The Poems of William Wordsworth Collected Reading Texts from the Cornell Wordsworth
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The Poems of William Wordsworth Collected Reading Texts from The Cornell Wordsworth Edited by Jared Curtis In Three Volumes A Complimentary Addendum HEB ☼ Humanities-Ebooks For advice on use of this ebook please scroll to page 2 Using this Ebook t * This book is designed to be read in single page view, using the ‘fit page’ command. * To navigate through the contents use the hyperlinked ‘Bookmarks’ at the left of the screen. * To search, click the search symbol. * For ease of reading, use <CTRL+L> to enlarge the page to full screen, and return to normal view using < Esc >. * Hyperlinks (if any) appear in Blue Underlined Text. Permissions You may print a copy of the book for your own use but copy and paste functions are disabled. No part of this publication may be otherwise reproduced or transmitted or distributed without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher. Making or distributing copies of this book would constitute copyright infringement and would be liable to prosecution. Thank you for respecting the rights of the author. An Addendum to The Poems of William Wordsworth Collected Reading Texts from The Cornell Wordsworth Series In Three Volumes Edited by Jared Curtis HEB ☼ Humanities-Ebooks, LLP © Jared Curtis, 2012 The Author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published by Humanities-Ebooks, LLP, Tirril Hall, Tirril, Penrith CA10 2JE. Cover image, Sunburst over Martindale © Richard Gravil The reading texts of Wordsworth’s poems used in this volume are from the Cornell Wordsworth series, published by Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, NY 14850. Copyright © Cornell University. Volumes are available at: http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu The Ebook versions of the three volumes in this edition or of all threee volumes in one ebook are available to private purchasers exclusively from http://www. humanities-ebooks.co.uk. The paperback versions are available from all booksellers but at a 33% discount exclusively from http://www.troubador.co.uk Contents of this Addendum Preface 8 An Evening Walk 9 The Baker’s Cart 23 A Fragment [A Night-Piece] 25 Nutting 27 The Ruined Cottage, MS.D 33 Yew-Trees 49 Odes, 1815–1817 51 Ode. The morning of the day appointed for a general thanksgiving. January 18, 1816. 52 Ode. 1815. 60 Ode. —1817. 65 Vernal Ode 69 Composed when a probability existed of our being obliged to quit Rydal Mount as a Residence (1826) 74 Salisbury Plain and Guilt and Sorrow; Or, Incidents upon Salisbury Plain 81 Salisbury Plain 82 Guilt and Sorrow; or, Incidents upon Salisbury Plain 101 Index of titles, first lines and series titles, Volumes I, II, III 126 Introducing ‘The Cornell Wordsworth’ from HEB 174 6 The Poems of William Wordsworth Contents of the Three-Volume Edition Volume 1 Early Poems and Fragments, 1785–1797 11 An Evening Walk (1793) 82 Descriptive Sketches (1793) 97 Adventures on Salisbury Plain (1795–1799) 123 The Borderers (1797) 151 The Ruined Cottage and The Pedlar (1798, 1803–1804) The Ruined Cottage (1798) 270 The Pedlar (1803–1804) 286 Lyrical Ballads, and Other Poems, 1797–1800 Lyrical Ballads and Other Poems (1798) 312 Lyrical Ballads and Other Poems, in Two Volumes (1800) 377 Other Poems, 1798–1800 476 Peter Bell, a Tale (1799) 487 The Prelude (1798–1799) 530 Home at Grasmere (1800–1806) 558 Poems, in Two Volumes, and Other Poems, 1800–1807 Poems, in Two Volumes (1807) 587 Other Poems, 1800–1807 718 Volume II The Prelude (1805–1806) 11 Benjamin the Waggoner &c (1806) 250 The Tuft of Primroses, with Other Late Poems for The Recluse (1808–1828) The Tuft of Primroses 274 To the Clouds 291 St. Paul’s 292 Composed when a probability existed of our being obliged to quit Rydal Mount as a Residence 294 An Addendum The Excursion (1808–1814) The Excursion (1814) 298 The Peasant’s Life 568 The Shepherd of Bield Crag 570 The White Doe of Rylstone; Or the Fate of the Nortons. A Poem (1808) 572 Translations of Chaucer and Virgil (1801–1831) Chaucer: The Prioress’s Tale 635 Chaucer: The Cuckoo and the Nightingale 643 Chaucer: Troilus and Cressida 654 Chaucer: The Manciple (from the Prologue) and his Tale 659 Virgil: Aeneid 667 Virgil: Georgics 751 Volume III Shorter Poems (1807–1820) 11 The Prelude (1824–1829) 144 Sonnet Series and Itinerary Poems (1820–1845) The River Duddon. A Series of Sonnets 349 Ecclesiastical Sketches 368 Memorials of a Tour on the Continent, 1820 427 Yarrow Revisited, and Other Poems, Composed (two excepted) during a Tour in Scotland, and on the English Border, in the Autumn of 1831 469 Sonnets Composed or Suggested during a tour in Scotland, in the Summer of 1833 488 Memorials of a Tour in Italy. 1837 524 Sonnets upon the Punishment of Death. In Series 555 Sonnets Dedicated to Liberty and Order 561 Last Poems (1821–1850) 568 8 The Poems of William Wordsworth Preface This addendum to The Poems of William Wordsworth (3 vols., Penrith, U.K.: Humanities-Ebooks, 2009) is intended to supply some of those poems and versions of poems that were omitted from the original work for lack of space. Readers have suggested some of the selec- tions, while others were thought by the editor to be equally essential to a full view of the poet’s life work. As a group, though a necessarily accidental one, the poems span Wordsworth’s career from his earliest published work, An Evening Walk, to one of the latest, Guilt and Sorrow, which, not surpris- ingly, draws on some of the poet’s earliest writings, like The Vale of Esthwaite, and is a thorough remake of a poem completed in 1797 but never published, Adventures on Salisbury Plain. In between are blank verse descriptive poems like The Baker’s Cart and two early versions of Nutting; a lyric—two versions of A Night Piece; the 1799 version of the remarkable narrative poem, The Ruined Cottage, published by Wordsworth only as the first book of The Excursion (1814); two odes originally composed between 1815 and 1817 and reworked and expanded in later years to form four distinct poems; and the final version of Composed when a probability existed of our being obliged to quit Rydal Mount as a Residence (1826), which Wordsworth intended as an introduction to a new section of his “great philosophical poem,” The Recluse. Quintessentially the poet of close observation of his surroundings, Wordsworth also regarded his body of written work as an inner “landscape” and continually drew upon it for inspiration and re-visioning the world. For the convenience of purchasers of the three paperback volumes, a consolidated index to the three volumes is also included. An Addendum An Evening Walk In 1836 Wordsworth dated the composition of An Evening Walk, “1787, 8, & 9”; the earliest complete version was published in 1793, which is the one that appears in The Poems of William Wordsworth (vol. I, pp. 82–96). But he made significant additions to the poem in 1794, roughly doubling its length and transforming it from a solely descriptive poem to a dramatic and narrative one. This version he did not publish but instead incorporated much of its new material into the early stages of composing The Ruined Cottage. Setting An Evening Walk aside for two decades, he then assigned it—and its companion poem, Descriptive Sketches—to the “Poems Referring to the Period of Childhood” when he arranged his collected poems to follow “the course of human life” in Poems (1815). In preparing successive editions of his collected poems, Wordsworth continued to revise An Evening Walk, creating distinct versions in 1827, 1832, 1836, 1840, and 1845. Of these the 1836 version is the one to which he gave the most attention, as he worked through the text at least three times to establish the final shape and content of the poem. It is this version that is included here. The source for the reading text is An Evening Walk, edited by James Averill (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984). 10 The Poems of William Wordsworth An Evening Walk Addressed to a Young Lady General Sketch of the Lakes—Author’s Regret of his youth passed amongst them—Short description of Noon—Cascade—Noon-tide Retreat—Precipice and sloping Lights—Face of Nature as the Sun declines—Mountain-farm, and the Cock—Slate- quarry—Sunset—Superstition of the Country, con- nected with that moment—Swans—Female Beggar— Twilight Sounds—Western Lights—Spirits—Night— Moonlight—Hope—Night-sounds—Conclusion. Far from my dearest Friend, ’tis mine to rove Through bare grey dell, high wood, and pastoral cove; Where Derwent rests, and listens to the roar That stuns the tremulous cliffs of high Lodore; Where peace to Grasmere’s lonely island leads, 5 To willowy hedge-rows, and to emerald meads; Leads to her bridge, rude church, and cottaged grounds, Her rocky sheepwalks, and her woodland bounds; Where, undisturbed by winds, Winander2 sleeps ’Mid clustering isles, and holly-sprinkled steeps; 10 WW’s general note to “Juvenile Pieces” (820–832) reads: “Of the Poems in this class, ‘The Evening Walk’ and ‘Descriptive Sketches’ were first published in 793. They are reprinted with some unimportant alterations that were chiefly made very soon after their publication. It would have been easy to amend them, in many passages, both as to sentiment and expression, and I have not been altogether able to resist the temptation: but attempts of this kind are made at the risk of injuring those characteristic features, which after all, will be regarded as the principal recommendation of juvenile poems.” In 836 WW added, “The above [note], which was written some time ago, scarcely applies to the Poem, ‘Descriptive Sketches,’ as it now stands.