TO B. R. HAYDON
Composed December 1815.—Published March 31, 1816.
One of the "Miscellaneous Sonnets." The title "Esq." was appended to the name in the editions of 1820 to 1832.—Ed.
High is our calling, Friend!—Creative Art
(Whether the instrument of words she use,
Or pencil pregnant with ethereal hues)
Demands the service of a mind and heart,
Though sensitive, yet, in their weakest part,
Heroically fashioned—to infuse
Faith in the whispers of the lonely Muse,
While the whole world seems adverse to desert.
And, oh! when Nature sinks, as oft she may
Through long-lived pressure of obscure distress,
Still to be strenuous for the bright reward,
And in the soul admit of no decay,
Brook no continuance of weak-mindedness—
Great is the glory, for the strife is hard!
This sonnet was first published in The Examiner (March 31, 1816). It was composed in December 1815. On November 27, Haydon wrote to Wordsworth: "I have benefited, and have been supported in the troubles of life by your poetry. I will bear want, pain, misery, and blindness, but I will never yield one step I have gained on the road I am determined to travel over." (See his Correspondence and Table Talk, vol. ii. pp. 19, 20.) To this Wordsworth replied in the following letter which is explanatory of the above sonnet, and of the two sonnets that follow it.
"Rydal Mount, near Ambleside,
December 21st, 1815.
* * * * * *
"Now for the poems, which are sonnets: one composed the evening I received your letter; the other the next day; and the third the day following. I shall not transcribe them in the order in which they were written, but inversely.
"The last you will find was occasioned, I might say inspired, by your last letter, if there be any inspiration in it; the second records a feeling excited in me by the object it describes in the month of October last; and the first by a still earlier sensation, which the revolution of the year impressed me with last autumn."
(Then follow the three sonnets transcribed in the following order—
"While not a leaf seems faded; while the fields."
"How clear, how keen, how marvellously bright."
"High is our calling, Friend!—Creative Art.")
* * * * * *
"With high respect, I am, my dear sir, most faithfully yours.
"William Wordsworth."
(See the Autobiography of B. R. Haydon, vol. i. chap. xvi. p. 325.)
Haydon replied to Wordsworth, December 29 (see his Correspondence, vol. ii. pp. 20-23): "I must say that I have felt melancholy ever since receiving your sonnets, as if I was elevated so exceedingly, with such a drunken humming in my brain, that my nature took refuge in quiet humbleness and gratitude to God."
It will be observed that in his letter of December 21, Wordsworth mentions the order in which these three sonnets were composed in three consecutive days. In his subsequent arrangement of the sonnets he altered this order, assigning "While not a leaf seems faded" to "September," and "How clear, how keen," to "November 1" (another instance of the inaccuracy of his dates). The detailed statement in this letter to Haydon must be trusted, however, in preference to the "afterthought" of the editions of 1820 and 1827. It may not be superfluous to note the dates of the first publication of this trilogy of sonnets, all of which Wordsworth sent to The Examiner.
"How clear, how keen," etc.Jan. 28th. }
"While not a leaf," etc. Feb. 11th. } 1816.
"High is our calling," etc. March 31st. }
Ed.