang
When of thy loss I thought, belovèd Wife!
On thee too fondly did my memory hang,
And on the joys we shared in mortal life,—
The paths which we had trod—these fountains, flowers;
My new-planned cities, and unfinished towers.
"But should suspense permit the Foe to cry,
'Behold they tremble!—haughty their array,
Yet of their number no one dares to die?'
In soul I swept the indignity away:
Old frailties then recurred:—but lofty thought,
In act embodied, my deliverance wrought.
"And Thou, though strong in love, art all too weak
In reason, in self-government, too slow;
I counsel thee by fortitude to seek
Our blest re-union in the shades below.
The invisible world with thee hath sympathised;
Be thy affections raised and solemnised.
145
"Learn, by a mortal yearning, to ascend
Seeking[10] a higher object. Love was given,
Encouraged, sanctioned, chiefly for that[11] end;
For this the passion to excess was driven—
That self might be annulled; her bondage prove
The fetters of a dream, opposed to love."—
Aloud she shrieked! for Hermes re-appears!
Round the dear Shade she would have clung—'tis vain:
The hours are past—too brief had they been years;
And him no mortal effort can detain:
Swift, toward the realms that know not earthly day,
He through the portal takes his silent way,
And on the palace-floor a lifeless corse She lay.
Thus, all in vain exhorted and reproved,
She perished; and, as for a wilful crime,
By the just Gods whom no weak pity moved,
Was doomed to wear out her appointed time,
Apart from happy Ghosts, that gather flowers[12]
Of blissful quiet 'mid unfading bowers.
—Yet tears to human suffering are due;
And mortal hopes defeated and o'erthrown
Are mourned by man, and not by man alone,
As fondly he believes.—Upon the side
Of Hellespont (such faith was entertained)
A knot of spiry trees for ages grew
From out the tomb of him for whom she died;
And ever, when such stature they had gained
That Ilium's walls were subject to their view,
The trees' tall summits withered at the sight;
A constant interchange of growth and blight![C]
After meeting the Wordsworths at Charles Lamb's, on the 9th May 1815, Henry Crabb Robinson wrote in his Diary: "It is the mere power which he is conscious of exerting in which he delights, not the production of a work in which men rejoice on account of the sympathies and sensibilities it excites in them. Hence, he does not much esteem his Laodamia, as it belongs to the inferior class of poems founded on the affections." (See Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence, vol. i. p. 482.)
Wordsworth wrote thus to Walter Savage Landor, from Rydal Mount, on the 21st of January 1824:—
"You have condescended to minute criticism upon the Laodamia.[D] I concur with you in the first stanza, and had several times attempted to alter it upon your grounds. I cannot, however, accede to your objection to the 'second birth,' merely because the expression has been degraded by Conventiclers.[E] I certainly meant nothing more by it than the eadem cura, and the largior æther, etc., of Virgil's Sixth Æneid. All religions owe their origin or acceptation to the wish of the human heart to supply in another state of existence the deficiencies of this, and to carry still nearer to perfection what we admire in our present condition, so that there must be many modes of expression arising out of this coincidence, or rather identity of feeling common to all Mythologies; and under this observation I should shelter the phrase from your censure—but I may be wrong in the particular case, though certainly not in the general principle. This leads to a remark in your last—'that you are disgusted with all books that treat of religion.' I am afraid it is a bad sign in me, that I have little relish for any other. Even in poetry it is the imaginative only, viz., that which is conversant with or turns upon Infinity, that powerfully affects me. Perhaps I ought to explain: I mean to say that except in those passages, where things are lost in each other, and limits vanish, and aspirations are raised, I read with something too like indifference; but all great Poets are in this view powerful Religionists."
In 1815 Charles Lamb wrote to Wordsworth, "Laodamia is a very original poem; I mean original with reference to your own manner. You have nothing like it. I should have seen it in a strange place, and greatly admired it, but not suspected its derivation." (The Letters of Charles Lamb, edited by Alfred Ainger, vol. i. p. 284.)
Mr. Hazlitt wrote of Laodamia: "It breathes the pure spirit of the finest fragments of antiquity—the sweetness, the gravity, the strength, the beauty, and the languor of Death. Its glossy brilliancy arises from the perfection of the finishing, like that of careful sculpture, not from gaudy colouring—the texture of the thoughts has the smoothness and solidity of marble. It is a poem that might be read aloud in Elysium, and the spirits of departed heroes and sages would gather round to listen to it."
I am indebted to the Headmaster of Fettes College, Edinburgh, the Rev. W. A. Heard, for the following illustrative notes on Laodamia:—
"This poem illustrates more completely than any other the sympathy of the poet with the spirit of antiquity in its purest and most exalted forms. The idea that underlies the poem is the same conception of 'pietas' which Virgil has embodied in the Æneid, and with which he has associated, especially in the sixth book, which Wordsworth in many passages recalls, great ethical and religious conceptions, derived in the main from the philosophy of Plato. 'Pietas' embraces all the duties of life that are based upon the affections—love of home and parents and children, love of the Gods of our Fathers, and a reverence for that great order of things in which man finds himself a part. The pious man believes in a destiny, or order transcending his own will: to exalt any passion, however innocent, above this, is a rebellion; to intensify any passion, so as to disturb the appropriate calm of resignation, is to act irreverently against the gods. Lesser duties must give way to greater: love of wife must give way to love of country, and the sorrow of bereavement must not obscure the larger issues of life. Thus, not only did Laodamia's yearning for the restoration of her husband to life show a failure to recognise the fixity of eternal laws, but her death was 'ὑπὲρ μόρον' and in reason's spite; it was, after all, self-will, and could not win the favour of heaven.
Blending with this notion of 'pietas,' we find the Platonic repudiation of sensuous and material life. This life is only a discipline under imperfect conditions, and to be set free from the passion and fretfulness of existence is the choice and longing of the wise.
The poem is thus notable, not so much for the assimilation of details, as for natural affinity to the spirituality of antiquity, of which Virgil is the purest exponent. Virgil's seriousness, his tenderness, his conception of the inevitable, and yet moral, order of the world, his desire for purification, his sadness, and yet complete freedom from unmanliness, his love of nature and belief in the sympathy of nature with man—all these are points of contact between the ancient and modern poet.
With sacrifice before the rising morn.
Offerings were made to the infernal deities in the interval between midnight and sunrise. See Virgil's Æneid, vi. 242-258. Sil. Ital., xiii. 405.
mactare repostis
Mos umbris, inquit, consueta piacula nigras
Sub lucem pecudes.
It is men's wont to offer to the buried shades the proper expiations of black sheep on the verge of dawn.
Her bosom heaves and spreads, her stature grows.
Non voltus, non color unus,
Non comptae mansere comae; sed pectus anhelum,
Et rabie fera corda tument; majorque videri,
Nec mortale sonans.Æneid vi. 47.
Neither face nor hue remained unchanged, nor braided the locks of her hair: but the bosom heaves and the heart swells wild with frenzy, and she is more majestic to behold, and her voice has no mortal sound.
. . . . wingèd Mercury.
Ἑρμῆς ψυχαγωγός or ψυχοπομπός, the conductor of souls.
. . . . with his wand.
Tum virgam capit: hac animas ille evocat Orco,
Pallentes, alias sub Tartara tristia mittit,
Dat somnos adimitque.Æneid iv. 242.
Then he takes the wand: with this he summons pale ghosts from Orcus, others he sends to gloomy Tartarus below: with this he gives and takes away sleep.
But unsubstantial Form eludes her grasp.
Ter conatus ibi collo dare bracchia circum,
Ter frustra comprensa manus effugit imago,
Par levibus ventis volucrique simillima somno.
Æneid vi. 700.
Thrice thereon he tried to cast his arms around his neck: thrice was the phantom grasped in vain and escaped the embrace, unsubstantial as the fleeting winds and shadowy like as winged sleep.
But in reward of thy fidelity.
And something also did my worth obtain.
'Vicit iter durum pietas,' is realised by these lines. 'Fidelity has prevailed to traverse the awful path.'
Thou knowest, the Delphic oracle foretold.
Sors quoque nescio quem fato designat iniquo,
Qui primus Danaum Troada tangat humum.
Ovid, Heroides, xiii. 93.
An oracle, moreover, destines some one or other for a cruel doom, who first of the Greeks sets foot on Trojan soil.
A nobler counsellor than my poor heart.
See Laodamia's words, Ovid, Heroides, xiii. 95.
Infelix quae prima virum lugebit ademptum;
Di faciant ne tu strenuus esse velis.
Hoc quoque praemoneo: de nave novissimus exi,
Non est quo properes terra paterna tibi.
Unhappy wife who shall be the first to lament a husband slain: God grant you may not choose the forward part: this warning too I give, be last to disembark: 'tis no fatherland to hasten to, no fatherland for you.
Give, on this well known couch, one nuptial kiss.
This is probably an adaptation of Ovid, Heroides, xiii. 117.
Quando erit ut lecto mecum bene junctus in uno
Militiae referas splendida facta tuae.
When will the time be that you will share the couch, and lovingly at my side recount the glorious deeds of your warfare?
Be taught, O faithful Consort, to control
Rebellious passion: for the Gods approve
The depth, and not the tumult, of the soul, etc.
Cf. Euripides, Iphigeneia in Aulide, 547:
γαλανείᾳ χρησάμενοι
μαινομένων οἴστρων.
Stilling to calmness the frenzied passions of love.
And again:
εἴη δέ μοι μετρία μὲν
χάρις πόθοι δ' ὅσιοι.
Mine be 'moderate transports' and holy yearnings.
. . . Did not Hercules by force.
This refers to the struggle between Hercules and Θάνατος.
Medea's spells dispersed the weight of years.
The story is found in Ovid, Metamorphoses, vii. 159-293.
Elysian beauty, melancholy grace,
Brought from a pensive though a happy place.
This is a perfect rendering of the tone of the Sixth Æneid.
Spake of heroic arts in graver mood
Revived, with finer harmony pursued.
Quae gratia currum
Armorumque fuit vivis, quae cura nitentes
Pascere equos, eadem sequitur tellure repostos.
Æneid vi. 653.
The charm of chariot and armour that they had in life, and the same care to pasture their glossy steeds, follow them deep buried under earth.
An ampler ether, a diviner air.
Largior hic campos aether et lumine vestit
Purpureo, solemque suum, sua sidera norunt.
Here an 'ampler ether' spreads around the plains, and clothes them in purple light, and they recognise a sun of their own, their own constellations.—Æneid vi. 640.
Yet bitter, oft-times bitter, was the pang.
Cf. Agamemnon's words, Iphigeneia in Aulide, 451-468.
My new-planned cities, and unfinished towers.
Cf. Homer, Iliad, ii. 700.
τοῦ δὲ καὶ ἀμφιδρυφὴς ἄλοχος Φυλάκῃ ἐλέλειπτο
καὶ δόμος ἡμιτελής.
But his wife too had been left at Phylace, her cheeks all marred with grief, and his palace half-finished.
In soul I swept the indignity away.
καὶ γὰρ οὐδέ τοί τι λίαν ἐμὲ φιλοψυχεῖν χρεών.
For neither of a surety ought I to cling to life too fondly.—Iphigeneia in Aulide, 1385.
It is from the character of Iphigeneia that Wordsworth derives these traits.
By the just Gods whom no weak pity moved.
We think of Virgil's tender line in the similar passage about Orpheus and Eurydice. Georg. iv. 488.
Quum subita incautum dementia cepit amantem,
Ignoscenda quidem, scirent si ignoscere Manes.
Pardonable indeed, were pardon known in the world of death.
Was doomed to wear out her appointed time.
Virg. Æn. vi. 445—
His Phaedram Procrimque locis maestamque Eriphylen
Crudelis nati monstrantem volnera cernit,
Evadnenque et Pasiphaën:
His Laodamia
It comes.
Those who died of love dwelt in the 'Lugentes Campi,' in the outer regions of Orcus.
A knot of spiry trees ...
The passage in Pliny is—
Sunt hodie ex adverso Iliensium urbis juxta Hellespontum in Protesilai sepulcro arbores, quae omnibus aevis cum in tantum accrevere ut Ilium aspiciant, inarescunt rursusque adolescunt.—Hist. Nat. 16, 44 (88).
Opposite to Ilium and close to the Hellespont there are to this day trees growing on Protesilaus' tomb, which, in every generation, as soon as they have grown high enough to see Ilium, wither away and again shoot up.
Cf. Anthologia Graeca Pal. vii. 141.
σᾶμα δέ τοι πτελέῃσι συηρεφὲς ἀμφικομεῦσι
Νύμφαι ἀπεχθομένης Ἰλίου ἀντιπέρας,
δένδρεα δυσμήνιτα, καὶ ἤν ποτε τεῖχος ἴδωσι
Τρώϊον αὐαλέην φυλλοχοεῦντι κόμην.
But right opposite hated Ilium the nymphs shroud thy tomb with a roof of elms; trees blighting with a lasting wrath, and if ever they see the walls of Troy, they shed their withering leaves.
And again, vii. 385—
καρφοῦται πετάλων κόσμον ἀναινόμενα.
They wither, disowning the glory of leaves.
For a legend showing a similar sympathy between nature and man, see Æneid, iii. 22."
As Wordsworth tells us in the Fenwick note to Laodamia, that "it cost him more trouble than almost anything of equal length he had ever written," and as there are many incomplete passages and suppressed readings among his MSS., the two following stanzas—intended at first to follow the second stanza in the poem as it now stands—may be given in a supplementary note.—Ed.
That rapture failing, the distracted Queen
Knelt, and embraced the Statue of the God:
"Mighty the boon I ask, but Earth has seen
Effects as awful from thy gracious nod;
All-ruling Jove, unbind the mortal chain,
Nor let the force of prayer be spent in vain!"
Round the high-seated Temple a soft breeze
Along the columns sighed—all else was still—
Mute, vacant as the face of summer seas,
No sign accorded of a favouring will.
Dejected she withdraws—her palace-gate
Enters—and, traversing a room of state,
O terror! etc. etc.
VARIANTS:
[1] 1827.
. . . before the rising morn
Performed, my slaughtered Lord have I required;
And in thick darkness, amid shades forlorn,
Him of the infernal Gods have I desired:
[2] 1820.
1815.
. . . did . . .
[3] 1820.
1815.
That . . . did . . .
[4] 1845.
1815.
That thou should'st cheat . . .
[5] 1836.
1815.
Know, virtue were not virtue if the joys
[6] 1820.
1815.
The fervor—not the impotence of love.
[7] 1827.
1815.
Towards . . . in beauty's bloom?
[8] 1827.
Spake, as a witness, of a second birth
For all that is most perfect upon earth;
[9] 1820.
1815.
Our future course, upon the silent sea;[B]
[10] 1836.
1815.
Towards . . .
[11] 1827.
1815.
. . . this . . .
[12] 1845.
Ah, judge her gently who so deeply loved!
Her, who, in reason's spite, yet without crime,
Was in a trance of passion thus removed;
Delivered from the galling yoke of time
And these frail elements—to gather flowers
By no weak pity might the Gods be moved;
She who thus perished not without the crime
Of Lovers that in Reason's spite have loved,
Was doomed to wander in a grosser clime,
Apart from happy Ghosts—that gather flowers
Was doomed to wear out her appointed time,
Apart from happy Ghosts—
She—who, though warned, exhorted, and reproved,
Thus died, from passion desperate to a crime—
By the just Gods, whom no weak pity moved,
Was doomed to wear out.
She perished thus, admonished and reproved
In vain; and even as for a wilful crime
By the just Gods,
Thus, though forewarned, exhorted, and reproved,
She perished; and even as for a wilful crime,
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Wordsworth mentioned in a letter to De Quincey (February 8, 1815) that this stanza was added while the poem was passing through the press.—Ed.
[B] The original MS. of Laodamia, however, contained the finally adopted reading "The oracle." Wordsworth explained to De Quincey (February 8, 1815) that he substituted the phrase "our future course," in case the words should seem to allude to the other answer of the oracle which commanded the sacrifice of Iphigenia.—Ed.
[C] For the account of these long-lived trees, see Pliny's Natural History, lib. xvi. cap. 44; and for the features in the character of Protesilaus see the Iphigenia in Aulis of Euripides. Virgil places the Shade of Laodamia in a mournful region, among unhappy Lovers:—
His Laodamia
It comes. W. W. 1827.
To his nephew, John Wordsworth, the poet wrote in 1831, explaining the alterations he had made in the last stanza of Laodamia: "As at first written, the heroine was dismissed to happiness in Elysium. To what purpose then the mission of Protesilaus? He exhorts her to moderate her passions; the exhortation is fruitless, and no punishment follows. So it stood: at present she is placed among unhappy ghosts for disregard of the exhortation. Virgil also places her there, but compare the two passages, and give me your opinion." (William Wordsworth, by Elizabeth Wordsworth, p. 131.)
With the last two lines of the poem, compare Hart-Leap Well, part ii. stanza 4 (vol. ii. p. 133)—
The trees were grey, with neither arms nor head;
Half wasted the square mound of tawny green, etc.Ed.
[D] Compare Imaginary Conversations, third series: "Southey and Porson."—Ed.
[E] He practically admitted its force, however, in the edition of 1827.—Ed.