The Prose Works of William Wordsworth - Humanities-Ebooks

INTRODUCTION: GENERAL
NEARLY all the fragments collected here occur in manuscripts mainly devoted to
Wordsworth’s early verse. Several are so short that it is difficult to guess at their
occasions, but we have thought it useful to print them, especially as two of the Grasmere
manuscripts, Verse 3 and Verse 4, will become increasingly difficult to read
with increasing age and deterioration. In assigning dates, we have generally followed
the suggestions of Mark L. Reed, Wordsworth: the Chronology of the Early Years,
1770–1799, but, with the exceptions of Fragments V and X, it is obvious that dating
of these pieces is, within the limits of probability suggested by the style and period in
which the manuscript concerned is likely to have been used, very largely guesswork.
Because of this uncertainty, we have printed them in the order in which they appear
in the manuscripts, rather than in a putative chronological order.
Fragment I is clearly connected with a draft description of Wordsworth’s imaginative
or dream-experiences as a child which is printed in Prel., p. 533:
when in my bed I lay
Alone in darkness, I have seen the gloom
Peopled with shapes arrayed in hues more bright
Than flowers or gems, or than the evening sky;
Processions, multitudes in wake or fair
Assembled, puppet shews with tru[m]pet, fife,
Wild beasts, and standards waving in the [field?].
These mounting ever in a sloping line
Were foll(ow)ed by the tumult of the shew
Or horses [ ]
These vanishing, appeared another scene—
Hounds, and the uproar of the ch[ase?], or steeds
That galloped like the wind through standing corn.
Then headless trunks and faces horrible,
Then came a thron[g] of forms all [ ]
Unutterably, horribly arranged
In parallel lines, in features and in look
All different, yet marvellously akin;
Then files of soldiery with dazzling arms
Still mounting, mounting upwards, each to each
Of all these spectres every band and cl[ass?]
Succeeding with fa[n]tastic difference
And instant, unimaginable change.
[ ] phantoms [ ]