The Duddon Sonnets - Notes to Sonnet XXVIII

XXVIII. JOURNEY RENEWED

          I ROSE while yet the cattle, heat-opprest,

          Crowded together under rustling trees

          Brushed by the current of the water-breeze;

          And for 'their' sakes, and love of all that rest,

          On Duddon's margin, in the sheltering nest;

          For all the startled scaly tribes that slink

          Into his coverts, and each fearless link

          Of dancing insects forged upon his breast;

          For these, and hopes and recollections worn

          Close to the vital seat of human clay;                      10

          Glad meetings, tender partings, that upstay

          The drooping mind of absence, by vows sworn

          In his pure presence near the trysting thorn--

          I thanked the Leader of my onward way.

This is one of those ’upside down’ sonnets that really makes no sense whatsoever until you get the final line – there’s got to be a rhetorical term for this – but I don’t know it.

Again, the pastoral opening image is essentially picturesque, reminiscent of idyllic representations of grazing cattle and herdsman from Claude Lorraine onwards.

Pastoral Landscape by Claude Lorrain, 1646/7, Timken Museum of Art.

 The remainder of the poem, however, develops in a more typical ‘Wordsworthian manner, which makes claims for a more profound  influence of Nature upon the mind, than the idyllic pastoral. The poet ‘thanks’ the river (the Leader) not only for the sake of all the creatures – cattle, insects – sustained by it (insects forged upon his breast – note continued anthropomorphic theme), but also for its anticipated influence on the ‘drooping mind of absence’. We’re in ‘when oft upon my couch lie/ …flash upon the inward eye ’ territory here.

This sustaining presence is a kind of marriage between the mind and nature, something that the traveller swears a vow to by the ‘trysting thorn’. The poet is led by the river on his onward way.