“Fareweil! thou little nook of mountain-ground,
Farewell! we leave thee to Heaven’s peaceful care,
Thee, and the cottage, which thou dost surround.
We go for one to whom ye will be dear;
And she will prize this bower, this Indian shed,
Our own contrivance—building without peer;
A gentle maid....
Will come to you, to you herself will wed,
And love the blessed life that we lead here.”
And in this place it will be well to give De Quincy’s sketch of the cottage itself, where this blessed life was lived, and to share which the poet went to fetch his bride from her father’s house:—“A little semi-vestibule between two doors, prefaced the entrance into what might be considered the principal room of the cottage. It was an oblong square, not above eight and a half feet high, sixteen feet long, and twelve broad; very prettily wainscotted, from the floor to the ceiling, with dark polished oak, slightly embellished with carving. One window there was—a perfect and unpretending cottage window—with little diamond panes, embowered, at almost every season of the year, with roses; and in the summer and autumn, with jessamine and other fragrant shrubs. From the exuberant luxuriance of the vegetation around it, and from the dark hue of the wainscotting, this window, though tolerably large, did not furnish a very powerful light to one who entered from the open air.... I was ushered up a little flight of stairs—fourteen in all—to a little dingy room, or whatever the reader chooses to call it. Wordsworth himself has described the fire-place of this, his—
‘Half kitchen and half parlour fire.’
It was not fully seven feet six inches high, and in other respects of pretty nearly the same dimensions as the rustic hall below. There was however, in a small recess, a library of perhaps three hundred volumes, which seemed to consecrate the nook as the poet’s study, and composing room; and so occasionally it was.”
So far then, De Quincy; and the following poem, already alluded to, will give an idea of the poet’s feelings respecting the bride he brought with him to share the cottage blessedness of Grasmere.
“She was a phantom of delight,
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely apparition, sent
To be a moment’s ornament.
Her eyes as stars of twilight fair;
Like twilight too her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May time and the cheerful dawn;
A dancing shape, an image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and waylay.
I saw her upon nearer view,
A spirit, yet a woman too!
Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin liberty;
A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet;
A creature not too bright or good
For human nature’s daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.
And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A being breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveller between life and death;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength and skill;
A perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, to command;
And yet a spirit still, and bright,
With something of angelic light.”
This beautiful poem, so full of calm affection, and intellectual homage, is a fair sample of Wordsworth’s love poems, as well as a charming tribute to his wife’s loveliness and virtue. In early life, it is thought by De Quincy and others, that the poet had experienced a tragical termination to an early love, and that the poems of which “Lucy” is the theme, were addressed to the object of this love; but Wordsworth always maintained a mysterious silence about the whole affair, and would never resolve the riddle of this attachment. The “Lucy” poems, however, beautiful as they are, are chiefly valuable as exhibiting the kind of passion which love showed itself in Wordsworth. Passion, in the proper meaning of the word—viz., deep, fiery, intense, and all-embracing feeling, was certainly not Wordsworth’s. His love was calm, intellectual, and emotional—but it was not passion. All his love seems to have passed through his head before it touched his heart. And yet he loved his wife, and lived, as I said before, very happily with her.
Mrs. Wordsworth, however, was a true household woman, and had not acquired that faculty of walking which Wordsworth and his sister possessed, in so eminent a degree. In about a year, therefore, after his marriage—that is, August 14, 1803,—we find Wordsworth parting from his wife, and making a tour into Scotland, with his sister and Coleridge, taking Carlisle on the way. When they arrived at Longtown, they found a guide-post pointing out two roads,—one to Edinburgh, the other to Glasgow. They took the latter road, and entered Scotland by crossing the river Sark. Edinburgh was no favourite place with Wordsworth, and for reasons which are sufficiently obvious. The tourists then passed through Gretna Green to Annan, leaving the Solway Frith, and the Cumberland hills to their left hand. On Thursday the 18th August, they went to the churchyard where Burns is buried; a bookseller accompanied them, of whom Miss Wordsworth had bought some little books for Johnny, the poet’s first child. He showed them first the outside of Burns’ house, where he had lived the last three years of his life, and where he died. It had a mean appearance, and was in a bye situation, white-washed, and dirty about the doors, as all Scotch houses are; flowering plants in the windows. They went on to visit his grave. He lies in a corner of the churchyard, and his second son, Francis Wallace, is beside him. There was no stone to mark the spot. The greatest bard that had sung in Britain for some centuries, lay buried there like a dog. A hundred guineas, however, had been collected to build a monument over his ashes. “There,” said the bookseller to the visitors, pointing to a pompous monument, a few yards off, “there lies Mr. John Bushby, a remarkably clever man; he was an attorney, and hardly ever lost a cause he undertook. Burns made many a lampoon upon him; and there they rest as you see.” Yes, indeed, there they rested; and that was the deep, sad moral of the story. We shall all rest so at last. They then went to Burns’ house. Mrs. Burns was not at home, but had gone to the sea-shore with her children. They saw the print of “The Cotter’s Saturday Night,” which Burns mentioned in one of his letters having received as a present. In the room above the parlour Burns died, and his son after him; and of all who saw this parlour on this 18th of August,—Wordsworth and his sister, Coleridge and the poor bookseller—who survives? “There they rest, as you see.”