The Duddon Sonnets - Notes to Sonnet XXV

XXV

          METHINKS 'twere no unprecedented feat

          Should some benignant Minister of air

          Lift, and encircle with a cloudy chair,

          The One for whom my heart shall ever beat

          With tenderest love;--or, if a safer seat

          Atween his downy wings be furnished, there

          Would lodge her, and the cherished burden bear

          O'er hill and valley to this dim retreat!

          Rough ways my steps have trod;--too rough and long

          For her companionship; here dwells soft ease:               10

          With sweets that she partakes not some distaste

          Mingles, and lurking consciousness of wrong;

          Languish the flowers; the waters seem to waste

          Their vocal charm; their sparklings cease to please.

Fancy having trumped Idleness – there follows a seriously fanciful sonnet!

The traveller day-dreams that some magical being of the air in the form of a bird will spirit his love to his ‘dim retreat’ as his journey has been to ‘rough and long/For her companionship’.

Lines 10 -14 are slightly ambiguous. Assuming that ‘she’ in L11 refers to ‘soft ease’ and not the traveller’s companion, (though if this is the case why is ‘idleness’ not personified) – but if this is correct, then ‘soft ease’ is distasteful, (I assume because it is unproductive) and a lurking consciousness of ‘wrong’ undermines the enjoyment of Nature – the flowers just ‘languish’,  the sound and sight of the water ‘cease to please’.

This is a good example of the puritanical streak that runs through Wordsworth’s poetry – on a personal note, it is his regard for poverty as a potentially positive quality that develops thrift and prudence within his ‘Republic of Shepherds’ that I find most difficult to accept (in the note, much is made of Rev. Robert Walker and is family’s ability to live good lives on a small income through hard work and thrift). Like Cobbett, Wordsworth’s critique of society was founded on eighteenth century notions of the dangers of ‘luxury’ and burgeoning materialism. The notion of ‘wealth re-distribution’ was really an outcome of Marxist analysis later in the Nineteenth Century. Wordsworth is ‘green’ rather than ‘red’.