POETICAL WORKS WILLIAM WORDSWORTH: TOGETHER WITH A DESCRIPTION OF THE COUNTRY OF THE LAKES IN THE NORTH OF ENGLAND, NOW FIRST PUBLISHED WITH HIS WORKS. POETS......DWELL ON EARTH TO CLOTHE WHATE'ER THE SOUL ADMIRES AND LOVES WITH LANGUAGE AND WITH NUMBERS. Akenside. THIS CONCORD....... OF A WELL-TUNED MIND HATH BEEN SO SET BY THAT ALL-WORKING HAND OF HEAVEN, THAT THOUGH THE WORLD HATH DONE HIS WORST TO PUT IT OUT BY DISCORDS MOST UNKIND; YET DOTH IT STILL IN PERFECT UNION STAND WITH GOD AND MAN; NOR EVER WILL BE FORCED FROM THAT MOST SWEET ACCORD; BUT STILL AGREE, Daniel. EDITED BY HENRY REED, PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. PHILADELPHIA: KAY & TROUTMAN, 1831 MARKET STREET. PITTSBURGH:-C. H. KAY. 1848. Entered according to the act of congress, in the year 1837, by JAMES KAY, JUN. & BROTHER, in the clerk's office of the district court of the United States in and for the eastern district of Pennsylvania. PRINTED BY SMITH & PETERS, Franklin Buildings, Sixth Street below Arch, Philadelphia. 821 1848 PREFACE BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. THIS Volume is published with a view to present a complete and uniform Edition of the Poetical Works of William Wordsworth. It contains the latest collected edition published by him, and the additional volume, entitled "Yarrow Revisited and other Poems," published in 1835. The text has been adopted with great care from the London edition. To the contents of those volumes there have been added some lines published since the date of the last volume, and the Description of the Scenery of the Lakes, written by Mr. Wordsworth some years since. When the Publishers were about commencing the preparation of this volume, a difficulty in regard to the arrangement of the poems presented itself, to which it is proper here to advert.— The recent volume "Yarrow Revisited, &c." was prefaced by an advertisement in which Mr. Wordsworth stated his intention to have been to reserve the contents of the volume to be interspersed in some future edition of his miscellaneous Poems.' The request of friends, however, and a very delicate regard for the interests of the purchasers of his former works, induced the publication of the separate volume, in which the poems are printed without reference to the classification, which distinguishes the general collection of his poems. In preparing a complete and uniform edition, it was at once obvious that great incongruity would result from inserting after the former collection of Poems, as- arranged by Mr. Wordsworth, the contents of the volume since published in an order wholly different. Such a course would have been in direct violation of the Poet's expressed intention, and would have betrayed an ignorance or distrust in his principles of classification, or a timidity in applying them. It would have been a method purely mechanical, and calculated to impair the effect of that philosophical arrangement, which was designed as a commentary unostentatiously directing the attention of those, who read with reflection, to the Poet's purposes.'-Intelligent readers, familiar with the spirit of Wordsworth's poetry, would regret any violation of the harmony of his method: they could not be content, for instance, with any other arrangement of the miscellaneous Poems than that which the Poet has adopted, closing with the lofty Ode on the Intimations of Immortality. · In editing this volume, I have therefore ventured to adopt the only alternative which presented itself—to anticipate Mr. Wordsworth's unexecuted intention of interspersing the contents of the volume entitled "Yarrow Revisited, &c." among the poems already arranged by him. I have been guided by an attentive study of the principles of classification stated in the -general Preface, and of the character of each poem to which they were to be applied. In some instances special directions for arrangement had been given by the Poet himself;-these - have been carefully followed. In many instances the close similarity between groups of the unarranged poems, and those which had been arranged, left little room for error. With 3 respect to the detached pieces, it has been felt to be a delicate undertaking to decide under which class each one of them should be appropriately arranged. This has been attempted with an anxious sense of the care it required, though with an assurance that there was no possibility of impairing the individual interest of any of the poems.-It may be added that no one would feel more grieved at any injury done by a false arrangement than he who claims to have brought to the task an affectionate solicitude for every verse in the volume. A few notes have been introduced, consisting almost entirely of illustrative passages from the writings of those with whom I am confident Mr. Wordsworth, from similarity of mind or feeling, or from personal friendship, would most willingly find his name associated. That these notes may in a moment be distinguished from the Poet's own, they have been included in brackets and designated with the addition of the initial letters of the Editor's name. They have been limited in number by an anxiety to avoid encumbering the text, which consideration has also regulated the general arrangement of notes throughout the volume. Pains have been taken to indicate typographically, in a manner more clear than in any former edition, the general classification, of the Poems.-The Prose writings have been arranged, together with the Description of the Scenery of the Lakes, in an Appendix, for the greater convenience of reference, and from a regard to their value. To prevent any possibility of misapprehension, it may be proper to state that the second motto on the title-page, has been introduced into this Edition. The motto quoted from Akenside was adopted by Mr. Wordsworth on the title-page of " Yarrow Revisited, &c.," from which it has been here transferred. The sonnet by Hartley Coleridge has been introduced as dedicatory lines to this Edition. A Poet of the age of Queen Elizabeth, looking to the then unbroken shores of America, found a new impulse for the English Muse, and foresaw a boundless scope for the English tongue : “And who (in time) knows whither we may vent This gain of our best glory shall be sent T'enrich unknowing nations with our stores? May come refined with th' accents that are ours?" 'Musophilus.' In preparing this Edition of the Poetical Works of Wordsworth for the press, it has been a pleasing thought that in no instance could that anticipation-not quite a prophecy-of the 'well-languaged Daniel,' have been better fulfilled, than in the publication of the writings of one, who, though incomparably superior in genius, is closely kindred to him in right-minded habits of reflection and in purity and gentleness of heart. PHILADELPHIA, December, 1836. H. R. |