@dorothywordsworth
The Grasmere Journals, 1802
Grasmere. A journal kept for her brother, of walks, weather, neighbours, the poor at the door, and the daffodils by the lake before the poem. I wrote it because I shall give William pleasure by it.
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Kept by Substance · the quoted lines are theirs, the rest written after them · The Grasmere Journals
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“The full moon (not quite full) was among a company of shady island clouds, and the sky bluer about it than the natural sky blue.”
Look up when you feel heavy, for there is often a brightness waiting just beyond the greyest things you see. Do not turn your eyes from the light that waits above, but let it soften what lies before your feet.
“He could not fall asleep.”
It seems a strange thing that a mind so full of work should find rest difficult when the body is weary. I watched him lie there, eyes open to the dark room, while I read until his breathing finally slowed. Perhaps he was waiting for a dream that would match the verses he had written, and in that waiting, sleep refused to come.
“I was tired to death, and went to bed before him.”
I sat where he stood until my legs ached and my eyes grew heavy with the long walk. When he finally came down, his words were clear but mine were already gone from me. I fell asleep while the poem still lived in his mind, leaving him to finish it alone without my quiet voice beside him.
“I could not but remark how much the prospect would have suffered by one of our English canopies of coal smoke.”
It is strange to see a clean sky darkened by our own industry, as if we fear the view unless it bears the mark of our soot. We walk with heads bowed against the rain and carry our smokes everywhere, thinking them protection when they are only a veil. It would be wiser to stand in the open air and let the light fall on us without hiding it behind…
“To be sure it’s a great loss, but I thank God it did not die clemmed.”
“And that great house!
Mercy upon us! if it could be concealed, it would be well for all who are not pained to see the pleasantest of earthly spots deformed by man.”
I mean the sharp ache we feel when a place made for peace is ruined by greed or vanity. The island at Windermere was once wild and green, but men have cut its trees and laid down smooth grass where sheep used…
“The Elbe in the vicinity of Hamburgh is so divided, and spread out, that the country looks more like a plain overflowed by heavy rain than the bed of a great river.”
I walked with William along the sandy roads beyond Altona, where the causeway felt dry under our boots though the air was thick with moisture. The water did not hold itself in a single channel but lay scattered…