V
SOLE listener, Duddon! to the breeze
that played
With thy clear voice, I caught the
fitful sound
Wafted o'er sullen moss and craggy
mound--
Unfruitful solitudes, that seemed to
upbraid
The sun in heaven!--but now, to form
a shade
For Thee, green alders have together
wound
Their foliage; ashes flung their arms
around;
And birch-trees risen in silver
colonnade.
And thou hast also tempted here to
rise,
'Mid sheltering pines, this Cottage
rude and grey; 10
Whose ruddy children, by the mother's
eyes
Carelessly watched, sport through the
summer day,
Thy pleased associates:--light as
endless May
On infant bosoms lonely Nature lies.
The anthropomorphic conceit continues
here; ash trees have ‘flung their arms’ around the Duddon; unfruitful solitudes
‘upbraid the sun in heaven’.
But the landscape begins to be
peopled, and we enter more obviously ‘Wordsworthian’ territory. The picture of
the ‘ruddy children’s’ mother ‘carelessly’ watching them play by the stream
brings to mind the description of the poet’s own childhood described in The Prelude:
…..For
this, didst thou
O
Derwent! winding amongst grassy holms
Where
I was looking on, a babe in arms,
Make
ceaseless music that composed my thoughts
To
more than infant softness, giving me
Amid
the fretful dwellings of mankind
A
foretaste, a dim earnest, of the calm
That
Nature breathes among the hills and groves.
Book 1, Ll. 275- 281.
There are some lovely observations in
this sonnet – ‘sullen moss and craggy
mound’, the ‘silver colonnade’ of birch-trees and the phrase ‘carelessly
watched’ – light as ‘endless May’ – the diction is less ornate, you hear the Wordsworth
of Lyrical Ballads more clearly.
2
Cockley Beck - The first cottages on the Duddon
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