THE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH - VOL. 2 (Completed)

A CHARACTER

Composed 1800.--Published 1800

[The principal features are taken from my friend Robert Jones.--I. F.]

Included among the "Poems of Sentiment and Reflection."--Ed.

I marvel how Nature could ever find space

For so many strange contrasts in one human face: [1]

There's thought and no thought, and there's paleness and bloom

And bustle and sluggishness, pleasure and gloom.

There's weakness, and strength both redundant and vain;

Such strength as, if ever affliction and pain

Could pierce through a temper that's soft to disease,

Would be rational peace--a philosopher's ease.

There's indifference, alike when he fails or [2] succeeds,

And attention full ten times as much as there needs;

Pride where there's no envy, there's so much of joy;

And mildness, and spirit both forward and coy.

There's freedom, and sometimes a diffident stare

Of shame scarcely seeming to know that she's there,

There's virtue, the title it surely may claim,

Yet wants heaven knows what to be worthy the name.

This picture from nature may seem to depart, [3]

Yet the Man would at once run away with your heart;

And I for five centuries right gladly would be

Such an odd such a kind happy creature as he.

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VARIANTS ON THE TEXT

[Variant 1:1837.

For the weight and the levity seen in his face: 1800.]

[Variant 2:1837.

... and ... 1800.]

[Variant 3:1837.

What a picture! 'tis drawn without nature or art, 1800.]

The full title of this poem, in "Lyrical Ballads," 1800, is 'A Character, in the antithetical Manner'. It was omitted from all subsequent editions till 1837. With this early friend, Robert Jones--a fellow collegian at St. John's College, Cambridge--Wordsworth visited the Continent (France and Switzerland), during the long vacation of1790; and to him, he dedicated the first edition of 'Descriptive Sketches', in 1793. With him, he also made a pedestrian tour in Wales in1791. Jones afterwards became the incumbent of Soulderne, near Deddington, in Oxfordshire; and Wordsworth described his parsonage there in the sonnet, beginning

"Where holy ground begins, unhallowed ends."



(See Wordsworth's note to the sonnet 'Composed near Calais', p.333.)--Ed.

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