The Duddon Sonnets - Notes to Sonnet I

I

          NOT envying Latian shades--if yet they throw

          A grateful coolness round that crystal Spring,

          Blandusia, prattling as when long ago

          The Sabine Bard was moved her praise to sing;

          Careless of flowers that in perennial blow

          Round the moist marge of Persian fountains cling;

          Heedless of Alpine torrents thundering

          Through ice-built arches radiant as heaven's bow;

          I seek the birthplace of a native Stream.--

          All hail, ye mountains! hail, thou morning light!           10

          Better to breathe at large on this clear height

          Than toil in needless sleep from dream to dream:

          Pure flow the verse, pure, vigorous, free, and bright,

          For Duddon, long-loved Duddon, is my theme!

Ll. 1 – 5 The ‘Sabine Bard’ refers to Horace (65BC. – 8BC) , and more particularly his Ode III, 13  which is a hymn to Spring written in praise of the Spring of Blandusia. This is believed to have been situated on Horace’s farm in Latium. Evoking the spirit of Horace is significant for a number of reasons: firstly, it signals that the sonnet sequence is written in the tradition of the short lyric, but linked together in a ‘collection’ on a variety of themes – similar to Horace’s books of Odes; secondly, in the opening lines the diction itself is, by Wordsworth’s standards, particularly Latinate, with frequent use of inversion (ll. 2, 3,); finally, the mention of Duddon – ‘a native stream’ is reminiscent of the final lines of the Horatian ode:

Yes, fountain of Bandusia,

Posterity shall know

The cooling brooks that from thy nooks,

Singing and dancing go.

It is interesting to note that the earliest version of ‘An Evening Walk’ (1786 – 9), written in Wordsworth’s late teens, contains the following lines:

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

Lingers behind his disappearing wain.

-Did Sabine grace adorn my living line,

Bandusia’s praise, wild stream should yield to thine!

This reference to Horace was removed in the version first published in 1793.

Later in the series Wordsworth re-iterates the theme of contrasting a small, little known, local river with either more famous rivers or a quasi-epic treatment in ‘the grand manner’.

L. 6 – ‘Persian fountains’ – brings in a note of orientalism

Ll. 7 -10  -These lines reject seeking the Sublime in ‘Alpine Torrents’ but in the ‘birthplace of a native Ttream’ then evoke Nature as a muse-like figure.

Ll. 11 – 14 - The evocation of the River Duddon is reminiscent of how the River Derwent is used as a ‘fount’ of inspiration in the opening lines of the ‘Two Part Prelude’ (1799).