William Wordsworth: A Disappearing Line

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View from the footpath up Watch Hill, Cockermouth, Cumbria: photo by Edwin Seppings, 4 November 2007

I love a public road: few sights there are
That please me more: such object hath had power
O'er my imagination since the dawn
Of childhood, when its disappearing line,
Seen daily afar off, on one bare steep
Beyond the limits that my feet had trod,
Was like a guide into eternity,
At least to things unknown and without bound.
Even something of the grandeur which invests
The Mariner who sails the roaring sea
Through storm and darkness early in my mind
Surrounded, too, the Wanderers of the Earth,
Grandeur as much, and loveliness far more;
Awed have I been by strolling Bedlamites,
From many other uncouth Vagrants pass'd
In fear, have walked with quicker step; but why
Take note of this? When I began to inquire,
To watch and question those I met, and held
Familiar talk with them, the lonely roads
Were schools to me in which I daily read
With most delight the passions of mankind,
There saw into the depth of human souls,
Souls that appear to have no depth at all
To vulgar eyes. And now convinced at heart
How little that to which alone we give
The name of education hath to do
With real feeling and just sense, how vain
A correspondence with the talking world
Proves to the most, and call'd to make good search
If man's estate, by doom of Nature yoked
With toil, is therefore yoked with ignorance,
If virtue be indeed so hard to rear,
And intellectual strength so rare a boon
I prized such walks still more; for there I found
Hope to my hope, and to my pleasure peace
And steadiness; and healing and repose
To every angry passion. There I heard,
From mouths of lowly men and of obscure
A tale of honour; sounds in unison
With loftiest promises of good and fair.

Watch Hill, from the entrance to Greenlands Farm, Cockermouth, Cumbria: photo by Nigel Monckton, 18 September 2005



The River Derwent, seen from the footpath behind Wordsworth House, Cockermouth, Cumbria: photo by Anna Hodgson, 7 June 2003

Wordsworth: The Prelude, or Growth of a Poet's Mind, from Book Twelfth, lines 145-184, in text of the poem as completed in May 1805 and read to Coleridge at Coleorton, in the winter after his return from Malta,1806-7; edited from the poet's manuscripts by Ernest de Selincourt, 1926

149-150 one bare steep Beyond the limits which my feet had trod: i.e. the road to the village of Isel over the Hay or Watch Hill, which can be seen from the garden and the back of the house at Cockermouth, where Wordsworth passed the first years of his life. (de Selincourt)

And see also: "Th[e] garden [of Wordsworth's House] extends from the house to the river Derwent, from which it is separated by a wall, with a raised terraced walk on the inner side, and nearly on a level with the top. I understand that this terrace was in existence in the poet's time.... Its direction is nearly due east and west; and looking eastward from it, there is a hill which bounds the view in that direction, and which fully corresponds to the description in The Prelude. It is from one and a half to two miles distant, of considerable height, is bare and destitute of trees, and has a road going directly over its summit, as seen from the terrace in Wordsworth's garden. This road is now used only as a footpath; but, fifty or sixty years ago it was the highroad to Isel, a hamlet on the Derwent, about three and a half miles from Cockermouth, in the direction of Bassenthwaite Lake. The hill is locally called the Hay, but on the Ordnance map it is marked Watch Hill."-- Dr. Henry Dodgson of Cockermouth, quoted in a note in Wordsworth's Poetical Works, Volume 3: The Prelude, ed. William Knight, 1896

The Setworthy Common track, Cockermouth, Cumbria: photo by John Holmes, 17 November 2005