قراءة كتاب The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. VI (of 8)

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The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. VI (of 8)

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المؤلف:

Wordsworth William

دار النشر: Project Gutenberg

الصفحة رقم: 8

class="i0">Chieftains and kings in council were detained;

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What time the fleet at Aulis lay enchained.[A]

"The wished-for wind was given:—I then revolved

The oracle, upon the silent sea;[9]

And, if no worthier led the way, resolved

That, of a thousand vessels, mine should be

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The foremost prow in pressing to the strand,—

Mine the first blood that tinged the Trojan sand.

"Yet bitter, oft-times bitter, was the pang

When of thy loss I thought, belovèd Wife!

On thee too fondly did my memory hang,

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And on the joys we shared in mortal life,—

The paths which we had trod—these fountains, flowers;

My new-planned cities, and unfinished towers.

"But should suspense permit the Foe to cry,

'Behold they tremble!—haughty their array,

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Yet of their number no one dares to die?'

In soul I swept the indignity away:

Old frailties then recurred:—but lofty thought,

In act embodied, my deliverance wrought.

"And Thou, though strong in love, art all too weak

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In reason, in self-government, too slow;

I counsel thee by fortitude to seek

Our blest re-union in the shades below.

The invisible world with thee hath sympathised;

Be thy affections raised and solemnised.

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"Learn, by a mortal yearning, to ascend

Seeking [10] a higher object. Love was given,

Encouraged, sanctioned, chiefly for that [11] end;

For this the passion to excess was driven—

That self might be annulled; her bondage prove

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The fetters of a dream, opposed to love."—

Aloud she shrieked! for Hermes re-appears!

Round the dear Shade she would have clung—'tis vain:

The hours are past—too brief had they been years;

And him no mortal effort can detain:

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Swift, toward the realms that know not earthly day,

He through the portal takes his silent way,

And on the palace-floor a lifeless corse She lay.

Thus, all in vain exhorted and reproved,

She perished; and, as for a wilful crime,

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By the just Gods whom no weak pity moved,

Was doomed to wear out her appointed time,

Apart from happy Ghosts, that gather flowers [12]

Of blissful quiet 'mid unfading bowers.

—Yet tears to human suffering are due;

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And mortal hopes defeated and o'erthrown

Are mourned by man, and not by man alone,

As fondly he believes.—Upon the side

Of Hellespont (such faith was entertained)

A knot of spiry trees for ages grew

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From out the tomb of him for whom she died;

And ever, when such stature they had gained

That Ilium's walls were subject to their view,

The trees' tall summits withered at the sight;

A constant interchange of growth and blight![C]

After meeting the Wordsworths at Charles Lamb's, on the 9th May 1815, Henry Crabb Robinson wrote in his Diary: "It is the mere power which he is conscious of exerting in which he delights, not the production of a work in which men rejoice on account of the sympathies and sensibilities it excites in them. Hence, he does not much esteem his Laodamia, as it belongs to the inferior class of poems founded on the affections." (See Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence, vol. i. p. 482.)

Wordsworth wrote thus to Walter Savage Landor, from Rydal Mount, on the 21st of January 1824:—

"You have condescended to minute criticism upon the Laodamia.[D] I concur with you in the first stanza, and had several times attempted to alter it upon your grounds. I cannot, however, accede to your objection to the 'second birth,' merely because the expression has been degraded by Conventiclers.[E] I certainly meant nothing more by it than the eadem cura, and the largior æther, etc., of Virgil's Sixth Æneid. All religions owe their origin or acceptation to the wish of the human heart to supply in another state of existence the deficiencies of this, and to carry still nearer to perfection what we admire in our present condition, so that there must be many modes of expression arising out of this coincidence, or rather identity of feeling common to all Mythologies; and under this observation I should shelter the phrase from your censure—but I may be wrong in the particular case, though certainly not in the general principle. This leads to a remark in your last—'that you are disgusted with all books that treat of religion.' I am afraid it is a bad sign in me, that I have little relish for any other. Even in poetry it is the imaginative only, viz., that which is conversant with or turns upon Infinity, that powerfully affects me. Perhaps I ought to explain: I mean to say that except in those passages, where things are lost in each other, and limits vanish, and aspirations are raised, I read with something too like indifference; but all

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