Wan cheek at once was privileged to unfold Oh if within me hope should e'er decline, And let my spirit in that power divine Rejoice, as, through that power, it ceased to mourn. 1837. The poems belonging to the year 1837 include the Memorials of a Tour in Italy with Henry Crabb Robinson in that year, and one or two additional sonnets. Pub. 1837. SIX months to six years added he remained O blessed Lord! whose mercy then removed * What we possessed, and now is wholly thine!* This refers to the poet's son Thomas, who died Dec. 1, 1812. He was buried in Grasmere churchyard, beside his sister Catherine; and Wordsworth placed these lines upon his tombstone. They may have been written much earlier than 1836, probably in 1813, but it is impossible to ascertain the date, and they were not published till 1837.-ED. MEMORIALS OF A TOUR IN ITALY. Comp. 1837. 1837. Pub. 1842. [During my whole life I had felt a strong desire to visit Rome and the other celebrated cities and regions of Italy, but did not think myself justified in incurring the necessary expense till I received from Mr Moxon, the publisher of a large edition of my poems, a sum sufficient to enable me to gratify my wish without encroaching upon what I considered due to my family. My excellent friend H. C. Robinson readily consented to accompany me, and in March 1837, we set off from London, to which we returned in August, earlier than my companion wished or I should myself have desired had I been, like him, a bachelor. These Memorials of that tour touch upon but a very few of the places and objects that interested me, and, in what they do advert to, are for the most part much slighter than I could wish. More particularly do I regret that there is no notice in them of the South of France, nor of the Roman antiquities abounding in that district, especially of the Pont de Degard, which, together with its situation, impressed me full as much as any remains of Roman architecture to be found in Italy. Then there was Vaucluse, with its Fountain, its Petrarch, its rocks of all seasons, its small plots of lawn in their first vernal freshness, and the blossoms of the peach and other trees embellishing the scene on every side. The beauty of the stream also called forcibly for the expression of sympathy from one who, from his childhood, had studied the brooks and torrents of his native mountains. Between two and three hours did I run about climbing the steep and rugged crags from whose base the water of Vaucluse breaks forth. "Has Laura's Lover," often said I to myself, " ever sat down upon this stone? or has his foot ever pressed that turf ?" Some, especially of the female sex, would have felt sure of it: my answer was (impute it to my years) "I fear, not." Is it, not in fact obvious that many of his love verses must have flowed, I do not say from a wish to display his own talent, but from a habit of exercising his intellect in that way rather than from an impulse of his heart? It is otherwise with his Lyrical poems, and particularly with the one upon the degradation of his country: there he pours out his reproaches, lamentations, and aspirations like an ardent and sincere patriot. But enough it is time to turn to my own effusions such as they are.] TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON.* COMPANION! by whose buoyant Spirit cheered, RYDAL MOUNT. Feb. 14th, 1842. The Tour of which the following Poems are very inadequate remembrances was shortened by report, too well founded, of the prevalence of Cholera at Naples. To make some amends for what was reluctantly left unseen in the South of Italy, we visited the Tuscan Sanctuaries among the Apennines, and the principal Italian Lakes among the Alps. Neither of those lakes, nor of Venice, is there any notice in these Poems, chiefly because I have touched upon them elsewhere. See, in particular, "Descriptive Sketches," "Memorials of a Tour on the Continent in 1820," and a Sonnet upon the extinction of the Venetian Republic. Had his sunk eye kindled at those dear words His, Sir Walter Scott's, eye, did in fact kindle at them, for the lines, * For Mr Robinson's 'Itinerary' of this Tour, see note B in the Appendix to this volume.-ED. Sir Humphrey Davy was with us at the time. We had ascended from Paterdale, and I could not but admire the vigour with which Scott scrambled along that horn of the mountain called "Striding Edge." Our progress was necessarily slow, and was beguiled by Scott's telling many stories and amusing anecdotes, as was his custom. Sir H. Davy would have probably been better pleased if other topics had occasionally been interspersed, and some discussion entered upon at all events he did not remain with us long at the top of the mountain, but left us to find our way down its steep side together into the Vale of Grasmere, where, at my cottage, Mrs Scott was to meet us at dinner. "With faint smile He said, 'When I am there, although 'tis fair, See among these notes the one on Yarrow revisited." "A few short steps (painful they were) apart From Tasso's Convent-haven, and retired grave." This, though introduced here, I did not know till it was told me at Rome by Miss Mackenzie of Seaforth, a lady whose friendly attentions during my residence at Rome I have gratefully acknowledged with expressions of sincere regret that she is no more. Miss M. told me that she accompanied Sir Walter to the Janicular Mount, and, after showing him the grave of Tasso in the church upon the top, and a mural monument, there erected to his memory, they left the church and stood together on the brow of the hill overlooking the City of Rome: his daughter Anne was with them, and she, naturally desirous, for the sake of Miss Mackenzie especially, to have some expression of pleasure from her father, half reproached him for showing nothing of that kind either by his looks or voice: "How can I," replied he, "having only one leg to stand upon, and that in extreme pain!" so that the prophecy was more than fulfilled. "Over waves rough and deep." We took boat near the lighthouse at the point of the right horn of the bay which makes a sort of natural port for Genoa; but the wind was high, and the waves long and rough, so that I did not feel quite recom pensed by the view of the city, splendid as it was, for the danger apparently incurred. The boatman (I had only one) encouraged me saying we were quite safe, but I was not a little glad when we gained the shore, though Shelley and Byron-one of them at least, who seemed to have courted agitation from any quarter-would have probably rejoiced in such a situation: more than once I believe were they both in extreme danger even on the lake of Geneva. Every man, however, has his fears of some kind or other; and no doubt they had theirs of all men whom I have ever known, Coleridge had the most of passive courage in bodily peril, but no one was so easily cowed when moral firmness was required in miscellaneous conversation or in the daily intercourse of social life. "How lovely robed in forenoon light and shade, Each ministering to each, didst thou appear, There is not a single bay along this beautiful coast that might not raise in a traveller a wish to take up his abode there, each as it succeeds seems more inviting than the other; but the desolated convent on the cliff in the bay to Savona struck my fancy most; and had I, for the sake of my own health or that of a dear friend, or any other cause, been desirous of a residence abroad, I should have let my thoughts loose upon a scheme of turning some part of this building into a habitation provided as far as might be with English comforts. There is close by it a row or avenue, I forget which, of tall cypresses. I could not forbear saying to myself—" What a sweet family walk, or one for lonely musings, would be found under the shade !" but there, probably, the trees remained little noticed and seldom enjoyed. "This flowering broom's dear neighbourhood." The broom is a great ornament through the months of March and April to the vales and hills of the Apennines, in the wild parts of which it blows in the utmost profusion, and of course successively at different elevations as the season advances. It surpasses ours in beauty and fragrance, but, speaking from my own limited observations only, I cannot affirm the same of several of their wild spring flowers, the primroses in particular, which I saw not unfrequently but thinly scattered and languishing compared to ours. * * Wordsworth himself, his nephew tells us, had no sense of smell (Memoirs, II p. 322). --ED. |