Memoirs of William Wordsworth

by George S. Phillips

He likewise addresses “The Longest Day” to her; and what a contrast to the last poem! Instead of gambolling with the falling leaves, and making life a grand holiday, he exhorts his child, now grown older, to think of higher matters:—

“Summer ebbs; each day that follows
Is a reflex from on high,
Tending to the darksome hollows,
Where the frosts of winter lie.
Now, even now, e’er wrapped in slumber,
Fix thine eyes upon the sea,
That absorbs time, space, and number,—
Look thou to eternity!”

And a little later, when the possibility of blindness came like a gloomy shadow to darken his more thoughtful moments; he anticipates the time when his own Dora shall guide his lonely steps. Poor Dora! she died of consumption, after trying, in vain, the warm south of Portugal. And yet she is not dead, and cannot die. In Dr. Wordsworth’s Memoirs, second volume, there is a fine portrait of her, and a sweet, mild, gentle, and spiritual girl she is; the eye singularly beautiful, and full of deep mystic fire. The poet has also drawn a portrait of her:—

“Open, ye thickets! let her fly,
Swift as a Thracian nymph, o’er field or height!
For she, to all but those who love her, shy,
Would gladly vanish from a stranger’s sight;
Tho’ where she is beloved, and loves
Light as the wheeling butterfly she moves;
Her happy spirit as a bird is free,
That rifles blossoms on a tree,
Turning them inside out, with rich audacity.”

And all this sweet surfeit of painting is true to the spirit of the beautiful girl; the spirit which stirs her thoughts, and makes all her movements an impulsive comminglement of music and poetry. A more airy, celestial form could not be imagined than hers. It seems to float on the atmosphere. And then she is so happy, and loving to those who love her.

“Alas! how little can a moment show
Of an eye where feeling plays
In ten thousand dewy rays;
A face o’er which a thousand shadows go!—
She stops—is fastened to that rivulet’s side;
And these (while, with sedater mien
O’er timid waters that have scarcely left
Their birthplace in the rocky cleft,
She bends) at leisure may be seen
Features to old ideal grace allied,
Amid their smiles and dimples dignified—
Fit countenance for the soul of primal truth;
The bland composure of eternal youth!

What more changeful than the sea?
But over his great tides
Fidelity presides;
And this light-hearted maiden constant is as he.
High is her aim, as heaven above,
And wide as ether her good will;
And like the lowly reed, her love
Can drink its nurture from the scantiest rill;
Insight as keen as frosty star
Is to her charity no bar,
Nor interrupts her frolic graces
When she is far from those wild places,
Encircled by familiar faces.

O the charms that manners draw,
Nature, from thy genuine law!
If from what her hand would do
Her voice would utter, aught ensue
Untoward or unfit;
She in benign affections pure
In self-forgetfulness, secure,
Sheds round the transient harm, or vague mischance
A light unknown to tutored elegance:
Hers is not a cheek shame-stricken,
But her blushes, are joy-flushes;
And the fault, if fault it be,
Only ministers to quicken
Laughter-loving gaiety,
And kindly sportive wit,
Leaving this daughter of the mountains free
As if she knew that Oberon, king of faery
Had crossed her purpose with some quaint vagary,
And heard his viewless bands
Over their mirthful triumph clapping hands.”

A fairer drawn portrait—a more beautiful poem, as a whole—does not, I think, exist. Alas! sweet Dora.

To return, however, to the narrative. When Wordsworth was living at Allan Bank, and during the time that Coleridge sojourned with him, two prose works appeared, by these two poets, which are memorable to all scholars. The former wrote his famous “Essay on the Convention of Cintra,” and the latter dictated (for he did not write it) his still more famous work entitled “The Friend.” Notwithstanding Wordsworth’s devotion, therefore, to poetry, it will be seen that he was not indifferent to the passing events which were writing their history in the blood of nations. Speaking of his “Convention of Cintra,” in a letter to Southey, he says, “My detestation, I may say abhorrence, of that event, is not at all diminished by your account of it. Bonaparte had committed a capital blunder in supposing that when he had intimidated the Sovereigns of Europe, he had conquered the several nations. Yet it was natural for a wiser than he was to have fallen into this mistake; for the old despotisms had deprived the body of the people of all practical knowledge in the management, and of necessity of all interest in the course of affairs. The French themselves were astonished at the apathy and ignorance of the people whom they had supposed they had utterly subdued, when they had taken their fortresses, scattered their armies, entered their capital cities, and struck their cabinets with dismay. There was no hope for the deliverance of Europe till the nations had suffered enough to be driven to a passionate recollection of all that was honourable in their past history, and to make appeal to the principles of universal and everlasting justice. These sentiments the authors of that Convention most unfeelingly violated; and as to the principals, they seemed to be as little aware even of the existence of such powers, for powers emphatically may they be called, as the tyrant himself. As far, therefore, as these men could, they put an extinguisher upon the star that was then rising! It is in vain to say that after the first burst of indignation was over, the Portuguese themselves were reconciled to the event, and rejoiced in their deliverance. We may infer from that, the horror which they must have felt in the presence of their oppressors; and we may see in it to what a state of helplessness their bad government had reduced them. Our duty was to have treated them with respect, as the representatives of suffering humanity, beyond what they were likely to look for themselves, and as deserving greatly, in common with their Spanish brethren, for having been the first to rise against that tremendous oppression, and to show how, and how only, it could be put an end to.” The poet apologises for the seeming inconsistency of his conduct in opposing the war against France at its commencement, and in urging the necessity of it in the later affairs of Spain and Portugal, by showing that he, and those who thought with him, “proved that they kept their eyes steadily fixed upon principles; for though there was a shifting or transfer of hostility in their minds, as far as regarded persons, they only combated the same enemy opposed to them under a different shape; and that enemy was the spirit of selfish tyranny and lawless ambition.”