Amongst the occasional visitors at Grasmere between the years 1800 and 1804, was Captain John Wordsworth, the poet’s second brother, who was eventually lost in the Abergaveny East Indiaman, on the 5th of February, 1804. His brother was a man of fine taste and discernment, and prophesied in various letters and at various times, the ultimate success of Wordsworth’s poetry. Wordsworth felt severely the untimely death of his brother, whom he loved with that devoted family fondness, which was characteristic of him. Writing to Sir George Beaumont upon this event, he says: “February 11th, 1808. This calamitous news we received at two o’clock to-day; and I write to you from a house of mourning. My poor sister, and my wife, who loved him almost as we did (for he was one of the most amiable of men) are in miserable affliction, which I do all in my power to alleviate; but, Heaven knows, I want consolation myself. I can say nothing higher of my ever dear brother than that he was worthy of his sister, who is now weeping beside me, and of the friendship of Coleridge; meek, affectionate, silently enthusiastic, loving all quiet things, and a poet in everything but words.” The lyre of the poet sounded his praises in three poems. The first is entitled “Elegiac Stanzas suggested by a picture of Peel Castle in a storm, painted by Sir George Beaumont.” The next is “To a Daisy,” which suggests his brother’s love of quiet and peaceful things, and closes with the tragedy of his death, and the discovery and final burial of the body in the country churchyard of Wythe, a village near Weymouth.
“And thou, sweet flower, shalt sleep and wake,
Upon his senseless grave,”
he concludes, returning thus finely to the simple flower which suggested the melancholy train of thought that runs through the poem. The third of these sad lyrical verses refers to the scene where the poet bade his brother farewell, on the mountains from Grasmere to Patterdale. The verses upon the “Picture of Peel Castle,” is the best of all these pieces; and as a fitting conclusion to this brief memorial of the poet’s brother, I will transcribe it.
“I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged pile!
Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee:
I saw thee every day; and all the while
Thy form was sleeping on a glassy sea.
So pure thy sky, so quiet was the air!
So like, so very like, was day to day!
Where’er I looked, thy image still was there;
It trembled, but it never passed away.
How perfect was the calm! it seemed no sleep;
No mood, which season takes away or brings:
I could have fancied that the mighty deep
Was even the gentlest of all gentle things.
Ah! then, if mine had been the painter’s hand,
To express what then I saw; and add the gleam,
The light that never was on sea, or land,
The consecration, and the poet’s dream;
I would have planted thee, thou hoary pile!
Amid a world how different from this!
Beside a sea that could not cease to smile
On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss.
A picture had it been of lasting ease,
Elysian quiet, without toil or strife;
No motion but the moving tide, a breeze,
Or merely silent Nature’s breathing life.
Such, in the fond illusion of my heart,
Such picture would I at that time have made;
And seen the soul of truth in every part,
A steadfast peace that might not be betrayed.