XIV
O MOUNTAIN Stream! the Shepherd and his Cot
Are privileged Inmates of deep
solitude;
Nor would the nicest Anchorite
exclude
A field or two of brighter green, or
plot
Of tillage-ground, that seemeth like
a spot
Of stationary sunshine:--thou hast
viewed
These only, Duddon! with their paths
renewed
By fits and starts, yet this contents
thee not.
Thee hath some awful Spirit impelled
to leave,
Utterly to desert, the haunts of
men, 10
Though simple thy companions were and
few;
And through this wilderness a passage
cleave
Attended but by thy own voice, save
when
The clouds and fowls of the air thy
way pursue!
1806.
L.3
– nicest – Middle English (in the sense ‘stupid’): from
Old French, from Latin nescius ‘ignorant’, from nescire ‘not
know’. Other early senses included ‘coy, reserved’,
giving rise to ‘fastidious,
scrupulous’: this led both to the sense ‘fine, subtle’ (regarded by some as the
‘correct’ sense), and to the main current senses.
Wordsworth
in his notes identifies this as the earliest sonnet in the series, written a
full fourteen years before the poems’ publication. The diction does indeed seem
closer to the Wordsworth of Lyrical Ballads – closer to ‘the real language of
men’. The phrase ‘plot of tillage ground that seemth like a spot of stationary
sunshine’ is one of those memorable Wordsworthian phrases that combines keen
observation with a thrilling metaphorical leap.
The core
of the poem lies in the contrast between the inhabitants of Wordsworth’s
pastoral republic – shepherd or hermit – who are content as ‘inmates of deep
solitude.’ With the restlessness of the river whose ‘awful spirit’ impels it to
leave the ‘haunts of men.’ What is this Spirit?
Nature? Time? Or the Imagination? –
Wordsworth, in the postscript writes of the river as being an image of
poetic inspiration for Virgil, as well as Burns and Coleridge.
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