An Evening Walk II

An Evening Walk (late version with many important changes).

An Evening Walk is one of Wordsworth's very early works, first published in 1793 at the same time as Descriptive Sketches, but written while he was at Hawkshead School and during his first two vacations from St John's College, Cambridge, therefore between the ages of seventeen and nineteen (1787-1789). The original version can be found here, the version reproduced below incorporates all subsequent changes. The descriptions presented are based on the scenery of the Lake District, in particular the scenery around Hawkshead. Places mentioned are Grasmere, Lodore, the River Derwent, and Lakes Windermere and Esthwaite, but Wordsworth notes : 'The country is idealised rather than described in any one of its local aspects'.

In addition to landscape descriptions, there are digressions on Horace's Sabine Villa (73-86), a cock (145-156), quarry workers (156-167), myths about ghostly riders (196-212), swans (212-249), , and the description of a beggar woman with two children who die out in the open (250-278).

An Evening Walk

Addressed to a young lady

General Sketch of the Lakes

Far from my dearest friend, 'tis mine to rove

Through bare grey dell, high wood, and pastoral cove;

Where Derwent rests, and listens to the roar

That stuns the tremulous cliffs of high Lodore;

Where peace to Grasmere's lonely island leads,

To willowy hedge-rows, and to emerald meads;

Leads to her bridge, rude church, and cottaged grounds,

Her rocky sheepwalks, and her woodland bounds;

Where, undisturbed by winds, Winander sleeps

'Mid clustering isles, and holly-sprinkled steeps;

Where twilight glens endear my Esthwaite's shore,

And memory of departed pleasures, more.

12.

Author's regret of his Youth which was passed amongst them (the Lakes)

13.

Fair scenes, erewhile, I taught, a happy child,

The echoes of your rocks my carols wild;

The spirit sought not then, in cherished sadness,

A cloudy substitute for failing gladness,

In youth's keen eye the livelong day was bright,

The sun at morning, and the stars at night,

Alike, when first the bittern's hollow bill

Was heard, or woodcocks roamed the moonlight hill.

21.

In thoughtless gaiety I coursed the plain,

And hope itself was all I knew of pain;

For then, the inexperienced heart would beat

At times, while young Content forsook her seat,

And wild Impatience, pointing upward, showed,

Through passes yet unreached, a brighter road.

Alas! the idle tale of man is found

Depicted in the dial's moral round;

Hope with reflection blends her social rays

To gild the total tablet of his days;

Yet still, the sport of some malignant power,

He knows but from its shade the present hour.

33.

But why, ungrateful, dwell on idle pain?

To show what pleasures yet to me remain,

Say, will my Friend, with unreluctant ear,

The history of a poet's evening hear?

Short description of noon

37

When, in the south, the wan noon, brooding still,

Breathed a pale steam around the glaring hill,

And shades of deep-embattled clouds were seen,

Spotting the northern cliffs with lights between;

When crowding cattle, checked by rails that make

A fence far stretched into the shallow lake,

Lashed the cool water with their restless tails,

Or from high points of rock looked out for fanning gales:

When school-boys stretched their length upon the green;

And round the broad-spread oak, a glimmering scene,

In the rough fern-clad park, the herded deer

Shook the still-twinkling tail and glancing ear;

When horses in the sunburnt intake stood,

And vainly eyed below the tempting flood,

Or tracked the passenger, in mute distress,

With forward neck the closing gate to press --

Then, while I wandered where the huddling rill

Brightens with water-breaks the hollow ghyll

As by enchantment, an obscure retreat

Opened at once, and stayed my devious feet.

Cascade scene

57.

While thick above the rill the branches close,

In rocky basin its wild waves repose,

Inverted shrubs, and moss of gloomy green,

Cling from the rockes, with pale wood-weeds between;

And its own twilight softens the whole scene,

Save where aloft the subtle sunbeams shine

On withered briars that o'er the crags recline;

Save where, with sparkling foam, a small cascade

Illumines, from within, the leafy shade;

Beyond, along the vista of the brook,

Where antique roots its bustling course o'erlook,

The eye reposes on a secret bridge

Half grey, half shagged with ivy to its ridge;

There, bending o'er the stream, the listless swain

Lingers behind his disappearing wain.

72.

72

-- Did Sabine grace adorn my living line,

Blandusia's praise, wild stream, should yield to thine!

Never shall ruthless minister of death

'Mid thy soft glooms the glittering steel unsheath;

No goblets shall, for thee, be crowned with flowers,

No kid with piteous outcry thrill thy bowers;

The mystic shapes that by thy margin rove

A more benignant sacrifice approve --

A mind, that, in calm angelic mood

Of happy wisdom, meditating good,

Beholds, of all from her high powers required,

Much done, and much designed, and more desired, --

Harmonious thoughts, a soul by truth refined,

Entire affection for all human kind.

86.

Precipice and sloping Lights

86.

Dear Brook, farewell! To-morrow's noon again

Shall hide me, wooing long thy wildwood strain;

But now the sun has gained his western road,

And eve's mild hour invites my steps abroad.

While, near the midway cliff, the silvered kite

In many a whistling circle wheels her flight;

Slant watery lights, from parting clouds, apace

Travel along the precipice's base;

Cheering its naked waste of scattered stone,

By lichens grey, and scanty moss, o'ergrown;

Where scarce the foxglove peeps, or thistle's beard;

And restless stone-chat, all day long, is heard.

Face of Nature as the Sun declines

98.

How pleasant, as the sun declines, to view

The spacious landscape change in form and hue!

Here, vanish, as in mist, before a flood

Of bright obscurity, hill, lawn, and wood;

There, objects, by the searching beams betrayed,

Come forth, and here retire in purple shade;

Even the white stems of birch, the cottage white,

Soften their glare before the mellow light;

The skiffs, at anchor where with umbrage wide

Yon chestnuts half the latticed boat-house hide,

108.

Shed from their sides, that face the sun's slant beam,

Strong flakes of radiance on the tremulous stream:

Raised by yon travelling flock, a dusty cloud

Mounts from the road, and spreads its moving shroud;

The shepherd, all involved in wreaths of fire,

Now shows a shadowy speck, and now is lost entire.

114.

Into a gradual calm the breezes sink,

A blue rim borders all the lake's still brink;

There doth the twinkling aspen's foliage sleep,

And insects clothe, like dust, the glassy deep:

And now, on every side, the surface breaks

Into blue spots, and slowly lengthening streaks;

Here, plots of sparkling water tremble bright

With thousand thousand twinkling points of light;

There, waves that, hardly weltering, die away,

Tip their smooth ridges with a softer ray;

And now the whole wide lake in deep repose

Is hushed, and like a burnished mirror glows,

Save where, along the shady western marge,

Coasts, with industrious oar, the charcoal barge.

128.

Their panniered train a group of potters goad,

Winding from side to side up the steep road;

The peasant, from yon cliff of fearful edge

Shot, down the headlong path darts with his sledge;

Bright beams the lonely mountain-horse illume

Feeding 'mid purple heath, 'green rings' and broom;

While the sharp slope the slackened team confounds,

Downward the ponderous timber-wain resounds;

In foamy breaks the rill, with merry song,

Dashed o'er the rough rock, lightly leaps along;

From lonesome chapel at the mountain's feet,

Three humble bells their rustic chime repeat;

Sounds from the water-side the hammered boat;

And 'blasted' quarry thunders, heard remote!

Mountain farm, and the Cock

142.

Even here, amid the sweep of endless woods,

Blue pomp of lakes, high cliffs, and falling floods,

Not undelightful are the simplest charms,

Found by the grassy door of mountain-farms.

Slate quarry

156

Where, mixed with graceful birch the sombrous pine

And yew-tree o'er the silver rocks recline;

I love to mark the quarry's moving trains,

Dwarf panniered steeds, and men, and numerous wains;

How busy all the enormous hive within,

While Echo dallies with its various din!

Some (hear you not their chisels' clinking sound?)

Toil, small as pigmies in the gulf profound;

Some, dim between the lofty cliffs descried,

O'erwalk the slender plank from side to side;

These, by the pale-blue rocks that ceaseless ring,

In airy baskets hanging, work and sing.

167.

Sunset

168

Just where a cloud above the mountain rears

An edge all flame, the broadening sun appears;

A long blue bar its aegis orb divides,

And breaks the spreading of its golden tides;

And now that orb has touched the purple steep

Whose softened image penetrates the deep.

'Cross the calm lake's blue shades the cliffs aspire,

With towers and woods, a 'prospect all on fire',

While coves and secret hollows, through a ray

Of fainter gold, a purple gleam betray.

Each slip of lawn the broken rocks between

Shines in the light with more than earthly green:

Deep yellow beams the scattered stems illume,

Far in the level forest's central gloom:

Waving his hat, the shepherd, from the vale,

Directs his winding dog the cliffs to scale, --

The dog, loud barking, 'mid the glittering rocks,

Hunts, where his master points, th'intercepted flocks,

Where oaks o'erhang the road the radiance shoots

On tawny earth, wild weeds, and twisted roots;

The druid-stones a brightened ring unfold;

And all the babbling brooks are liquid gold;

Sunk to a curve, the day-star lessens still,

Gives one bright glance, and drops behind the hill.

191.

Superstition of that Country connected with that moment

192

In these secluded vales, if village fame,

Confirmed by hoary hairs, belief may claim;

When up the hills, as now, retired the light,

Strange apparitions mocked the shepherd's sight.

196

The form appears of one that spurs his steed

Midway along the hill with desperate speed;

Unhurt pursues his lengthened flight, while all

Attend, at every stretch, his headlong fall.

Anon, appears a brave, a gorgeous show

Of horsemen-shadows moving to and fro;

At intervals imperial banners stream,

And now the van reflects the solar beam;

The rear through iron brown betrays a sullen gleam.

While silent stands the admiring crowd below,

Silent the visionary warriors go,

Winding in ordered pomp their upward way

Till the last banner of the long array

Has disappeared, and every trace is fled

Of splendour -- save the beacon's spiry head

Tipt with eve's latest gleam of burning red.

Swans

212

Now, while the solemn evening shadows sail,

On slowly-waving pinions, down the vale;

And, fronting the bright west, yon oak entwines

Its darkening boughs and leaves, in stronger lines;

'Tis pleasant near the tranquil lake to stray

Where, winding on along some secret bay,

217.

The swan uplifts his chest, and backward flings

His neck, a varying arch, between his towering wings:

The eye that marks the gliding creature sees

How graceful, pride can be, and how majestic, ease,

While tender cares and mild domestic loves

With furtive watch pursue her as she moves,

The female with a meeker charm succeeds,

And her brown little ones around her leads,

Nibbling the water lilies as they pass,

Or playing wanton with the floating grass.

She, in a mother's care, her beauty's pride

Forgetting, calls the wearied to her side;

Alternately they mount her back, and rest

Close by her mantling wings' embraces prest.

232

Long may they float upon this flood serene;

Theirs be these holms untrodden, still, and green,

Where leafy shades fence off the blustering gale,

And breathes in peace the lily of the vale!

Yon isle, which feels not even the milkmaid's feet,

Yet hears her song, 'by distance made more sweet',

Yon isle conceals their home, their hut-like bower;

Green water-rushes overspread the floor;

Long grass and willows form the woven wall,

And swings above the roof the poplar tall.

Thence issuing often with unwieldy stalk,

They crush with broad black feet their flowery walk;

Or, from the neighbouring water, hear at morn

The hound, the horse's tread, and mellow horn;

Involve their serpent-necks in changeful rings,

Rolled wantonly between their slippery wings,

Or, starting up with noise and rude delight,

Force half upon the wave their cumbrous flight.

249.

Female Beggar

250

Fair Swan! by all a mother's joys caressed,

Haply some wretch has eyed, and called thee blessed;

When with her infants, from some shady seat

By the lake's edge, she rose -- to face the noontide heat;

Or taught their limbs along the dusty road

A few short steps to totter with their load.

256

I see her now, denied to lay her head,

On cold blue nights, in hut or straw-built shed,

Turn to a silent smile their sleepy cry,

By pointing to the gliding moon on high.

-- When low-hung clouds each star of summer hide,

And fireless are the valleys far and wide,

Where the brook brawls along the public road

Dark with bat-haunted ashes stretching broad,

Oft has she taught them on her lap to lay

The shining glow-worm; or, in heedless play,

Toss it from hand to hand, disquieted;

While others, not unseen, are free to shed

Green unmolested light upon their mossy bed.

269

Oh! when the sleety showers her path assail,

And like a torrent roars the headstrong gale;

No more her breath can thaw their fingers cold,

Their frozen arms her neck no more can fold;

Weak roof a cowering form two babes to shield,

And faint the fire a dying heart can yield!

Press the sad kiss, fond mother! vainly fears

Thy flooded cheek to wet them with its tears;

No tears can chill them, and no bosom warms,

Thy breast their death-bed, coffined in thine arms!

278.

Twilight sounds

279

Sweet are the sounds that mingle from afar,

Heard by calm lakes, as peeps the folding star,

Where the duck dabbles 'mid the rustling sedge,

And feeding pike starts from the water's edge,

Or the swan stirs the reeds, his neck and bill

Wetting, that drip upon the water still;

And heron, as resounds the trodden shore,

Shoots upward, darting his long neck before.

Western Lights

287

Now, with religious awe, the farewell light

Blends with the solemn colouring of night;

'Mid groves of clouds that crest the mountain's brow,

And round the west's proud lodge their shadows throw,

Like Una shining on her gloomy way,

The half-seen form of Twilight roams astray;

Shedding, through paly loop-holes mild and small,

Gleams that upon the lake's still bosom fall;

Soft o'er the surface creep those lustres pale

Tracking the motions of the fitful gale.

Spirits

297

With restless interchange at once the bright

Wins on the shade, the shade upon the light.

No favoured eye was e'er allowed to gaze

On lovelier spectacle in faery days;

When gentle Spirits urged a sportive chase,

Brushing with lucid wands the water's face:

While music, stealing round the glimmering deeps,

Charmed the tall circle of the unchanged steeps.

Night

305

-- The lights are vanished from the watery plains:

No wreck of all the pageantry remains.

Unheeded night has overcome the vales:

On the dark earth the wearied vision fails;

The latest lingerer of the forest train,

The lone black fir, forsakes the faded plain;

Last evening sight, the cottage smoke, no more

Lost in the thickened darkness, glimmers hoar;

And, towering from the sullen dark-brown mere,

Like a black wall, the mountain-steeps appear.

-- Now o'er the soothed accordant heart we feel

A sympathetic twilight slowly steal,

And ever, as we fondly muse, we find

The soft gloom deepening on the tranquil mind.

Stay! pensive, sadly-pleasing visions, stay!

Ah no! as fades the vale, they fade away!

Yet still the tender, vacant glow remains;

Still the cold cheek its shuddering tear retains.

323

The bird, who ceased, with fading light, to thread

Silent the hedge or steamy rivulet's bed,

From his grey re-appearing tower shall soon

Salute with gladsome note the rising moon,

While with a hoary light she frosts the ground,

And pours a deeper blue to Aether's bound;

Pleased, as she moves, her pomp of clouds to fold

In robes of azure, fleecy-white, and gold.

Moonlight

331

Above yon eastern hill, where darkness broods

O'er all its vanished dells, and lawns, and woods;

Where but a mass of shade the sight can trace,

Even now she shews, half-veiled, her lovely face:

Across the gloomy valley flings her light,

Far to the western slopes with hamlets white;

And gives, where woods the chequered upland strew,

To the green corn of summer, autumn's hue.

Hope

339

Thus Hope, first pouring from her blessed horn

Her dawn, far lovelier than the moon's own morn,

Till higher mounted, strives in vain to cheer

The weary hills, impervious, blackening near;

Yet does she still, undaunted, throw the while

On darling spots remote her tempting smile.

345

Even now she decks for me a distant scene,

(For dark and broad the gulf of time between)

Gilding that cottage with her fondest ray,

(Sole bourn, sole wish, sole object of my way;

How fair its lawns and sheltering woods appear!

How sweet its streamlet murmurs in mine ear!)

Where we, my Friend, to happy days shall rise,

Till our small share of hardly-paining sighs

(For sighs will ever trouble human breath)

Creep hushed into the tranquil breast of death.

355

But now the clear bright Moon her zenith gains,

And, rimy without speck, extend the plains:

The deepest cleft the mountain's front displays

Scarce hides a shadow from her searching rays;

From the dark-blue faint silvery threads divide

The hills, while gleams below the azure tide;

Time softly treads; Throughout the landscape breathes

A peace enlivened, not disturbed, by wreaths

Of charcoal-smoke, that o'er the fallen wood,

Steal down the hill, and spread along the flood.

Night-sounds

365

The song of mountain-streams, unheard by day,

Now hardly heard, beguiles my homeward way.

Air listens, like the sleeping water, still,

To catch the spiritual music of the hill,

Broke only by the slow clock tolling deep,

Or shout that wakes the ferry-man from sleep,

The echoed hoof nearing the distant shore,

The boat's first motion -- made with dashing oar;

Sound of closed gate, across the water borne,

Hurrying the timid hare through rustling corn;

The sportive outcry of the mocking owl;

And at long intervals the mill-dog's howl;

The distant forge's swinging thump profound;

Or yell, in the deep woods, of lonely hound.

378.

Commentary

The following explanations were appended by Wordsworth much later:

The young lady to whom this was addressed was my sister. It was composed at school and during my first two college vacations. There is not an image in it which I have not observed; and, now in my seventy-third year, I recollect the time and place where most of them were noticed. I will confine myself to one instance.

Waving his hat, the shepherd from the vale

Directs his wandering dog the cliffs to scale;

The dog loud barking mid the glittering rocks,

Hunts where his master points, the intercepted flocks.

I was an eye-witness of this for the first time while crossing the pass of Dunmail Raise. Upon second thought, I will mention another image:

And fronting the bright west, yon oak tree entwines

Its darkening boughs and leaves in stronger lines.

This is feebly and imperfectly expressed, but I recollect distinctly the very spot where this first struck me. It was on the way between Hawkshead and Ambleside, and gave me extreme pleasure. The moment was important in my poetical history; for I date from it my consciousness of the infinite variety of natural appearances which had been unnoticed by the poets of any age or country, so far as I was acquainted with them; and I made a resolution to supply in some degree the deficiency. I could not have been at that time above fourteen years of age.

The description of the Swans that follows was taken from the daily opportunities I had of observing their habits, not as confined to the gentleman's park, but in a state of nature. There were two pairs of them that divided the lake of Esthwaite and its in-and-out-flowing streams between them, never trespassing a single yard upon each other's separate domain. They were of the old magnificent species, bearing in beauty and majesty about the same relation to the Thames swan which that does to a goose. It was from the remembrance of these noble creatures I took, thirty years after, the picture of the swan which I have discarded from the poem of Dion.

While I was a school-boy, the late Mr Curwen introduced a little fleet of these birds, but of the inferior species, to the lake of Windermere. Their principal home was about his own islands; but they sailed about into remote parts of the lake, and either from real or imagined injury done to the adjoining fields, they were got rid of at the request of the farmers and proprietors, but to the great regret of all who had become attached to them from noticing their beauty and quiet habits.

I will conclude my notice of this poem by observing that the plan of it has not been confined to a particular walk, or an individual place; a proof (of which I was unconscious at the time) of my unwillingness to submit the poetic spirit to the chains of fact and real circumstance. The country is idealised rather than described in any one of its local aspects.'

Criticism

The critical reception of the poem was mixed. There was considerable appreciation for the quality of the descriptions of nature. The Critical Review comments on the 'new and picturesque imagery' of the poem, and 'many touches ... which would not disgrace our best descriptive poets', The European Magazine praises the 'minuteness and accuracy' of the depictions of the landscape. (William Wordsworth in Context, Ed Andrew Bennett, ch 6, The Critical Reception 1793-1806, David Higgins, p47). But the major critical review of the poem occurs much later in Emile Legouis' The Early Life of William Wordsworth (p120-160), 1896. Legouis points out that: At twenty years of age, or thereabouts, Wordsworth wrote in a style which was perhaps more perverse and distorted than that of any other poet of his generation. Samuel Taylor Coleridge also notes the problems of style presented by Wordsworth's early poems, characterising them as resembling exotic fruits maturing in a hard and knotty rind, images 'all a-blaze'. After exhaustively analysing his stylistic peculiarities, Legouis continues his analysis with: Nevertheless, in spite of their unwholesome style, these poems are, in their way, works of genius. The layer of affectation which encumbers them is broken in numberless places by pieces of exquisite imagery. At a period when the descriptive writers seemed to have exhausted the whole flora, the young poet made his appearance, loaded with a profusion of freshly gathered blossoms.