The
poet's office is to be a Voice, not of one crying in the wilderness to a
knot of already magnetized acolytes, but singing amid the throng of men
and lifting their common aspirations and sympathies (so first clearly
revealed to themselves) on the wings of his song to a purer ether and a
wider reach of view. We cannot, if we would, read the poetry of
Wordsworth as mere poetry; at every other page we find ourselves
entangled in a problem of aesthetics. The world-old question of matter
and form of whether nectar _is_ of precisely the same flavor when served
to us from a Grecian chalice or from any jug of ruder pottery, comes up
for decision anew. The Teutonic nature has always shown a sturdy
preference of the solid bone with a marrow of nutritious moral to any
shadow of the same on the flowing mirror of sense. Wordsworth never lets
us long forget the deeply rooted stock from which he sprang,--_vien ben
da lui_.
* * * * *
William Wordsworth was born at Cockermouth in Cumberland on the 7th of
April, 1770, the second of five children. His father was John Wordsworth,
an attorney-at-law, and agent of Sir James Lowther, afterwards first Earl
of Lonsdale. His mother was Anne Cookson, the daughter of a mercer in
Penrith. His paternal ancestors had been settled immemorially at
Penistone in Yorkshire, whence his grandfather had emigrated to
Westmoreland.
Pages:
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295