ODE TO LYCORIS
May, 1817
Composed 1817.—Published 1820
[The discerning reader—who is aware that in the poem of Ellen Irwin I was desirous of throwing the reader at once out of the old ballad, so as if possible, to preclude a comparison between that mode of dealing with the subject and the mode I meant to adopt—may here perhaps perceive that this poem originated in the four last lines of the first stanza. Those specks of snow, reflected in the lake and so transferred, as it were, to the subaqueous sky, reminded me of the swans which the fancy of the ancient classic poets yoked to the car of Venus. Hence the tenor of the whole first stanza, and the name of Lycoris, which—with some readers who think my theology and classical allusion too far fetched and therefore more or less unnatural and affected—will tend to unrealise the sentiment that pervades these verses. But surely one who has written so much in verse as I have done may be allowed to retrace his steps in the regions of fancy which delighted him in his boyhood, when he first became acquainted with the Greek and Roman poets. Before I read Virgil I was so strongly attached to Ovid, whose Metamorphoses I read at school, that I was quite in a passion whenever I found him, in books of criticism, placed below Virgil. As to Homer, I was never weary of travelling over the scenes through which he led me. Classical literature affected me by its own beauty. But the truths of Scripture having been entrusted to the dead languages, and these fountains having recently been laid open at the Reformation, an importance and a sanctity were at that period attached to classical literature that extended, as is obvious in Milton's Lycidas for example, both to its spirit and form in a degree that can never be revived. No doubt the hacknied and lifeless use into which mythology fell towards the close of the 17th century, and which continued through the 18th, disgusted the general reader with all allusion to it in modern verse; and though, in deference to this disgust, and also in a measure participating in it, I abstained in my earlier writings from all introduction of pagan fable, surely, even in its humble form, it may ally itself with real sentiment, as I can truly affirm it did in the present case.—I. F.]
One of the "Poems of Sentiment and Reflection." In 1847 Wordsworth wrote to Mr. Fletcher that this poem was "suggested to him one day at Ullswater, in the year 1817, by seeing two white, snowy clouds reflected in the lake. 'They looked' (he said), 'like two swans.'"—Ed.
I
An age hath been when Earth was proud
Of lustre too intense
To be sustained; and Mortals bowed
The front in self-defence.
Who then, if Dian's crescent gleamed,
Or Cupid's sparkling arrow streamed
While on the wing the Urchin played,
Could fearlessly approach the shade?
—Enough for one soft vernal day,
If I, a bard of ebbing time,
And nurtured in a fickle clime,
May haunt this hornèd bay;[CM]
Whose amorous water multiplies
The flitting halcyon's vivid dyes;[CN]
And smooths her[249] liquid breast—to show
These swan-like specks of mountain snow,[CO]
White as the pair that slid along the plains
Of heaven, when Venus held the reins!
II
In youth we love the darksome lawn
Brushed by the owlet's wing;
Then, Twilight is preferred to Dawn,
And Autumn to the Spring.[CP]
Sad fancies do we then affect,
In luxury of disrespect
To our own prodigal excess
Of too familiar happiness.
Lycoris (if such name befit
Thee, thee my life's celestial sign!)[CQ]
When Nature marks the year's decline,
Be ours to welcome it;
Pleased with the harvest hope that runs
Before the path of milder suns;[250]
Pleased while the sylvan world displays
Its ripeness to the feeding gaze;
Pleased when the sullen winds resound the knell
Of the resplendent miracle.
III
But something whispers to my heart
That, as we downward tend,
Lycoris! life requires an art
To which our souls must bend;
A skill—to balance and supply;
And, ere the flowing fount be dry,
As soon it must, a sense to sip,
Or drink, with no fastidious lip.
Then welcome, above all, the Guest
Whose smiles, diffused o'er land and sea,
Seem to recal the Deity
Of youth into the breast:[251]
May pensive Autumn ne'er present
A claim to her disparagement!
While blossoms and the budding spray
Inspire us in our own decay;
Still, as we nearer draw to life's dark goal,
Be hopeful Spring the favourite of the Soul!
VARIANTS:
[249] 1827.
1820.
And smoothes its . . .
[250] 1827.
Pleased with the soil's requited cares;
Pleased with the blue that ether wears;
[251] 1837.
Frank greeting, then, to that blithe Guest
Diffusing smiles o'er land and sea
To aid the vernal Deity
Whose home is in the breast!
FOOTNOTES:
[CM] Probably one of the bays in Rydal Mere.—Ed.
[CN] The kingfisher.—Ed.
[CO] Probably on Nab Scar reflected in Rydal water.—Ed.
[CP] Compare The Prelude, book vi. l. 173—
Moods melancholy, . . . that loved
The twilight more than dawn, autumn than spring.
[CQ] Lycoris was the name under which the poet Gallus wrote of his Cytheris, a freed woman of the senator Volumnius, celebrated for her beauty and intrigues. See Virgil's reference to her in Eclogue x. 42, in which he condoles with his friend Gallus for the loss of Lycoris—
Hic gelidi fontes, hic mollia prata, Lycori,
Hic nemus; hic ipso tecum consumerer aevo.
Ovid also refers to her, A. A. iii. 537—"The western and the eastern lands know of Lycoris." From the tone of the Fenwick note, it would seem that Wordsworth was doubtful of the fitness of associating the name of Lycoris with the dominant thought of these stanzas; but there is no unfitness in the use he makes of it. This poem, with its reference to the "one soft vernal day," and its prevailing thought of spring, and
the Guest
Whose smiles, diffused o'er land and sea,
Seem to recal the Deity
Of youth into the breast,
appropriately follow the Vernal Ode.—Ed.