T I! l.II C;; ". -.V II F It f !~I, ' ' rev== i beed go roAt ~ureg Sound and Motion in Wordsworth's Poetry BY. MAY TOMLINSON BOSTON The Poet Lore Company Publishers I 905 - 11 I. Copyright 1905 by MAY TOMLINSON All Rights Reserved Uniform with this volume THE RETREAT OF A POET NATURALIST (John Burroughs) by CLARA BARRUS, M. D. Printed at THE GORHAM PRESS Boston, U. S. A, SOUND AND MOTION IN WORDSWORTH'S POETRY A CAREFUL reading of English poetry will reveal the fact that the sense of the beauty of sound and motion is more largely developed in the poets-with, perhaps, two or three exceptions-than is the sense of the beauty of form and color. We read of sunshine and shadow, of the gleam, the glow, the sheen; but we find comparatively little iention of color. Indeed, the poets themselves seem to place the latter sense on a lower plane of estimation. Wordsworth, in his autobiographical poem, tells us that he was never "bent over much on superficial things, pampering myself with meagre novelties of form and color." And yet Ruskin declares that "of all God's gifts to the sight of man, color is the holiest, the most divine, the most solemn." It is the painter, we must remember, to whom the beauty of color seems the highest beauty. To the musician, the deepest pleasure is the pleasure that he re3 "91 -.1;Cz "?, i ., T;,, A I f - __ I - _A SOUND AND MOTION ceives through the ear. Color is naught to him except as it is represented in intensity of sound, in crescendo and diminuendo, in a delicate shading of tone. And the poet, in his susceptibilities, is more akin to the musician than to the painter. The painter's interest is in objects, his aim is to reproduce; so, necessarily, he is concerned with form and color. The poet's art, more than that of the painter,-more than that of the musician, even,-is suggestive: it makes larger demands upon the imagination. And so, because, among the arts, poetry, both in him who creates and in him who merely enjoys, demands the largest exercise of the imagination, it is the most "effective agency for cherishing within us the ideal." "Its great function," says one who is great and good, "is to keep alive man's sensibilities and instincts, and thus fit him for the reception of high spiritual truths." I have said that the poet's first delight is in sound and motion. Passages innumerable, from many poets, might be cited as illustrative of this sensitiveness. There is Coleridge's 4 IN WORDSWORTH'S POETRY "Kubla Khan," with its seething turmoil and, mazy motion. The poem is itself a strange wierd melody. Shelley's description in "The Revolt of Islam" of "an eagle and a serpent wreathed in fight" affords a remarkable example of life and power, of dizzy speed and impetuous flight, of wheeling, floating, fluttering, leaping motion. Tennyson's reminiscence, in "The Gardener's Daughter," of a certain May morning with all its sound is proof enough of his delight in melody. We know what joy even the memory of the thrush's song gave Browning, when, far from home, he thought of England in May time, when "the white-throat builds and all the swallows!" Every student knows the morning and evening sounds as enumerated by Milton in those companion poems, "L'Allegro" and "II Penseroso." Mrs. Browning's poetry is fairly vibrant with sound. I have in mind as I write some very beautiful lines in "The Drama of Exile," suggestive of smooth-flowing motion and soft, low sounds. But, of all the poets, Wordsworth, in his enjoyment of nature, is most alive to the pow5 SOUND AND MOTION er and beauty of sound. When a boy, he would walk alone under the quiet stars, and, at such times, he felt "whate'er there is of power in sound to breathe an elevated mood, by form or image unprofaned." "And I would stand," he tells us, "if the night blackened with a coming storm, beneath some rock, listening to notes that are the ghostly language of the ancient earth, or make their abode in distant winds." Of this boyhood time we read, "Ah! when I have hung 's Above the raven's nest, by knots of grass And half-inch fissures in the slippery rock But ill sustained, and almost (so it seemed) Suspended by the blast that blew amain, Shouldering the naked crag, oh, at that time While on the perilous ridge I hung alone, With what strange utterance did the loud dry wind Blow through my ear! the sky seemed not a sky Of earth-and with what motion moved the clouds!" 6 IN WORDSWORTH'S POETRY Wordsworth always heard voices: the voice of the mountain torrent, the tones of waterfalls, the murmur of the streams, the sighing of the wind through the leaves of a tree, the soft murmur of the vagrant bee.* The number of poems in which we fail to find some mention of waters-of sea or lake, of river or brook, of mountain torrent or waterfall-is not large. Indeed, by actual count, among the whole number of Wordsworth's poems, there are scarcely thirty which have not some reference to sound or motion: sound or flow of waters, song or flight of bird, or the movement of clouds. Wordsworth described with rare truthfulness what he saw and heard. A daily wanderer among woods and fields, familiar with mountains and lakes and sounding cataracts, it is not strange that he should report of smooth fields; of white *All through my paper I have woven into my sentences phrases and clauses, which the student of Wordsworth's poetry will recognize as quotations. I have not thought it necessary, in these instances, to use the marks of quotation. M. T. 7 SOUND AND MOTION sheets of water; of the cuckoo's melancholy call; of the trembling lake; of motions of delight that haunt the sides of the green hills; of breezes and soft airs; of mists and winds that dwell among the hills; of notes which, in his tuneful course, the wind draws forth from rocks, woods, caverns, heaths, and crashing shores. The following description of "The Simplon Pass" is one of the finest of Wordsworth's sound poems: -"Brook and road Were fellow-travellers in this gloomy Pass, And with them did we journey several hours At a slow pace. The immeasurable height Of woods, decaying, never to be decayed, The stationary blasts of waterfalls, And in the narrow rent, at every turn, Winds thwarting winds bewildered and forlorn, The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky, The rocks that muttered close upon our ears, Black drizzling crags that spake by the wayside 8 IN WORDSWORTH'S POETRY As if a voice were in them, the sick sight And giddy prospect of the raving stream, The unfettered clouds and regions of the heavens, Tumult and peace, the darkness and the lightWere all like workings of one mind, the features Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree, Characters of the great Apocalypse, The types and symbols of Eternity, Of first, and last, and midst, and without end." Another instance of the poet's alertness to the voices of nature is the passage in the fifth book of "The Prelude," beginning, "There was a boy." The famous description of winter sports"All shod with steel y We hissed along the polished ice"affords a good illustration of Wordsworth's delight in both sound and motion. No lovelier example of Wordsworth's 9 " —" * SOUND AND MOTION sense of the beauty of motion, as an expression of grace and gentleness, could be given than the lines which tell of the white Doe's weekly visit to Bolton Priory during the hour of service. The passage is perfect;-in diction, in imagery, in versification: ~ "The only voice which you can hear Is the river murmuring near. -When soft!-the dusky trees between, And down the path through the open green, Where is no living thing to be seen; And through yon gateway, where is found, Beneath the arch with ivy bound, Free entrance to the churchyard groundComes gliding in with lovely gleam, Comes gliding in serene and slow, Soft and silent as a dream, A solitary Doe! White she is as lily of June, And beauteous as the silver moon When out of sight the clouds are driven And she is left alone in heaven; Or like a ship some gentle day In sunshine sailing far away, IO IN WORDSWORTH'S POETRY A glittering ship, that hath the plain Of ocean for her own domain." Is there not something more than romantic fancy in the thought that Nature hath power to mould even the bodily form of one, who, from earliest childhood, lives in close sympathy with her,-in her daily presence? And shall not "beauty born of murmuring sound" pass into the face of the maiden who leans "her ear to many a secret place where rivulets dance their wayward round?" What could be more beautiful than the following exquisite stanzas from that most Wordsworthian poem, "Three years she Grew?""The floating clouds their state shall lend To her; for her the willow bend; Nor shall she fail to see Even in the motions of the storm Grace that shall mould the maiden's form By silent sympathy. "The stars of midnight shall be dear To her; and she shall lean her ear II SOUND AND MOTION To many a secret place Where rivulets dance their wayward round, And beauty born of murmuring sound Shall pass into her face." Reference has already been made to the power possessed by the family of floods over the minds of poets, old and young. Our poet finds a friend in every babbling brook; "he loves the brooks far better than the sage's books." "Fondly I pursued," he tells us, "even when a child, the streams, unheard, unseen." "They taught me random cares and truant joys, That shield from mischief and preserve from stains Vague minds, while men are growing out of boys." "The Derwent, fairest of all rivers, loved to Blend his murmurs with my nurse's song, And, from his alder shades and rocky falls, And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice That flowed along my dreams." 12 IN WORDSWORTH'S POETRY Certain rivers will always be associated with the name of Wordsworth. Everybody knows those sweetest and tenderest of poems, the three poems to the River Yarrow,"Yarrow Stream! To dream-light dear while yet unseen, Dear to the common sunshine, And dearer still, as now I feel, To memory's shadowy moonshine." The sonnets to The River Duddon, though little known, are, indeed, refreshing when read on a summer day. They suggest what is cool, and sweet, and restful: you feel soft breezes; you hear glad bird-notes; you smell the delicate scent of wild flowers; you rejoice in green bowers and quivering sunbeams; you follow the smooth, glistening River "through dwarf willows gliding and by ferny brake; you linger under the shade of green alders and silver birch-trees. As you advance with the majestic Duddon, in its "radiant progress toward the Deep," you feel your heart joining in the Poet's prayer that you may be I3 SOUND AND MOTION "Prepared, in peace of heart, in calm of mind And soul, to mingle with Eternity;" you find your spirit attuned to the noble dignity of the concluding sonnet of the series:"I thought of Thee, my partner and my guide, As being past away.-Vain sympathies! For, backward, Duddon, as I cast my eyes, I see what was, and is, and will abide; Still glides the Stream, and shall forever glide; The Form remains; the Function never dies; While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise, We Men, who in our morn of youth defied The elements, must vanish;-be it so! Enough, if something from our hands have power To live, and act, and serve the future hour; And if, as toward the silent tomb we go, Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower, We feel that we are greater than we know." Matthew Arnold, in his "Memorial verses," says,I4 IN WORDSWORTH'S POETRY "Keep fresh the grass upon his grave, O Rotha, with thy living wave! Sing him thy best! for few or none Hears thy voice right now he is gone." Wordsworth repeatedly uses the figure of the stream, or brook, or lake. In the introductory sonnet to "Ecclesiastical Sonnets," he likens the Christian church to a Holy River, and follows the course of this Stream from its source, marking its progress through the centuries, until, in the closing sonnet of the series, he exclaims,"Look forth!-that Stream behold, That Stream upon whose bosom we have passed Floating at ease while nations have effaced Nations, and Death has gathered to his fold Long lines of mighty kings-look forth my Soul! (Nor in this vision be thou slow to trust) The living waters, less and less by guilt Stained and polluted, brighten as they roll, Till they have reached the eternal city-built For the perfected Spirits of the just!" I SOUND AND MOTION In "The Prelude," the poet tells how, in that time of depression and bewilderment which followed the failure of the French Revolution, his beloved sister maintained for him a saving intercourse with his true self,"Now speaking in a voice Of sudden admonition-like a brook That did but cross a lonely road, and now Is seen, heard, felt, and caught at every turn, Companion never lost through many a league." In "The Excursion" the Solitary thus describes the grief of his young wife: "Calm as a frozen lake when ruthless winds Blow fiercely, agitating earth and sky, The Mother now remained." We find the same figure in the poem entitled "Memory." The serenity of old age, when the life has been pure and the conscience is clear, is compared tothe calm of -"lakes that sleep In frosty moonlight glistening, Or mountain rivers, where they creep i6 IN WORDSWORTH'S POETRY Along a channel smooth and deep, To their own far-off murmurs listening." The very melody of these verses, so smooth and flowing, suggests the calm that they describe. In his poem "To The Skylark," Wordsworth likens the ecstatic outpouring of the bird's song to the strong, free, impetuous flow of a mountain river:"With a soul as strong as a mountain river Pouring out praise to the Almighty Giver." No poets observed more closely the movements of the clouds-the speechless clouds. In "The Excursion," speaking of that little lowly vale,"A lowly vale, and yet uplifted high Among the mountains," — the poet says,"in such a place I would not willingly, methinks, lose sight Of a departing cloud." Two remarkable instances of the figurative use of the cloud should be noted. The first is that familiar simile,I7 SOUND AND MOTION "I wandered lonely as a cloud Y That floats on high (?vale and hills." The other is the famous description of the Leech Gatherer, old and decrepit:"Upon the margin of that moorish flood Motionless as a cloud the old man stood, That heareth not the loud winds when they call And moveth altogether, if it move at all." Many are the birds celebrated in Wordsworth's verse,-birds of all degrees, from the daring hawk to the lordly eagle, from the -"darkling wren That tunes on Duddons banks her slender voice"to the soaring lark, "Ethereal minstrel! pilgrim of the sky!" But our poet rejoices most in the cuckoo's vagrant voice: I 8 IN WORDSWORTH'S POETRY "Not the whole warbling grove in concert heard, When sunshine follows shower, the heart can thrill Like the first summon's, Cuckoo! of thy bill, With its twin notes inseparately paired." The poet tells us with what delight he heard that voice in a foreign land: "List-'twas the cuckoo-O with what delight Heard I that voice! and catch it now though faint, Far off and faint, and melting into air, Yet not to be mistaken. Hark again! Those louder cries give notice that the Bird, Although as invisible as Echo's self, Is wheeling hitherward. Thanks, happy creature, For this unthought-of greeting!" No poet has so well described that wandering Voice: "Though babbling only to the Vale, I9 SOUND AND MOTION Of sunshine and flowers, Thou bringest unto me a tale Of visionary hours. "Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring! Even yet thou art to me No bird, but an invisible thing, A voice, a mystery; "The same whom in my school-boy days I listened to; that boy Which made me look a thousand ways In bush, and tree, and sky. "To seek thee did I often rove Through woods and on the green; And thou wert still a hope, a love; Still longed for, never seen. "And I can listen to thee yet; Can lie upon the plain And listen, till I do beget That golden time again. "0 blessed Bird! the earth we pace Again appears to be 20 IN WORDSWORTH'S POETRY An unsubstantial fairy place, That is fit home for Thee." Way into manhood the poet remembered the song of the little wren which one day, in his school-boy time, sang so sweetly in the nave of the old church: "So sweetly mid the gloom the invisible bird Sang to herself, that there I could have made My dwelling-place, and lived forever there To hear such music." Among the bird verses there is nothing more exquisite than the following stanzas describing the Green Linnet: "Amid yon tuft of hazel trees, That twinkle to the gusty breeze, Behold him perched in ecstasies, Yet seeming still to hover; There! where the flutter of his wings Upon his back and body flings Shadows and sunny glimmerings, That cover him all over. 21 SOUND AND MOTION "My dazzled sight he oft deceives, A Brother of the dancing leaves; Then flits, and from the cottage-eaves Pours forth his song in gushes; As if by that exulting strain He mocked and treated with disdain The voiceless Form he chose to feign While fluttering in the bushes." The picture of the Blue-cap is almost as full of life and joy: "Where is he that giddy sprite, Blue-cap, with his colors bright, Who was blest as bird could be, Feeding in the apple-tree; Made such wanton spoil and rout, Turning blossoms inside out; Hung-head pointing towards the groundFluttered, perched, into a round Bound himself, and then unbound; Lithest, gaudiest Harlequin! Prettiest tumbler ever seen! Light of heart and light of limb; What has now become of Him?" 22 IN WORDSWORTH'S POETRY Very different from the flitting, fluttering, tumbling of this Blue-cap in the apple-tree, is the wide, sweeping, circling flight of the Water Fowl in their evolutions above the lake. "Mark how the feathered tenants of the flood, With grace of motion that might scarcely seem Inferior to angelical, prolong Their curious pastime! shaping in mid air (And sometimes with ambitious wing that soars, High as the level of the mountain-tops) A circuit ampler than the lake beneathTheir own domain; but ever, while intent On tracing and retracing that large round, Their jubilant activity evolves Hundreds of curves and circlets, to and fro, Upward and downward, progress intricate Yet unperplexed, as if one spirit swayed Their indefatigable flight. 'Tis doneTen times, or more, I fancied it had ceased; But lo! the vanished company again 23 SOUND AND MOTION Ascending; they approach-I hear their wings, Faint, faint at first; and then at eager sound, Past in a moment-and as faint again! They tempt the sun to sport amid their plumes; They tempt the water, or the gleaming ice, To show them a fair image; 'tis themselves, Their own fair forms, upon the glimmering plain, Painted more soft and fair as they descend Almost to touch;-then up again aloft, Up, with a sally and a flash of speed, As if they scorned both resting-place and rest!" Wordsworth was never -"to the moods Of time and season, to the moral power, The affections and the spirit of the place Insensible." Though rejoicing always before the winds and roaring waters and in the lights and shades that march and countermarch about the hills in glorious apparition, he was most 24 IN WORDSWORTH'S POETRY responsive to the quieting influences of nature, he felt most deeply the stillness and calm of evening and early morning. We know this when Me read that incomparable sonnet, "Composed upon Westminster Bridge," and the lovely sonnet beginning, "It is a beauteous evening, calm and free." Passages of great beauty (the beauty of truthfulness-the truthfulness of one who not only sees but feels) might be cAilled from the many poems which describe the sober hour, its hush, its repose, its deepening darkness. The finest of these evening voluntaries is the ode "Composed upon an Evening of Extraordinary Splendor and Beauty." No lover of poetry can read this ode without emotion and an uplift of the spirit, without a vision of those fair countries to which we are bound. Wordsworth, as we have said, sensitive always to the moods of time and place, felt what power there is in sound, heard at a quiet hour and in a lonely place, to deepen the sense - of calm and solitude. Note his description, near the close of the fourth book of "The 25.* -n..*... SOUND AND MOTION Excursion" of the raven's cry, heard at the hour when issue forth the first pale stars: "The solitary raven, flying, Athwart the concave of the dark blue dome, Unseen, perchance above all power of sight." See also, in the same book of "The Excursion" what the poet says of > -"that single cry, the unanswered bleat Of a poor lamb-left somewhere~to itself, The plaintive spirit of the solitude." A stanza in the poem entitled "Fidelity," the stanza which describes the loneliness and remoteness of that cove far in the bosom of Helvellyn, affords another example of the power of sound to deepen the impression of stillness and solitude: "There sometimes does a leaping fish Send through the tarn a lonely cheer; The crags repeat the raven's crook, In symphony austere; Thither the rainbow comes-the cloudAnd mists that spread the flying shroud; And sunbeams; and the sounding blast, 26 *: Ire! ':7 IN WORDSWORTH'S POETRY That, if it could, would hurry past; But that enormous barrier holds it fast." Somewhere in his poetry, Wordsworth speaks of the shadow of an object as that object's echo. Another instance of this tendency to transfer the function from the sense of seeing to the sense of hearing is found in the little poem, "Airey-place Valley." The swaying motion of the light ash-a tree sensitive to the gentle touch of the breeze-is described as a "soft eye-music of slow-waving boughs." In the second book of "The Excursion" there is still another example. The Solitary has been telling of the part that two huge,Peaks - play in the wild concert which the wind, in his tuneful course, draws forth from rocks, woods, caverns, heaths, and crashing shores. "Nor have nature's laws," he adds, "Left them ungifted with a power to yield Music of finer tone; a harmony, So do I call it, though it be the hand Of silence, though there be no voice;-the clouds, The mists, the shadows, light of golden suns, 27 SOUND AND MOTION Motions of moonlight, all come hithertouch, And have an answer-thither come, and shape A language not unwelcome to sick hearts And idle spirits." That Wordsworth, himself so alive to the beauty of sound, comprehended the loneliness of one who lives in utter silence, the following passage from "The Excursion" proves: "He grew up From year to year in loneliness of soul; And this deep mountain-valley was to him Soundless, with all its streams. The bird of dawn Did never rouse this Cottager from sleep With startling summons, nor for his delight The vernal cuckoo shouted; not for him Murmured the labouring bee. When stormy winds Were working the broad bosom of the lake Into a thousand, thousand sparkling waves, Rolking the trees, or driving cloud on cloud Along the sharp edge of yon lofty crags, 28 IN WORDSWORTH'S POETRY The agitated scene before his eye Was silent as a picture: evermore Were all things silent, wheresoe'er he moved." Seen anywhere, should we not know these lines to be Wordsworth's?And you tall pine-tree, whose composing sound Was wasted on the good man's living ear, y Hath now its own peculiar scantity; And, at the touch of every wandering breeze, Murmurs, not idly, o'er his peaceful grave." These lines just quoted remind us of the poet's wish for the Farmer of Tilsbury: "I hope that thy grave, wheresoever it be, Will hear the wind blow through the leaves of a tree." We cannot read Wordsworth's poetry thoughtfully without being made to think what this world would be if Nature never gave a brook to murmur or a bough to 29 SOUND AND MOTION wave! What a desolate earth this would be without Life, and Voice, and Motion! Perhaps the most grateful and exalted tribute ever paid by poet to the salutary and composing influence of nature is found in that passage in "The Prelude" which has been called a prayer anthem, a gloria in excelsis: "Yet were I grossly destitute of all Those human sentiments that make this earth So dear, if I should fail with grateful voice To speak of you, ye mountains, and ye lakes And sounding cataracts, ye mists and winds That dwell among the hills where I was born. If in my youth I have been pure in heart, If, mingling with the world, I am content With my own modest pleasures, and have lived With God and Nature communing, removed From little enmities and low desiresThe gift is yours; if in these times of fear,* This melancholy waste of hopes overthrown, * French Revolution. 30 IN WORDSWORTH'S POETRY If, mid indifference and apathy, And wicked exultation when good men On every side fall off, we know not how, To selfishness, disguised in gentle names, Of peace and quiet and domestic love Yet mingled not unwillingly with sneers On visionary minds; if, in this time Of dereliction and dismay, I yet Despair not of our nature, but retain, A more than Roman confidence, a faith That fails not, in all sorrow my support, The blessing of my life-the gift is yours, Ye winds and sounding cataracts! 'tis yours, Ye mountains! thine, 0 Nature! Thou hast fed My lofty speculations; and in thee, For this uneasy heart of ours, I find A never-failing principle of joy And purest passion. 3I j . UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN ''-'- * lil i "! ll~JJlil' IIall'l ll'll 'Illl'!/~'IJ l i 3 9015 03180 4266 UI - X.. —.. —... ---- - S N 'I I:f-.,,, ~,! I I.dl 1. rx. 0.A K