THE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, VOL. 8 (Completed)

"THERE IS A SHAPELESS CROWD OF UNHEWN STONES"

Numerous fragments of verse, more or less unfinished, occur in the Grasmere Journals, written by Dorothy Wordsworth. One of these--which is broken up into irregular fragments, and very incomplete--is evidently part of the material which was written about the old Cumbrian shepherd Michael. The successive alterations of the text of the poem Michael are in the Grasmere Journal. These fragments have a special topographical interest, from their description of Helvellyn, and its spring, the fountain of the mists, and the stones on the summit. On the outside leather cover of the MS. book there is written, "May to Dec.1802."

The following lines come first:--

There is a shapeless crowd of unhewn stones[345]

That lie together, some in heaps, and some

In lines, that seem to keep themselves alive

In the last dotage of a dying form.

At least so seems it to a man who stands

In such a lonely place.

These are followed by a few lines, some of which were afterwards used in The Prelude (see vol. iii. p. 269):--

Shall he who gives his days to low pursuits,

Amid the undistinguishable crowd

Of cities, 'mid the same eternal flow

Of the same objects, melted and reduced

To one identity, by differences

That have no law, no meaning, and no end,

Shall he feel yearning to those lifeless forms,

And shall we think that Nature is less kind

To those, who all day long, through a long life,

Have walked within her sight? It cannot be.

                               Mary Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth,

                                             William Wordsworth.

                                       Sat. Eve., 20 past 6, May 29.

Other fragments follow, less worthy of preservation. Then the passage, which occurs in book xiii. of The Prelude, beginning--

There are who think that strong affection, love,

(see vol. iii. p. 361), with one or two variations from the final text, which were not improvements.

Five lines on Helvellyn, afterwards included in the Musings near Aquapendente (see vol. viii. p. 47, ll. 61-65), come next.

The fragments referring to Michael are written down, probably just as the brother dictated them to his sister, and would be--if not unintelligible--certainly without any literary connection or unity, were they printed in the order in which they occur. I therefore transpose them slightly, to give something like continuity to the whole; which remains, of course, a torso.

I will relate a tale for those who love

To lie beside the lonely mountain brooks,