Browse content similar to William Wordsworth. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
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This is the Skirrid on the edge of the Black Mountains in South Wales. | 0:00:02 | 0:00:06 | |
It's a place that I love. | 0:00:06 | 0:00:09 | |
I've been coming here nearly all of my life and I will never tire | 0:00:09 | 0:00:12 | |
of the incredibly dramatic views that you get off this ridge. | 0:00:12 | 0:00:16 | |
Look at that - absolutely stunning. | 0:00:16 | 0:00:19 | |
When I first started to write poetry, | 0:00:19 | 0:00:22 | |
this hill and all of the landscape around here | 0:00:22 | 0:00:24 | |
found their way into the work that I was writing. | 0:00:24 | 0:00:27 | |
I think that in Britain our poets have always had | 0:00:27 | 0:00:30 | |
a very intense relationship with the places that matter to them. | 0:00:30 | 0:00:34 | |
In this series I'll be looking at six of my favourite poems | 0:00:34 | 0:00:38 | |
that have come out of this ongoing conversation | 0:00:38 | 0:00:41 | |
between the British landscape and her poets. | 0:00:41 | 0:00:45 | |
There are places that speak, telling the stories of us and them. | 0:00:46 | 0:00:51 | |
A village asleep, loaded with dream. | 0:00:51 | 0:00:54 | |
An ocean, flicking its pages over the sand. | 0:00:54 | 0:00:59 | |
Eventually we reply. | 0:00:59 | 0:01:01 | |
A conversation of place and page over time, | 0:01:01 | 0:01:04 | |
inscribing the map so that each, In turn, might hold the line. | 0:01:04 | 0:01:10 | |
The most famous conversation between a poet and the British landscape | 0:01:19 | 0:01:23 | |
was that between William Wordsworth and the Lake District. | 0:01:23 | 0:01:26 | |
When you think of Wordsworth, the images | 0:01:28 | 0:01:31 | |
that probably come to mind | 0:01:31 | 0:01:32 | |
are lakes, wandering clouds and daffodils. | 0:01:32 | 0:01:36 | |
And yet, in 1802, | 0:01:36 | 0:01:38 | |
when Wordsworth wrote in would become one of his best-known poems, | 0:01:38 | 0:01:42 | |
"Earth hath not anything to show more fair", | 0:01:42 | 0:01:45 | |
the beautiful view he was writing about | 0:01:45 | 0:01:47 | |
wasn't a mountain or some flowers he'd stumbled upon | 0:01:47 | 0:01:50 | |
or anything in his beloved Lake District. | 0:01:50 | 0:01:53 | |
He was writing instead about this place - | 0:01:53 | 0:01:56 | |
London. | 0:01:56 | 0:01:57 | |
Earth has not anything to show more fair: | 0:02:13 | 0:02:17 | |
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by | 0:02:17 | 0:02:19 | |
A sight so touching in its majesty: | 0:02:19 | 0:02:21 | |
This city now doth like a garment wear | 0:02:23 | 0:02:26 | |
The beauty of the morning; | 0:02:26 | 0:02:28 | |
silent, bare, | 0:02:28 | 0:02:30 | |
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie | 0:02:31 | 0:02:36 | |
Open unto the fields, and to the sky, | 0:02:36 | 0:02:39 | |
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. | 0:02:39 | 0:02:43 | |
Never did sun more beautifully steep | 0:02:46 | 0:02:49 | |
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; | 0:02:49 | 0:02:52 | |
Ne'er saw I, never felt a calm so deep! | 0:02:52 | 0:02:56 | |
The river glideth at his own sweet will: | 0:02:58 | 0:03:01 | |
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; | 0:03:01 | 0:03:04 | |
And all that mighty heart is lying still! | 0:03:06 | 0:03:09 | |
This poem by Wordsworth, a 14-line sonnet about London at dawn, | 0:03:13 | 0:03:18 | |
is one of the great love songs to this city. | 0:03:18 | 0:03:21 | |
It's a really fantastic piece of writing | 0:03:23 | 0:03:25 | |
that I think does all the things that a good poem should, | 0:03:25 | 0:03:28 | |
in that over an incredibly short space of page, | 0:03:28 | 0:03:31 | |
it really takes us somewhere. | 0:03:31 | 0:03:32 | |
It really manages to change the weather in our heads. | 0:03:32 | 0:03:36 | |
It's also a poem that's very much of its time | 0:03:39 | 0:03:41 | |
and yet manages to travel remarkably well, | 0:03:41 | 0:03:44 | |
in that were we to walk across Westminster Bridge now, | 0:03:44 | 0:03:47 | |
we would still have the same basic experience | 0:03:47 | 0:03:49 | |
that Wordsworth is talking about. | 0:03:49 | 0:03:51 | |
There'd still be that moment of stillness | 0:03:51 | 0:03:53 | |
in between all that activity on the banks. | 0:03:53 | 0:03:56 | |
You only have to talk to the people who cross it every morning | 0:03:57 | 0:04:00 | |
on their way to work to get a sense of this. | 0:04:00 | 0:04:03 | |
It's two hours from house to work. I don't mind a bit. | 0:04:03 | 0:04:06 | |
I can walk across here and it's just glorious. | 0:04:06 | 0:04:09 | |
At 8 o'clock, half seven when not many people are around that's the best time. | 0:04:09 | 0:04:13 | |
The best thing for me about seeing the river in the morning, | 0:04:15 | 0:04:18 | |
is it's a very small world shared with very few people. | 0:04:18 | 0:04:22 | |
So very early in the morning when just the sun's coming up, | 0:04:22 | 0:04:25 | |
it feels like a little town. | 0:04:25 | 0:04:27 | |
All the beautiful buildings, they kind of stand out. | 0:04:28 | 0:04:31 | |
-You know, Lambeth Bridge. -You're reminded this is a city | 0:04:31 | 0:04:34 | |
who's main feature is the lovely river running through it. | 0:04:34 | 0:04:37 | |
I think these are exactly the feelings that Wordsworth describes. | 0:04:39 | 0:04:42 | |
This is a beautifully simple poem about the city at dawn. | 0:04:42 | 0:04:46 | |
So how come it was written by a poet from the Lake District? | 0:04:46 | 0:04:50 | |
What was Wordsworth doing on Westminster Bridge that morning? | 0:04:51 | 0:04:55 | |
Where was he going? What was on his mind? | 0:04:55 | 0:04:58 | |
The story behind the poem | 0:04:58 | 0:05:00 | |
is the surprising tale of Wordsworth's love life, | 0:05:00 | 0:05:03 | |
the complex tale of his love for three different women. | 0:05:03 | 0:05:08 | |
To get to the bottom of this story, | 0:05:18 | 0:05:20 | |
I headed for more familiar Wordsworth territory, | 0:05:20 | 0:05:22 | |
the Lake District. | 0:05:22 | 0:05:24 | |
Lakeland poet William Wordsworth was of course one of the towering figures of English Romanticism, | 0:05:27 | 0:05:32 | |
alongside Keats, Byron, Shelley and Wordsworth's close friend Coleridge. | 0:05:32 | 0:05:37 | |
When he started writing at the end of the 18th century he was an idealistic radical. | 0:05:39 | 0:05:43 | |
By the end of his life in the middle of the 19th, | 0:05:43 | 0:05:46 | |
he'd become the revered and grand old man of English verse. | 0:05:46 | 0:05:50 | |
The Lakes is where Wordsworth was born and bred, | 0:05:50 | 0:05:54 | |
lived much of his life, | 0:05:54 | 0:05:55 | |
and where his poetry seems indelibly inked on the landscape. | 0:05:55 | 0:05:59 | |
For Wordsworth as a writer, the landscape of the Lake District | 0:06:00 | 0:06:03 | |
was so much more than just his poetic canvas. | 0:06:03 | 0:06:07 | |
It was his teacher, his muse, or as he said himself, | 0:06:07 | 0:06:11 | |
"The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse | 0:06:11 | 0:06:14 | |
"The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul | 0:06:14 | 0:06:17 | |
"Of all my moral being." | 0:06:17 | 0:06:19 | |
Although Wordsworth was raised in the Lakes, at 17 he moved away, | 0:06:23 | 0:06:27 | |
first to university in Cambridge. | 0:06:27 | 0:06:29 | |
After that he became something of a nomad, | 0:06:29 | 0:06:31 | |
spending much much of his time hiking across England and Wales | 0:06:31 | 0:06:36 | |
and further afield on trips to Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Revolutionary France. | 0:06:36 | 0:06:41 | |
During those years, he was restlessly searching for a purpose for his life | 0:06:41 | 0:06:47 | |
and defining his ideas about nature, religion and politics. | 0:06:47 | 0:06:52 | |
In 1800, at the age of 29, Wordsworth found himself once again | 0:06:52 | 0:06:58 | |
without a permanent residence | 0:06:58 | 0:07:00 | |
and with a growing certainty that he was ready to go back home. | 0:07:00 | 0:07:04 | |
In the autumn of that year | 0:07:04 | 0:07:06 | |
he returned on a walking tour with Coleridge. | 0:07:06 | 0:07:09 | |
It was on that walking tour that he discovered this cottage. | 0:07:09 | 0:07:13 | |
Immediately it seemed like the ideal place | 0:07:13 | 0:07:16 | |
in which to begin a new chapter of his life. | 0:07:16 | 0:07:19 | |
At this point in his life, it's fair to say that in the eyes of the world | 0:07:29 | 0:07:33 | |
at the age of 29 Wordsworth had achieved relatively little. | 0:07:33 | 0:07:37 | |
But once ensconced in this place, all of that began to change. | 0:07:37 | 0:07:42 | |
When he moved in here the house was cold, | 0:07:42 | 0:07:45 | |
apparently one of the chimneys smoked very badly. | 0:07:45 | 0:07:47 | |
But Wordsworth didn't mind. | 0:07:47 | 0:07:49 | |
He was just ecstatic to finally have a home. | 0:07:49 | 0:07:53 | |
The publication of the radical collection | 0:07:53 | 0:07:56 | |
of his and Coleridge's verse, Lyrical Ballads, | 0:07:56 | 0:07:58 | |
had started to make his name. | 0:07:58 | 0:08:01 | |
But with the new-found security of this place, | 0:08:01 | 0:08:03 | |
over the next three years Wordsworth would go on | 0:08:03 | 0:08:06 | |
to write some of the best poetry of his life. | 0:08:06 | 0:08:09 | |
But Wordsworth didn't come to Dove Cottage on his own. | 0:08:13 | 0:08:15 | |
He moved in with his sister Dorothy. | 0:08:15 | 0:08:19 | |
William and Dorothy were brought up separately, | 0:08:19 | 0:08:21 | |
after the death of first their mother and then their father. | 0:08:21 | 0:08:25 | |
However, they retained a strong emotional bond | 0:08:25 | 0:08:28 | |
and in their mid-20s, | 0:08:28 | 0:08:29 | |
out of friendship and convenience, they began living together. | 0:08:29 | 0:08:32 | |
By the time they moved to Grasmere, five years later, | 0:08:32 | 0:08:35 | |
they were clearly devoted companions. | 0:08:35 | 0:08:38 | |
The fascinatingly intimate journal that Dorothy kept | 0:08:39 | 0:08:42 | |
about their time together here | 0:08:42 | 0:08:44 | |
is the main source of information about their daily routine. | 0:08:44 | 0:08:48 | |
It's also clear from the pages of this journal, | 0:08:48 | 0:08:50 | |
that brother and sister shared and discussed | 0:08:50 | 0:08:54 | |
many of the experiences that would go on to become Wordsworth's poems. | 0:08:54 | 0:08:58 | |
There's still a strong echo at Dove Cottage | 0:08:59 | 0:09:01 | |
of that intense literary and personal relationship | 0:09:01 | 0:09:04 | |
between brother and sister. | 0:09:04 | 0:09:06 | |
Although neither these rooms, Dorothy's journal, nor Wordsworth's poems, | 0:09:06 | 0:09:10 | |
answer the many outstanding questions about their artistic and emotional interaction. | 0:09:10 | 0:09:16 | |
I was once fortunate enough to be the writer-in-residence at the Wordsworth Trust here in Grasmere. | 0:09:18 | 0:09:23 | |
The man with that job today is Adam O'Riordan. | 0:09:23 | 0:09:25 | |
I wondered what his response was to living with William and Dorothy. | 0:09:25 | 0:09:29 | |
There is this sense of the things | 0:09:29 | 0:09:31 | |
that Dorothy and William and Coleridge | 0:09:31 | 0:09:33 | |
and everyone else was pushing towards do still live on here in a way. | 0:09:33 | 0:09:36 | |
I guess the role of the poet-in-residence is to embody that | 0:09:36 | 0:09:40 | |
and to be that, if that doesn't sound too grand, which it's not. | 0:09:40 | 0:09:43 | |
You're keeping that going, you're writing the poems. | 0:09:43 | 0:09:46 | |
There is something so winning and drawing | 0:09:46 | 0:09:49 | |
about re-imagining the intimacies that existed between the Wordsworths, | 0:09:49 | 0:09:53 | |
between Dorothy and Mary and William, and what went on in that house. | 0:09:53 | 0:09:58 | |
It is a great starting point for poems. | 0:09:58 | 0:10:00 | |
I know other poems have written successfully about them, | 0:10:00 | 0:10:03 | |
but they're great places to go to fire your imagination. | 0:10:03 | 0:10:06 | |
A Double Wash Stand. | 0:10:09 | 0:10:10 | |
Before the age condemned | 0:10:10 | 0:10:13 | |
such joint ablutions | 0:10:13 | 0:10:14 | |
You dip your hands in the tepid water | 0:10:14 | 0:10:17 | |
as geese come in low across the lake | 0:10:17 | 0:10:20 | |
landing on their shadows, | 0:10:20 | 0:10:23 | |
their shadows becoming their wake | 0:10:23 | 0:10:25 | |
breaking apart the imago they seem to chase. | 0:10:25 | 0:10:29 | |
So you break this tension, shattering your own reflections. | 0:10:29 | 0:10:34 | |
There's a complicity in getting clean together | 0:10:34 | 0:10:37 | |
who knows what distances you travelled in your sleep | 0:10:37 | 0:10:40 | |
back towards one another, | 0:10:40 | 0:10:42 | |
and the secrets that those distances will keep, | 0:10:42 | 0:10:44 | |
each movement fluid and practised in the winter air. | 0:10:44 | 0:10:49 | |
You revel in this intimate act, not quite each other's double. | 0:10:49 | 0:10:54 | |
Your easy mime of mannerisms from other lives | 0:10:54 | 0:10:57 | |
like brother and sister. | 0:10:57 | 0:11:00 | |
No, I mean man and wife. | 0:11:00 | 0:11:02 | |
There will always be speculation about William and Dorothy's relationship at Dove Cottage | 0:11:05 | 0:11:10 | |
but she certainly wasn't the only woman in Wordsworth's life. | 0:11:10 | 0:11:13 | |
One of his closest friends at the time | 0:11:13 | 0:11:16 | |
was a Lakeland girl, Mary Hutchinson. | 0:11:16 | 0:11:19 | |
Wordsworth had actually been in the same school as Mary Hutchinson, | 0:11:19 | 0:11:22 | |
so he'd known her almost all of his life. | 0:11:22 | 0:11:25 | |
In the summer of 1787 she joined William and Dorothy on their rambles | 0:11:25 | 0:11:29 | |
through the woods and hills of Penrith. | 0:11:29 | 0:11:32 | |
Since their arrival at Dove Cottage, she'd been a regular visitor. | 0:11:32 | 0:11:36 | |
At some point, we think around the end of 1801, | 0:11:36 | 0:11:40 | |
William decided to ask her to marry him. | 0:11:40 | 0:11:43 | |
His marriage to Mary and her settling in at Dove Cottage | 0:11:47 | 0:11:50 | |
would be the final keystone in the architecture of this newly settled life | 0:11:50 | 0:11:54 | |
that Wordsworth was building for himself at Grasmere. | 0:11:54 | 0:11:57 | |
In early 1802, William and Mary were more than ready to get married, | 0:12:00 | 0:12:04 | |
but there was a problem. | 0:12:04 | 0:12:06 | |
Several hundred miles away from here in Grasmere there was another woman | 0:12:06 | 0:12:11 | |
who had been calling herself Mrs Wordsworth for the last ten years. | 0:12:11 | 0:12:15 | |
Annette Vallon, the third woman in this story, had met Wordsworth | 0:12:18 | 0:12:21 | |
when as a hot-blooded young graduate he travelled to France | 0:12:21 | 0:12:25 | |
to take a look at the Revolution in action. | 0:12:25 | 0:12:27 | |
He met Annette in the city of Orleans. | 0:12:29 | 0:12:31 | |
One thing led to another | 0:12:31 | 0:12:33 | |
and a couple of months after they met she was pregnant. | 0:12:33 | 0:12:36 | |
Wordsworth left France before the baby was born, | 0:12:39 | 0:12:42 | |
and although he may have planned to return, | 0:12:42 | 0:12:45 | |
a few weeks after he came back, France declared war on England. | 0:12:45 | 0:12:49 | |
Return to Annette and his newly-born daughter Caroline became impossible | 0:12:49 | 0:12:54 | |
and gradually Wordsworth's thoughts of France began to fade. | 0:12:54 | 0:13:01 | |
In the spring of 1802, Wordsworth realised that | 0:13:01 | 0:13:04 | |
he just couldn't get married to Mary | 0:13:04 | 0:13:06 | |
without first going to France to speak with Annette face to face. | 0:13:06 | 0:13:10 | |
Thanks to a recent peace treaty with the French, | 0:13:10 | 0:13:13 | |
this was, for the first time in a decade, actually possible. | 0:13:13 | 0:13:17 | |
On 9th July, William left Grasmere for London on his way to Calais. | 0:13:17 | 0:13:21 | |
As ever, he wasn't travelling on his own. | 0:13:21 | 0:13:24 | |
His companion was his sister, Dorothy. | 0:13:24 | 0:13:27 | |
Wordsworth had both enjoyed and suffered the maelstrom of London | 0:13:33 | 0:13:37 | |
on a number of occasions before 1802, | 0:13:37 | 0:13:39 | |
and his poetic responses sum up the sensory overload | 0:13:39 | 0:13:43 | |
that the capital made on his Lakelander sensibility. | 0:13:43 | 0:13:47 | |
The quick dance Of colour, lights, and forms; | 0:13:47 | 0:13:49 | |
the Babel din; | 0:13:49 | 0:13:51 | |
The endless stream of men and moving things | 0:13:51 | 0:13:54 | |
The comers and the goers face to face, face after face. | 0:13:54 | 0:13:59 | |
This was the city in which William and Dorothy found themselves, | 0:14:00 | 0:14:04 | |
when early on the morning of July 31st, 1802 | 0:14:04 | 0:14:07 | |
they arrived at Charing Cross to catch a stagecoach for Dover. | 0:14:07 | 0:14:11 | |
The Wordsworths had taken their seats on the top of the carriage, | 0:14:11 | 0:14:14 | |
quite possibly because they were cheaper. | 0:14:14 | 0:14:16 | |
This meant they were able to see over the bridge's parapet, | 0:14:16 | 0:14:20 | |
which was much higher than it is now. | 0:14:20 | 0:14:22 | |
As they crossed over Westminster Bridge they were both enraptured by the view, | 0:14:22 | 0:14:27 | |
which more than likely remained their topic of conversation | 0:14:27 | 0:14:30 | |
as the coach carried on towards Dover. | 0:14:30 | 0:14:33 | |
When Dorothy wrote about their trip to France some months later, | 0:14:33 | 0:14:37 | |
her journal seems to pause for a moment | 0:14:37 | 0:14:39 | |
to pay special attention to the view from the bridge. | 0:14:39 | 0:14:42 | |
"It was a beautiful morning. | 0:14:44 | 0:14:45 | |
"The city, St Paul's, with the river and a multitude of little boats, | 0:14:45 | 0:14:50 | |
"made a most beautiful sight as we crossed Westminster Bridge. | 0:14:50 | 0:14:53 | |
"The houses were not overhung by their cloud of smoke | 0:14:53 | 0:14:57 | |
"and they were spread out endlessly, | 0:14:57 | 0:14:59 | |
"yet the sun shone so brightly with such a pure light | 0:14:59 | 0:15:02 | |
"that there was even something | 0:15:02 | 0:15:05 | |
"like the purity of one of nature's own grand spectacles." | 0:15:05 | 0:15:10 | |
This entry from Dorothy's journal | 0:15:10 | 0:15:13 | |
clearly shares William's images and words | 0:15:13 | 0:15:15 | |
and we can only imagine that it was their conversation | 0:15:15 | 0:15:19 | |
on the bridge that morning which brought the poem to life. | 0:15:19 | 0:15:22 | |
Earth has not anything to show more fair: | 0:15:22 | 0:15:26 | |
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by | 0:15:26 | 0:15:29 | |
A sight so touching in its majesty | 0:15:29 | 0:15:32 | |
This city now doth, like a garment, | 0:15:32 | 0:15:35 | |
wear the beauty of the morning; silent, bare | 0:15:35 | 0:15:38 | |
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie | 0:15:38 | 0:15:43 | |
Open unto the fields and to the skies | 0:15:43 | 0:15:46 | |
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. | 0:15:46 | 0:15:49 | |
Never did sun more beautifully steep | 0:15:49 | 0:15:52 | |
in his first splendour, valley, rock or hill; | 0:15:52 | 0:15:56 | |
Ne'er saw I, never felt a calm so deep! | 0:15:56 | 0:15:59 | |
The river glideth at his own sweet will: | 0:15:59 | 0:16:03 | |
Dear God! The very houses seem asleep; | 0:16:03 | 0:16:07 | |
And all that mighty heart is lying still! | 0:16:07 | 0:16:10 | |
The basic experience that Wordsworth is describing | 0:16:12 | 0:16:15 | |
and is making us live again in this poem, | 0:16:15 | 0:16:18 | |
is one that of course all of us experience all the time in cities. | 0:16:18 | 0:16:21 | |
When you're on one side of the river | 0:16:21 | 0:16:24 | |
and you're in those very close horizons of the streets | 0:16:24 | 0:16:26 | |
and you've got buildings all around you, | 0:16:26 | 0:16:28 | |
you've got a lot of noise and activity. | 0:16:28 | 0:16:31 | |
Then you step out onto the bridge and you walk across the bridge | 0:16:31 | 0:16:34 | |
and then suddenly there's this space in the air. | 0:16:34 | 0:16:37 | |
You haven't got buildings in front of your eyes. | 0:16:37 | 0:16:39 | |
You've got the river there. | 0:16:39 | 0:16:41 | |
The movement of the poem is very simple, | 0:16:43 | 0:16:45 | |
from that opening line of astonished statement | 0:16:45 | 0:16:48 | |
through to that sense of a very deep calmness. | 0:16:48 | 0:16:51 | |
But across that movement, the poem is charged crucially by a sense of brevity, | 0:16:51 | 0:16:56 | |
and you can really get a sense of that brevity of experience | 0:16:56 | 0:16:59 | |
that Wordsworth was talking about when you see the bridge here. | 0:16:59 | 0:17:03 | |
Then of course there's the brevity of the form, the sonnet, | 0:17:03 | 0:17:06 | |
which I think really gives the poem its potency, its power. | 0:17:06 | 0:17:10 | |
It's within those tight 14 lines | 0:17:10 | 0:17:12 | |
that Wordsworth has to capture this moment of rare beauty. | 0:17:12 | 0:17:16 | |
I mean, if you just have a look at that opening line, | 0:17:16 | 0:17:19 | |
"Earth has not anything to show more fair:" | 0:17:19 | 0:17:21 | |
The weight on that first syllable is total. | 0:17:21 | 0:17:24 | |
Imagine how much weaker it would have been if he'd said "the world" | 0:17:24 | 0:17:27 | |
and we didn't have that weight until the second syllable. | 0:17:27 | 0:17:30 | |
That continues onto the second line when Wordsworth says, | 0:17:30 | 0:17:33 | |
"Dull would he be of soul who could pass by". | 0:17:33 | 0:17:37 | |
And who wants to be thought of as being dull of soul? | 0:17:37 | 0:17:39 | |
None of us. So we stay with the poet and we linger. | 0:17:39 | 0:17:43 | |
And then again, the close of the poem is broken up | 0:17:43 | 0:17:47 | |
with this quite surprising apostrophe - "Dear God!" | 0:17:47 | 0:17:50 | |
- before it falls down to this sense of a very beautiful calmness. | 0:17:50 | 0:17:55 | |
"he very houses seem asleep: | 0:17:55 | 0:17:56 | |
"And all that mighty heart is lying still!" | 0:17:56 | 0:17:59 | |
It's a sublime vision of London, in which the city becomes | 0:18:01 | 0:18:05 | |
a sleeping, breathing, organic creature. | 0:18:05 | 0:18:08 | |
The poet Simon Armitage is a fan of Wordsworth, | 0:18:10 | 0:18:13 | |
who shares my passion for this poem. | 0:18:13 | 0:18:15 | |
It came as a great shock to me. I look at this poem, with the line, | 0:18:15 | 0:18:20 | |
"Earth has not anything to show more fair", | 0:18:20 | 0:18:23 | |
and I think it's going to be about a mountain or a lake or something. | 0:18:23 | 0:18:28 | |
It turns out to be a poem about London, | 0:18:28 | 0:18:31 | |
which you would imagine to be Wordsworth's nemesis, really. | 0:18:31 | 0:18:36 | |
I think I always went on to think about it for a long time afterwards | 0:18:36 | 0:18:40 | |
as a poem which simply celebrated the city | 0:18:40 | 0:18:44 | |
and was a kind of anomaly in his work. | 0:18:44 | 0:18:47 | |
But actually having gone back to the poem a number of times, | 0:18:47 | 0:18:50 | |
I have a different reading of it now. | 0:18:50 | 0:18:52 | |
If you look closely at the poem, the city cannot exist as something | 0:18:52 | 0:18:57 | |
beautiful and miraculous without nature's presence. | 0:18:57 | 0:19:02 | |
The city is entirely transfigured by the morning sun. | 0:19:02 | 0:19:06 | |
Not only that, it's framed as well. | 0:19:06 | 0:19:09 | |
There's a phrase in the poem about | 0:19:09 | 0:19:10 | |
being open to the fields and the sunlight. | 0:19:10 | 0:19:15 | |
Every part of the city has a border of nature. | 0:19:15 | 0:19:19 | |
There's the sky, there's the sun, there's the fields, | 0:19:19 | 0:19:22 | |
and there is the river. | 0:19:22 | 0:19:23 | |
After crossing Westminster Bridge, the Wordsworths travelled to Dover | 0:19:28 | 0:19:32 | |
and then took a boat that evening over to Calais. | 0:19:32 | 0:19:36 | |
They arrived early the next morning. | 0:19:36 | 0:19:39 | |
William went on shore and met Annette almost immediately. | 0:19:39 | 0:19:44 | |
In 1802, Calais was no more glamorous a town than it is today. | 0:19:44 | 0:19:49 | |
But it must have been a fascinating place to visit | 0:19:49 | 0:19:53 | |
immediately after ten years of war between England and France. | 0:19:53 | 0:19:58 | |
Dorothy's journal is quiet detailed about some of their time here. | 0:19:58 | 0:20:01 | |
She complains about the bad smells in their lodgings | 0:20:01 | 0:20:04 | |
and she waxes lyrical about the phosphorescence in the sea. | 0:20:04 | 0:20:07 | |
She is frustratingly quiet on the things we really want to know about. | 0:20:07 | 0:20:11 | |
What was it like for William and Annette to see one another again? | 0:20:11 | 0:20:16 | |
Was there still any spark? | 0:20:16 | 0:20:18 | |
How was it for William to meet his nine-year-old daughter | 0:20:18 | 0:20:21 | |
for the first time in his life? | 0:20:21 | 0:20:23 | |
His already imperfect French would have been fairly rusty, | 0:20:23 | 0:20:26 | |
so how did they even manage to talk to one another? | 0:20:26 | 0:20:29 | |
What we do know is that they spent a lot of time together on the beach. | 0:20:31 | 0:20:35 | |
"We walked by the sea shore almost every evening | 0:20:37 | 0:20:39 | |
"with Annette and Caroline, or William and I alone. | 0:20:39 | 0:20:43 | |
"I had a bad cold and could not bathe at once, but William did." | 0:20:43 | 0:20:48 | |
This beach holiday lasted for a whole month, | 0:20:48 | 0:20:51 | |
and whilst there's no surviving record, | 0:20:51 | 0:20:53 | |
William and Annette obviously reached some kind of agreement | 0:20:53 | 0:20:57 | |
which allowed him to marry with a clear conscience. | 0:20:57 | 0:21:00 | |
The month on the beach also afforded William | 0:21:02 | 0:21:04 | |
plenty of time for writing poetry. | 0:21:04 | 0:21:06 | |
Wordsworth loved to form his poems while he was walking, | 0:21:07 | 0:21:11 | |
ideally across uninterrupted ground | 0:21:11 | 0:21:13 | |
so that his rhythms and thoughts weren't disturbed. | 0:21:13 | 0:21:17 | |
So the impressive expanse here would have been the perfect place for him to compose, | 0:21:17 | 0:21:23 | |
especially because the 12 or 13 poems that he wrote over that month | 0:21:23 | 0:21:28 | |
were all sonnets, 14 lines, tightly packed, | 0:21:28 | 0:21:32 | |
and easy to hold in the mind as Wordsworth strode along these sands. | 0:21:32 | 0:21:38 | |
Once again, Dorothy had a crucial hand in this. | 0:21:38 | 0:21:41 | |
She had been reading | 0:21:41 | 0:21:42 | |
the sonnets of the great John Milton to her brother. | 0:21:42 | 0:21:45 | |
It was these that influenced him to experiment with the sonnet himself. | 0:21:45 | 0:21:49 | |
Including one fantastic poem which I've always read as kind of | 0:21:49 | 0:21:54 | |
a counterpoint to his sonnet about the dawn in London, | 0:21:54 | 0:21:57 | |
in which he mentions his daughter Caroline. | 0:21:57 | 0:22:00 | |
The poem begins with the evocative lines... | 0:22:02 | 0:22:04 | |
It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, | 0:22:04 | 0:22:08 | |
The holy time is quiet as a Nun | 0:22:08 | 0:22:11 | |
And concludes with these words for his young daughter... | 0:22:14 | 0:22:17 | |
Dear Child! dear Girl! That walkest with me here, | 0:22:17 | 0:22:21 | |
If thou appear untouched by solemn thought, | 0:22:21 | 0:22:24 | |
Thy nature is not therefore less divine: | 0:22:24 | 0:22:27 | |
It's curious that this brief and unique reference to the poet's daughter, | 0:22:43 | 0:22:47 | |
although fond, seems strangely detached. | 0:22:47 | 0:22:50 | |
Especially when compared to the passion that Wordsworth expresses about London. | 0:22:50 | 0:22:55 | |
That summer of 1802, Wordsworth seems to have focused his energies | 0:22:59 | 0:23:03 | |
on refining his skills as a sonneteer. | 0:23:03 | 0:23:05 | |
The sonnets he wrote are all impressive, | 0:23:05 | 0:23:08 | |
and they provide an important context | 0:23:08 | 0:23:11 | |
for the sonnet on Westminster Bridge. | 0:23:11 | 0:23:13 | |
What is really fascinating | 0:23:15 | 0:23:16 | |
about the story around the writing of this poem, | 0:23:16 | 0:23:19 | |
is how it touches on so many exciting elements of Wordsworth. | 0:23:19 | 0:23:24 | |
Nowadays the reputation of Wordsworth is quite often drawn | 0:23:24 | 0:23:28 | |
from the later part of his life, | 0:23:28 | 0:23:29 | |
Wordsworth when he was in his establishment phase. | 0:23:29 | 0:23:32 | |
But the story around this poem | 0:23:32 | 0:23:34 | |
really reminds us exactly how incredibly radical he was. | 0:23:34 | 0:23:38 | |
It's worth remembering that as a young man, | 0:23:38 | 0:23:41 | |
Wordsworth had been an extensive traveller, | 0:23:41 | 0:23:44 | |
a sympathiser with the French Revolution, | 0:23:44 | 0:23:46 | |
a father outside of marriage, | 0:23:46 | 0:23:48 | |
and a poet who chose not to live in literary London, | 0:23:48 | 0:23:51 | |
but in the Lake District. | 0:23:51 | 0:23:53 | |
The poem moves between these two places that really formed Wordsworth - | 0:23:53 | 0:23:57 | |
the Lake District and the radical revolutionary France | 0:23:57 | 0:24:02 | |
that he had known as a young man. | 0:24:02 | 0:24:04 | |
And right in the middle, halfway between those two places, is London. | 0:24:05 | 0:24:09 | |
When you see the poem in this context, it's not surprising | 0:24:09 | 0:24:12 | |
that what Wordsworth writes is in its own way quite radical. | 0:24:12 | 0:24:16 | |
There's always been a tendency in, you know, | 0:24:18 | 0:24:23 | |
traditional forms of literature | 0:24:23 | 0:24:25 | |
to see the city as places of evil intent. | 0:24:25 | 0:24:30 | |
You know, filthy, murderous, inhuman places. | 0:24:30 | 0:24:35 | |
Wordsworth, in this poem, takes the opposite view. | 0:24:35 | 0:24:40 | |
I think that is quite a watershed moment really, in poetry. | 0:24:42 | 0:24:46 | |
Even the though the poem is, to a certain extent, | 0:24:46 | 0:24:48 | |
sentimental and romantic with a small R, | 0:24:48 | 0:24:51 | |
I still think it's a brave poem, | 0:24:51 | 0:24:55 | |
especially for somebody like Wordsworth | 0:24:55 | 0:24:58 | |
whose philosophies lie elsewhere, | 0:24:58 | 0:25:01 | |
to stand up and stay at this moment, "This is beauty". | 0:25:01 | 0:25:05 | |
A Vision. | 0:25:10 | 0:25:12 | |
The future was a beautiful place, once. | 0:25:12 | 0:25:16 | |
Remember the full-blown balsa-wood town | 0:25:16 | 0:25:19 | |
on public display in the Civic Hall? | 0:25:19 | 0:25:22 | |
Ring-bound sketches, artists' impressions, | 0:25:22 | 0:25:26 | |
blueprints of smoked glass and tubular steel, | 0:25:26 | 0:25:31 | |
board-game suburbs, | 0:25:31 | 0:25:33 | |
modes of transportation like fairground rides or executive toys. | 0:25:33 | 0:25:39 | |
Cities like dreams, cantilevered by light. | 0:25:39 | 0:25:43 | |
And people like us, at the bottle bank next to the cycle path, | 0:25:43 | 0:25:48 | |
or dog-walking over tended strips of Fuzzy-Felt grass, | 0:25:48 | 0:25:53 | |
or model drivers, motoring home in electric cars. | 0:25:53 | 0:25:58 | |
Or after the late show strolling the boulevard. | 0:25:58 | 0:26:02 | |
They were the plans, | 0:26:02 | 0:26:04 | |
all underwritten in the neat left-hand of architects... | 0:26:04 | 0:26:08 | |
a true, legible script. | 0:26:08 | 0:26:11 | |
I pulled that future out of the north wind at the landfill site, | 0:26:12 | 0:26:17 | |
stamped with today's date, riding the air with other such futures, | 0:26:17 | 0:26:23 | |
all unlived in and now fully extinct. | 0:26:23 | 0:26:27 | |
From London, the Wordsworths headed back north | 0:26:41 | 0:26:43 | |
where William finally got to marry Mary. | 0:26:43 | 0:26:46 | |
He brought his new bride back to Grasmere | 0:26:46 | 0:26:48 | |
where they lived for the rest of their lives, | 0:26:48 | 0:26:50 | |
eventually ending up here | 0:26:50 | 0:26:52 | |
at this grand Victorian villa in Rydal Mount, | 0:26:52 | 0:26:56 | |
just 20 minutes' walk away from Dove Cottage. | 0:26:56 | 0:27:00 | |
And Dorothy? | 0:27:00 | 0:27:01 | |
Well, she lived with her brother and his wife for the rest of her life | 0:27:01 | 0:27:04 | |
in what was a fairly unusual but remarkably successful domestic arrangement. | 0:27:04 | 0:27:09 | |
And what about the third woman from that summer of 1802, | 0:27:11 | 0:27:14 | |
Annette and her daughter Caroline? | 0:27:14 | 0:27:16 | |
As far as we know, Wordsworth only ever met them one more time | 0:27:16 | 0:27:21 | |
while on a holiday with his family in Paris 20 years later. | 0:27:21 | 0:27:25 | |
By which point he and Mary had three teenage children of their own. | 0:27:25 | 0:27:29 | |
In the end, we have no idea how Wordsworth | 0:27:31 | 0:27:34 | |
responded to the complex situation he found himself in that summer, | 0:27:34 | 0:27:38 | |
meeting his mistress and a daughter for the first time | 0:27:38 | 0:27:42 | |
on the eve of his marriage to Mary. | 0:27:42 | 0:27:45 | |
But what we do know is that as a result of that journey, | 0:27:45 | 0:27:48 | |
Wordsworth, our great poet of nature, | 0:27:48 | 0:27:52 | |
wrote one of the most euphoric poems about a city | 0:27:52 | 0:27:54 | |
in the English language. | 0:27:54 | 0:27:56 | |
What really fascinates me though | 0:27:58 | 0:28:00 | |
is how the resonance of the poem has actually strengthened over time. | 0:28:00 | 0:28:05 | |
What I mean by that is as the city of London | 0:28:05 | 0:28:07 | |
becomes increasingly built-up, | 0:28:07 | 0:28:09 | |
as it becomes increasingly more hectic around us, | 0:28:09 | 0:28:12 | |
the experience that the poem describes | 0:28:12 | 0:28:14 | |
of that great sense of relief that we get as we cross over the Thames, | 0:28:14 | 0:28:19 | |
has over the years actually become not less but more powerful. | 0:28:19 | 0:28:24 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:28:40 | 0:28:43 | |
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