lin·gua·phile |
Graduate student specializing in 18th century British literature with an emphasis on the novel. Lover of John Milton, Jane Austen, and Charlotte Bronte. (Yes, I know none of them published in the 18th century.) Occasional writer of lengthy fictions, seven-time NaNoWriMo participant and former Office of Letters and Light intern. Reader of much young adult and/or fantasy lit. Lifetime lover of Diane Duane's Young Wizards series, recently fanatic about Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan trilogy, blaming it all on Harry Potter. Wanderluster. Left my heart in London, reclaim it bit by bit through tea and Doctor Who and Sherlock and Downton Abbey. |
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“Earth hath not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty…”from Wordsworth’s “Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802”
(Source: appleday, via theknittingnerd)
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LONDON, 1802.
Milton! thou should’st be living at this hour:
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England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star and dwelt apart:
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea;
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life’s common way,
In chearful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on itself did lay.William Wordsworth
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"There was no doubt that this poor man was mad, but there is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott."
William Wordsworth, discussing William Blake
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There are moments when I love Milton and Byron in the same sentence, and this is one of them:
If, fallen in evil days on evil tongues,
Milton appeal’d to the Avenger, Time,
If Time, the Avenger, execrates his wrongs,
And makes the word “Miltonic” mean “sublime,”
He deign’d not to belie his soul in songs,
Nor turn his very talent to a crime;
He did not loathe the Sire to laud the Son,
But clos’d the tyrant-hater he begun.from Byron’s “Dedication” to Don Juan
For some reason, the image that comes to mind when I read this is of an elderly Wordsworth, working his job at the excise, reading this poem, and doubling over with the grief of revolutionary enthusiasm turned sour, the loss of youthful naivete and the onrushing conservatism of later life. Milton obviously meant so much to Wordsworth that to be unfavorably compared to his great hero must have cost him — what, I can’t say, but something.
