The Duddon Sonnets - Notes to Sonnet XI

XI. THE FAERY CHASM

          NO fiction was it of the antique age:

          A sky-blue stone, within this sunless cleft,

          Is of the very footmarks unbereft

          Which tiny Elves impressed;--on that smooth stage

          Dancing with all their brilliant equipage

          In secret revels--haply after theft

          Of some sweet Babe--Flower stolen, and coarse Weed left

          For the distracted Mother to assuage

          Her grief with, as she might!--But, where, oh! where

          Is traceable a vestige of the notes                         10

          That ruled those dances wild in character?--

          Deep underground? Or in the upper air,

          On the shrill wind of midnight? or where floats

          O'er twilight fields the autumnal gossamer?

My copy of Wordsworth’s Poetical Works is a reprint (1969) of Oxford University Press’s facsimile of Thomas Hutchinson’s volume published in 1850, and revised in 1904 by Ernest De Selincourt. It retains the somewhat idiosyncratic categorisations of Wordsworth’s output preferred by the poet himself. The poems are divided into broad categories, either by subject matter – Ecclesiastical Sonnets, Memorials of a Tour of Italy (1837), or by ‘type’– Poems of Sentiment and Reflection, Poems of Affections, Poems of the Fancy… Aside from its inclusion in the Duddon Sonnet series, the above poem is an excellent example as what is meant by a poem of Fancy. 

Imagination, Fancy, Affections and Sentiment – these are now out-moded ways of thinking about mental faculties; we prefer categorisations that are either psychological, linguistic or neurological. Poetry about fanciful things did not manage to survive the onslaught of modernism and was ditched with any other cultural object that had a whiff of Victorian sentimentality about it. Perhaps, the post-modern era’s interest in ‘language games’ and intertextuality will make us more amenable to the charms of the Fanciful. What is certain, as shown below, poets of Wordsworth’s generation discussed the idea at length, and as a mode of poetic expression it retained its popularity throughout the nineteenth century.

The law under which the processes of Fancy are carried on is as capricious as the accidents of things, and the effects are surprising, playful, ludicrous, amusing, tender, or pathetic, as the objects happen to be appositely produced or fortunately combined. Fancy depends upon the rapidity and profusion with which she scatters her thoughts and images; trusting that their number, and the felicity with which they are linked together, will make amends for the want of individual value: or she prides herself upon the curious subtilty and the successful elaboration with which she can detect their lurking affinities. If she can win you over to her purpose, and impart to you her feelings, she cares not how unstable or transitory may be her influence, knowing that it will not be out of her power to resume it upon an apt occasion. But the Imagination is conscious of an indestructible dominion;—the Soul may fall away from it, not being able to sustain its grandeur; but, if once felt and acknowledged, by no act of any other faculty of the mind can it be relaxed, impaired, or diminished.—Fancy is given to quicken and to beguile the temporal part of our nature, Imagination to incite and to support the eternal.
Wordsworth – Preface to Poems (1815)

There are two other aspects of this sonnet which merit further discussion – firstly the question of size and miniaturism – this is taken-up as the theme of the next sonnet.

Secondly, the re-telling of traditional tales and popular superstitions is a recurrent interest to Romantic writers, and indeed emerged in the earlier generation with the publication of Percy’s ‘Reliques’.