Bard of the Fleece, whose skilful genius made
That work a living landscape fair and bright;
Nor hallowed less with musical delight
Than those soft scenes through which thy childhood strayed,
Those southern tracts of Cambria, deep embayed, 5
With green hills fenced, with[1] ocean's murmur lull'd;[A]
Though hasty Fame hath many a chaplet culled
For worthless brows, while in the pensive shade
Of cold neglect she leaves thy head ungraced,
Yet pure and powerful minds, hearts meek and still, 10
A grateful few, shall love thy modest Lay,
Long as the shepherd's bleating flock shall stray
O'er naked Snowdon's wide aërial waste;
Long as the thrush shall pipe on Grongar Hill!
John Dyer, author of Grongar Hill (1726), and The Fleece (1757), was born at Aberglasney, in Caermarthenshire, in 1698, and died in 1758. Both Akenside and Gray, before Wordsworth's time, had signalised his merit, in opposition to the dicta of Johnson and Horace Walpole. The passage which Wordsworth quotes is from The Fleece, in which Dyer is referring to his own ancestors, who were weavers, and "fugitives from superstition's rage," and who brought the art of weaving "from Devon" to
that soft tract
Of Cambria, deep-embayed, Dimetian land,
By green hills fenced, by ocean's murmur lulled.
It will be observed that Wordsworth quotes this last line of Dyer accurately in the edition of 1815, but changed it in 1827.
This sonnet was possibly written before 1811, as in a letter to Lady Beaumont, dated November 20, 1811, he speaks of it as written "some time ago." In that letter Wordsworth writes thus of Dyer:—"His poem is in several places dry and heavy, but its beauties are innumerable, and of a high order. In point of imagination and purity of style, I am not sure that he is not superior to any writer of verse since the time of Milton." He then transcribes his sonnet, and adds—"In the above is one whole line from The Fleece, and also other expressions. When you read The Fleece, you will recognise them."—Ed.
VARIANTS:
[1] 1827.
By green hills fenced, by ... 1815.
FOOTNOTES: