Abstract
The writing of the Immortality Ode had, as we have seen, established a large framework for Wordsworth’s future career. Where ‘Tintern Abbey’ had created a tone, a set of sentiments, which fitted his cultivation of freedom and sensibility during the years with Dorothy, the concluding stanzas of the Ode provided authority for his new commitment to domesticity.
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Notes
See Moorman I 551; G. Whalley, Coleridge and Sara Hutchinson and the Asra Poems (1955), pp. 11;119–22.
It is unlikely that any engagement, or even ‘understanding’ existed between Sara and John. The arguments against such a hypothesis have been presented by Alethea Hayter (A Voyage in Vain (1973), pp. 57–8). On the other hand Coleridge was well placed to perceive a covert attraction between them, even if it had not yet been openly acknowledged. His belief in the possibility — and even desirability — of such a marriage is indisputable (see, e.g. CN II 2517, 2861).
G. Herbert, ‘Vertue’: Works, ed. F. E. Hutchinson (Oxford, 1941), p. 87. The implications of Wordsworth’s metaphor in the ‘Recluse’ passage are explored at length in M. H. Abrams’s Natural Supernaturalism (1971).
T. Whitaker, History and Antiquities of the Deanery of Craven, 2nd ed. (1812), pp. 449–50. Quoted, in part and variatim, in Wordsworth’s note to the poem (PW III 535).
Henry Vaughan, Works, ed. L. C. Martin (1914), II, 425.
Jessie Chambers (‘E.T.’), D. H. Lawrence: a Personal Record (1935), p. 223.
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© 1978 John Beer
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Beer, J. (1978). In Face of Loss. In: Wordsworth and the Human Heart. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08710-5_7
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