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Morton Marcus: He said: Our birth is but asleep and forgetting; the soul that rises with us, our life's star, hath had elsewhere its setting and cometh from afar, not in entire forgetfulness, and not another

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nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home. His name was William Wordsworth and he is one of the most important poets of the English language. Today on the Poetry

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Show, we will celebrate his birthday, which is on April 7th. He was born April 7th, 1770, and lived for 80 years, dying as the poet laureate of England in 1850. Tonight, we will briefly discuss his ideas, and hear some of his best poems read by famous

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actors, one of whom was one of the first Actors in Residence at the Shakespeare Santa Cruz Festival. This then, is a show on William Wordsworth. William Wordsworth was born on April 7th, 1770. He had a life

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which had various adventures in its younger years. He went over to France just at the time of the French Revolution, fell in love with a young woman by the name of Annette Vallon, had an illegitimate child by her and later took care of that child.

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But we are going to concentrate on Wordsworth, the poet, Wordsworth, the man of ideas, the man who really changed English poetry. It would never be the same again. And people like Allen Ginsburg, T.S. Eliot, people as different as Ezra

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Pound, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, all owed roots to the ideas that Wordsworth expressed. He was one of the first of the great Romantic poets and he gave poetry a totally different, shall I say slant, than it ever had before. Before him in the

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18th century and before that, for all the centuries, poetry had been the domain of the educated and had been generally written for the court, the king and the nobility who supported the poets. Poetry itself is even a noble art. But with the coming

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of the 19th century and the absolute horror of the French Revolution, all of the tenants of the 18th century which concerned reason, which c ncerned using satire for the b tterment of society, which c ncerned using general imagery, a

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d also concerned not only the g neralization of imagery, but t e use of things for the co mon good, not concerned ge erally with individuals but wi h society in general. And th t hierarchy of poetry, which ha included at the top epic; seco

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d, tragic; third, comedy; four satire; fifth, pastoral; and owest on the line of the hier rchy of poems to write, lyri . It was this world that Word worth came to and changed ever thing. He said that he was a po t who was just a man talk

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ng to other men like other men, different only in that he had greater sensitivity and coul put into language every ne's dreams and aspir tions. If his diction, if the d ction of 18th century poetr was poetic, Wordsworth was v

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ry plain. It was the speec of one man talking to anoth r. He was concerned not with hose people who are nobil ty or upper middle class as th subjects of poetry, but for t e first time, he looked at the l wer class. In fact, he even

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ook it to a great extreme, and w s only concerned with outca ts and those people who reall lived almost below the level of society. Again, we hear in he e the beatnik poets and the o her poets who have really adapt d the working man's life. He be

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ieved that poetry was not a rat onal undertaking in which one d monstrated how well he could write poetic forms, but was a spontaneous overflow of emoti n, something which certa nly we recognize as the basis for our writing our poetr

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. But he also said that it was a spontaneous overflow of emoti n recollected in tranq ility. And what he meant by th t was that you could have the f elings of poetry, you could even have the inspiration but y u had to go back home, you had t

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let the events settle. And t en you had to bring to bear he faculty of the reason, the f culty of a tranquility to look peacefully, calmly, serenel at the subject before you sta ted writing. So, one of his gre t quotes that very simply,

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"Poetry is a spontaneous overflo of emotions recollected in tran uility." He is the great poet of thought, he is a philoso hical poet. And here is what hi best friend, Coleridge, said ab ut him. Coleridge, of course, is one of the great English

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poets, Samuel Taylor Colerid e, and it is said that really e made up William Wordswor h, because Wordsworth used all of the ideas that Coleridg was formulating. And here's w at Coleridge says, from Table Ta k, he says:

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"Of all the men I ever knew, Wordsworth has the least femininity in his mind, he is all man. He is a man of whom it might be said, it is good for him to be alone. I think Wordsworth possessed more of the genius of a great philosophic

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poet than any man I ever knew, or, as I believe, has existed in England since Milton. But it seems to me that he ought never to have abandoned the contemplative position, which is peculiarly, perhaps, I might say, exclusively fitted for him.

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His propper title is specte of extra." So it is as the poet of contemplation that we will listen to Wordsworth tonight and listen to his greatest poems. And many people think that he really stopped writing poems of

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any import after 1807. And the great book that he and Coleridge put out with both their poems in it in 1798, that changed the course of poetry as much as let's say, "Howl" will change the course of poetry in America was a book called, "Lyrical

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Ballads." And let us now listen to part of the preface from the 1800 edition -- the book came out in 1798. Here's a preface from the 1800 edition, here is Tony Church, the first actor-in residence at the Santa Cruz Shakespeare Festival reading

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from Wordsworth's preface as he talks about what is it to be a poet. Tony Church: What is a poet? To whom does he address himself and what language is to be expected from him? He is a man speaking

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to men, a man it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature and a more comprehensive soul than I suppose to be common among mankind. A man pleased with his

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own passions and volition, and rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him, delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings on of the universe, and habitually impelled to create them, where

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he does not find them. Poetry is the breath and finest spirit of all knowledge. It is the impassioned expression, which is in the countenance of all science. Emphatically [unintelligible] as Shakespeare has said of man, that he looks

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before and after. He is the rock of defense for human nature and upholder and preserver, carrying everywhere with him relationship and love, in spite of difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs, in spite of things

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silently gone out of mind, and things violently destroyed, the poet, binds together by passion and knowledge, the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time. The objects of the poet's thoughts are

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everywhere. Though the eyes and senses of man are, it is true his favorite guides, yet he will follow wherever he can find an atmosphere of sensation in which to move his wings. Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge, it is as immortal as the heart

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of man. Morton Marcus: That was Tony Church, reading from the preface to the, "Lyrical Ballads." Let me now present Alan Bates reading from part of a huge -- I mean it's hundreds of pages long

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--poem by Wordsworth called, "The Prelude." This is actually, it's called, "A Prelude to the Growth of the Poet's Mind," and it is an attempt to remember everything of his youth all the way up to when he was an adult, as he talks about what inspired

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him, what made him a poet and all the experiences he had, it is an autobiography and poetry. I really want to read this. This is part of it, or one of them. It's called, "There Was a Boy," and it's read by Alan Bates and the reason that I want to play

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is that Alan Bates reads this poem so beautifully. So let's go ahead in Wordsworth's career, he wrote this poem and rewrote it all his life. And let us hear this wonderful poem of Wordsworth's, which is called, "There Was a Boy," and it is

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actually, if I can find it here, it's from book five, on books, and it's from part of the poem called, "The Boy of Winander." And this is the great actor, Alan Bates, I think beautifully reading this poem.

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THERE WAS A BOY by William Wordsworth. Sir Cedric Hardwicke: Five years have passed- Morton Marcus: Excuse me, wrong one. Here is Alan Bates. Alan Bates: That was a boy; ye knew him well, ye cliffs and

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islands of Winander. Many a time, at evening when the earliest stars began to move along the edges of the hills, rising or setting, would he stand alone, beneath the trees or by the glimmering lake, and there with fingers interwoven,

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both hands pressed closely palm to palm and to his mouth uplifted, he, as through an instrument, blew mimic hootings to the silent owls that they might answer him. And they would shout across the watery vale, and shout again, responsive to

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his call. With quivering peals and long halloos, and screams, and echoes loud redoubled and redoubled, concourse wild of jocund din! And, when there came a pause of silence such as baffled his best skill, then, sometimes, in that silence while

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he hung listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise has carried far into his heart the voice of mountain-torrent; or the visible scene would enter unawares into his mind with all its solemn imagery, its rocks, its woods, and that uncertain

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heaven received into the bosom of the steady lake. Morton Marcus: That was Alan Bates reading, "There Was a Boy," just beautifully enunciating the words and really letting you hear the poetry in the words. What is interesting

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about Wordsworth is that he is the person who really gives us our attitude towards nature, especially here in California. We believe that we can go to nature, especially our National Parks, especially all the green areas that are set aside for us

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by the county and the state, as well as the federal government, and we can be renewed by communing with nature. This idea really comes from Wordsworth. His philosophical belief was this, that it is nature who we can go to to find the rhythm by

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which we can come into the rhythm of the universe. He felt that as a child, one, very simply, intuitively was part of nature as as the child ran and played and climb trees. And that when one grew up, one went back to nature, not with that same

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intuitive freedom and understanding, but with a rational understanding, so that one could see things almost from afar, but still could have nature impress him with its lesson, with- it was like a book, nature was a book in which

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we could see the order of the universe, in which we could see the whole history of man and the whole history of the planet. This was brilliantly stated, though I think personally rather ponderously, in one of his most famous poems, "Tintern Abbey. "

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And these are lines composed the "Tintern Abbey," and this is a conversation poem, and that is he is talking to someone and who he's talking to his his younger sister, Dorothy. And he is telling her it's five years since I've been to see Tintern

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Abbey in all of these woods, and I was then young and I was absolutely part of this nature. Now, as an older man, I come back and I am impressed with nature in a different way, again, obviously in an intellectual rational way. But

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you, my sister, he says, young now are enjoying nature as youth was supposed to enjoy nature. But still you can even later on in your life, you will be able to appreciate nature and get your strength, your spiritual strength and your spiritual

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power from it. It is interesting also that this poem- and I think this is why it's ponderous, and this is a Marcus attitude- I really think that though he chose to write the prelude in blank verse, that is in unrhymed, iambic pentameter

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verse, and though he uses that same thing in this poem which is, "Tintern Abbey," I really think it allows him to wander off and talk incessantly. It is when he is using shorter lines and mostly when he is using rhymed forms, as we will hear

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shortly that his work suddenly becomes very, very clean and very, very terse and I hope to prove that. But anyway, this is the great, contemplative poem on nature, in which he first states his ideas completely on nature, called, "Lines Composed Near

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Tintern Abbey." The reader is the great English actor who made a lot of American films in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, Sir Cedric Hardwicke. Here is TINTERN ABBEY, the first really great poem by William

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Wordsworth. Sir Cedric Hardwicke: Five summers with the length of five long winters. And again I hear these waters, rolling from their mountain-springs with a soft inland murmur. Once again do I

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behold these steep and lofty cliffs, that on a wild secluded scene impress thoughts of more deep seclusion and connect the landscape with the quiet of the sky. The day is come when I again repose here, under this dark sycamore, and view these

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plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts, which at this season, with their unripe fruits are clad in one green hue, lose themselves 'mid grooves and copses. Once again I see these hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines of sportive wood

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run wild. These pastoral farms, green to the very door and wreaths of smoke sent up, in silence, from among the trees. With some uncertain notice, as might seem of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, or of some Hermit's cave where by his

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fire the Hermit sits alone. These beauteous forms, through a long absence, have not been to me as is a landscape to a blind man's eye. But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din of towns and cities, I have owed to them,

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in hours of weariness, sensations sweet, felt in the blood, and felt along the heart, and passing even into my purer mind with tranquil restoration. Feelings too of unremembered pleasure, such perhaps as have no slight or trivial influence

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on that best portion of a good man's life, his little, nameless, unremembered, acts of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust, to them I may have owed another gift of aspect more sublime. That blessed mood, in which the burthen of the

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mystery, in which the heavy and the weary weight of all this unintelligible world, is lightened -- that serene, and blessed mood -- in which the affections gently lead us on. Until, the breath this corporeal frame and even the motion of our

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human blood almost suspended, we are laid asleep in body, and become a living soul while with an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.

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If this be but a vain belief, yet, oh! How oft- in darkness and amid the many shapes of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir unprofitable, and the fever of the world, have hung from the beatings of my heart- how oft, in spirit, have

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I turned to thee, O sylvan Wye thou wander thro' the woods, how often has my spirit turn to thee! And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought, with many recognitions, dim and faint and somewhat of a sad

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perplexity, the picture of the mind revives again. While here I stand, not only with the sense of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts that in this moment there is life and food for future years. And so I dare to hope, though changed, no

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doubt, from what I was when first I came among these hills. When like a roe I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams, wherever nature led, more like a man flying through something that he dreads, the

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one who sought the thing he loved. For nature, then (The coarser pleasures of my boyish days and their glad animal movements all gone by) to me was all in all. I cannot paint what then I was. The sounding cataract haunted me like a

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passion: the tall rock, the mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, their colors and their forms, were then to me an appetite, a feeling and a love that had no need of remoter charm, by thought supplied, nor any interest unborrowed from the

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eye. That time is passed, and all its aching joys are now no more, all its dizzy raptures. Not for this faint I, nor mourn nor murmur, other gifts have followed. For such loss, I would believe, abundant recompense. For I have learned to look on

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nature, not as in the hour of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes the still sad music of humanity, nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power to chasten and subdue. And I have felt a presence that disturbs me with the joy of

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elevated thoughts. A sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused, whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, and the round ocean and the living air, and the blue sky, and in the mind of man, a motion and a spirit, that impels

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all thinking things, all objects of all thought, and rolls through all things. Therefore am I still a lover of the meadows and the woods and mountains; and of all that we behold from this green earth; of all the mighty world of eye, and both what they

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half create, and what perceive, well pleased to recognize in nature and the language of the sense, the anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, the guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul of all my moral being.

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Nor perchance, if I were not thus taught, should I the more suffer my genial spirits to decay: for thou art with me here upon the banks of this fair river. Thou my dearest Friend, my dear, dear Friend, and in thy voice I catch the language of my

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former heart and read my former pleasures in the shooting lights of thy wild eyes. Oh! Yet a little while may I behold in thee what I was once, my dear, dears Sister. And this prayer I make, knowing that nature never did betray the heart that loved

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her; 'tis her privilege, through all the years of this our life, to lead from joy to joy, for she can so inform the mind that is within us, so impress with quitness and beauty, and so feed with lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, rash

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judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all the dreary intercourse of daily life, shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb our cheerful faith, that all which we behold is full of blessings. Therefore

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let the moon shine on thee in thy solitary walk. And let the misty mountain-winds be free to blow against thee; and, in after years, when these wild ecstasies shall be matured into a sober pleasure, when thy mind shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,

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thy memory be as a dwelling-place for all sweet sounds and harmonies. Oh! Then, if solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief, should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts of tender joy wilt thou remember me, and these my exhortations.

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Nor, perchance- if I should be where I no more can hear thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes, these gleams of past existence- wilt thou then forget that on the banks of this delightful stream we stood together, and that I, so long a

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worshipper of Nature, hither came unwearied in that service, rather say with warmer love- Oh! With far deeper zeal of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget, that after many wanderings, many years of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs, and this

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green pastoral landscape, were to me more dear, both for themselves and for thy sake. Morton Marcus: That was Sir Cedric Hardwicke reading, Tintern Abbey, or "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above

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Tintern Abbey," the first major poem by William Wordsworth, we are presenting a birthday show of William Wordsworth's poetry who was born a poet- a great poet who was born April 7th, 1770 and we will be back after a musical interlude.

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Beck's obvious philosophy and is a poem speaking to other men in a very plain language. It is a poem about the lower orders, in this case, the outcasts even beyond the social order, and it is about nature and how this character, an old

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leech-gatherer, really is part of nature and can instruct us with fortitude, and a sense of stoicism as we see the tragedy of the world around us, so: RESOLUTION AND INDEPENDENCE

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There was a roll- there was a roaring in the wind all night, the rain came heavily and fell in floods. But now the sun is rising, calm and bright. The birds are singing in the distant woods. Over his own sweet voice, the Stock-dove broods. The Jay

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makes answer, as the Magpie chatters, and all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters. All things that love the sun are out of doors. The sky rejoices in the mornings birth, the grass is bright with raindrops. On the

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moors the hare is running races in her mirth. And with her feet she from the plashy earth raises a mist, that, glittering in the sun, runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run. I was a Traveller then upon the moor. I saw the hare that erased

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about with joy. I heard the woods and distant waters roar, or heard them not, as happy as a boy. The pleasant season did my heart employ, my old remembrances went for me wholly, and all the ways of men, so vain and melancholy.

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But as it sometimes chanceth, from the might of joys in minds that can no further go, as high as we have mounted in delight in our dejection do we sink as low. To me that morning did it happen so, and fears and fancies thick upon me came. Dim sadness and

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blind thoughts, I knew not, nor could name. I heard the sky-lark warbling in the sky, and I be thought me of the playful hare, even such a happy child of earth am I. Even as these blissful creatures do I fare, far from the world I walk

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and far from all care. But there may come another day to me, solitude, pain of heart, distress, and poverty. My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought, as if life's business were a summer mood, as if all needful things would come

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unsought to genial faith, still rich in genial good. But how can he expect that others should build for him, sow for him, and at his call love him, who for himself will take no heed at all?

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I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy, the sleepless soul that perished in his pride. Of Him who walked in glory and in joy following his plough, along the mountain-side. By our own spirits- by our own spirits are we deified. We poets in our

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youth begin in gladness, but therefore come in the end despondency and madness. Now, whether it were by peculiar grace, a leading from above, or something given, yet it befell that, in this lonely place, when

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I would these untoward thoughts had striven, beside a pool bare to the eye of heaven I saw a man before me unawares. The oldest man he seemed, that ever wore grey hairs. As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie couched on the bald

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top of an eminence, wonder to all who do the same espy, by what means it could thither come and whence. So that it seems a thing endued with sense, like a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a shelf of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun itself.

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Such seemed this man, not all alive, nor dead, nor all asleep in his extreme old age. His body was bent double, feet and head coming together in life's pilgrimage. As if some dire constraint of pain, or rage of sickness felt by him in times

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long past, a more than human weight upon his frame had cast. Himself he propped, limbs, body, and pale face, upon a long gray staff of shaven wood. And, still as I drew near with gentle pace, upon the margin of that morish flood, motionless as a cloud the

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old man stood, that heareth not the loud winds when they call, and movethj all together, it it move at all. At length himself unsettling, he the pond stirred with his staff, and fixedly did look upon the muddy water, which he conned, as

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if he had been reading in a book. And now a stranger's privilege I took. And, drawing to his side, to him did say, "This morning gives us promise of a glorious day." A gentle answer did the old man make, in courteous speech which

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forth he slowly drew, and him with further words I thus bespake, "What occupation do you there pursue? This is a lonesome place for one like you." Ere he replied, a flash of mild surprise broke from the sable orbs of his yet-vivid eyes.

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His words came feebly, from a feeble chest, but each in solemn order followed each, with something of a lofty utterance drest. Choice word and measured phrase, above the reach of ordinary men. A stately speech such as grave livers do in

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Scotland use, religious men, who give to God and man their dues. He told that to these waters he had come to gather leeches, being old and poor, employment hazardous and wearisome! And he had many hardships to endure, from pond to pond he roamed,

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from moor to moor, housing with God's good help, by choice or chance, and in this way he gained an honest maintenance. The old man still stood talking by my side, but now his voice to me was like a stream scarce heard. Nor word from word could

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I divide and the whole body of the man did seem like one whom I had met with in a dream, or like a man from some far region sent, to give me human strength, by apt admonishment. My former thoughts returned: the fear that kills and hope that is

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unwilling to be fed. Cold, pain, and labor, and all fleshly ills. And mighty poets in their misery dead. Perplexed, and longing to be comforted, my question eagerly did I renew, "How is it that you live, and what is it you do?"

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He with a smile did then his words repeat and said that, gathering leeches, far and wide he traveled, stirring thus about his feet the waters of the pools where they abide. "Once I could meet with them on every side, but they have dwindled long by

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slow decay. Yet still I persevere, and find them where I may." While he was talking thus, the lonely place, the old man's shape, and speech, all troubled me. In my mind's eye I seemed to

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see him pace about the weary moors continually, wandering about alone and silently. While I these thoughts within myself pursued, he, having made a pause, the same discourse renewed.

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And soon with this he other matter blended, cheerfully uttered, with demeanor- with demeanor kind, but stately in the main. And when he ended, I could have laughed myself to scorn to find in that decrepit man so firm a mind. "God," said

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I, "be my help and stay secure. I'll think of the leech-gather on the lonely moor." Wordsworth was also famous for short, lyric poems. Here is one of his most famous ones it's called:

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I WANDEREED LONELY AS A CLOUD I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o'er vales and hills, when all at once I saw a crowd, a host, of golden daffodils beside the lake, beneath the trees, fluttering

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and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine and twinkle on the Milky Way, they stretched in never-ending line along the margin of a bay. Ten thhousand saw I at a glance, tossing their heads and sprightly dance. The

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waves beside them danced, but they out-did the sparkling waves in glee. A poet could not but be gay, in such a jocund company, I gazed and gazed, but little thought what wealth the show to me had brought. For oft, when on my couch I lie in vacant or in

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pensive mood, they flash upon that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude, and then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffodils. Let us listen to another very short section of this long poem

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that he wrote throughout his life, which is called, THE PRELUDE, and this is passing the Simplon Pass in Europe and here is Tony Church again to read this poem. Again Tony Church is the actor, was the first actor in residence at Shakespeare

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Santa Cruz. Tony Church: Brook and road were fellow travelers in this gloomy pass, and with them did we journey several hours at a slow step. The immeasurable height of woods decaying, never to be

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decayed, stationary blasts of waterfalls, and in the narrow rent, at every turn, winds thwarting winds bewildered and forlorn, the torrents shooting from the clear blue sky. The rocks that muttered close upon our ears, black drizzling crags

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that spake by the wayside as if a voice were in them, the sick sight and giddy prospect of the raving stream, the unfettered clouds and region of the heavens, tumult and peace, the darkness and the light, were all like workings of one mind, the

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features of the same face, blossoms upon one tree, characters of the great Apocalypse, the types and symbols of eternity, of first and last, and midst, and without end.

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Morton Marcus: That was Tony Church reading, "Crossing the Simplon Pass." Wordsworth was also one of the great sonnet writers in the history of English poetry and his sonnets were impossible

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sonnets, really, they were perfect petrarchan sonnets, which means that they use the first eight lines, just two rhymes, and listen to this one. The rhymes are: fair, by, majesty, where, bear, temple, lie, sky, air, so that air,

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fare, and majesty and lie, sky are the the rhymes. And then in the last six lines he just uses three rhymes, which do not end, do not end in a couplet. This is again, the great Sir Cedric Hardwicke reading one of the most famous sonnets composed

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upon Westminster Bridge 1802. Now, what's interesting about this is that there was a dichotomy in Wordsworth: nature was where you got your strength, but you were robbed of your strength by the city, by the ife in society, so he would

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lways go back to nature to have is strength rekindled. Yet in his poem on Westminster Bridge, hen- in which he is describ ng London on a Sunday morni g, here, we get a picture of he strength that can be gotten on the bridge and watching

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he River Thames. The joke here, if it is a joke, is that he is describing the city as if it were nature and since it is Sunday morning, there is no boats about, there are no hawkers, or there are no wago s, there's no smoke, there are

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no factories working. It is- he city is asleep and looks lik a part of nature and this is hy he can give it praise. Here is Sir Cedric Hardwick readi g, "Composed upon Westminster Br dge 1802," one of the greate t of Wordsworth son

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Sir Cedric Hardwicke: Earth has not any thing to show more fair, dull would he be a soul who could pass by a sight so touching in its majesty. This city now doth, like a garment, wear the beauty of the morning. Silent, bare, ships, towers,

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domes, theaters, and temples lie open unto the fields, and to the sky, all bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep in his first splendor valley, ock, or hill. Never saw I, ever felt a calm so deep. The r

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ver glideth at its own sweet wi l. Dear God, the very houses se m asleep and all that mighty he rt is lying still. Morton Marcus: That was Sir Cedric Hardwicke reading, "Composed Upon Westminster Bridge." Here are some of the

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beautiful images that he has. This is from another sonnet called, "It is a Beauteous Evening." He's walking with his natural daughter by Anette Vallon and he says: It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, the holy time is quiet

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as a Nun breathless with adoration. The broad sun is sinking down in its tranquility. The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea. Listen! the mighty being is awake and doth was his eternal motion make a sound like thunder -- everlastingly dear

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child! Dear girl! that walkest with me here, if thou appear untouched by solemn thought, thy nature is not therefore less divine. Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year, and worshipp'st at the temple's inner shrine, God being with

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thee when we know it not. Well, here's a poem called, "The World Is Too Much With Us." And this is when he talks about the world of society, the world of men, the world of the city that destroys our tranquility,

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destroys our communion, and our balance, and our harmony with nature. And nature, of course, is represented by the figure of God or the Being, he's never actually a Christian God, but the Being that directs all things. And this is when- this

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is what he complains about, the world in society. And then he opts at the end of this for a picture out of Pagan Greece, almost out of the Iliad or the Odyssey as to what he'd rather have than this. And of course what he's talking about is the

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rise of materialism and the rise of the industrial age in the 19th century. THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US The world is too much with us; Late and soon, getting and

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spending, we lay waste our powers. Little we see in nature that is ours. We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon. The winds that will be howling at all hours, and are up-gathered now like sleeping

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flowers. For this, for everything, we are out of tune. It moves us not. Great God! I'd rather be a Pagan suckled in a creed outworn. So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, have glimpses that would make me less forlorn. Have sight of

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Proteus rising from the sea. Or hear old Triton blow his weathed horn. Wordsworth's nature is very, very tranquil and one of the problems is that everything is solved, everything is very

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motherly in nature. And when his brother was killed in an accident at sea, suddenly everything turned and in 1807, he worked in a- for 1802, 1804, and 1807 on a poem, which was called- if I can find it here. I think I've got the wrong one,

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which was called, "Elegiac Stanzas." And I think I'll finish with this. This really was the end of Wordsworth's career. He finished -- he didn't work in 1802 and 1804 -- he worked on this poem 1806 and 1807.

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He is talking about a painting that George Beaumont drew of a castle, Peele Castle which stands upon the sea. And the whole purpose of the poem is to show how calm nature is and how serene it is, and how he recollects that when he sees

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that, when he recollect seeing Peele Castle, but now he sees the storm. And now he feels that nature, or his attitude towards nature, was wrong. There is another side to nature and that is the destructive side and that is what has claimed his brother

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and he realizes that he has to look in a very stoic manner or using the British stiff upper lip to get through life because no longer is nature the mother that will take care of him. This is, "Elegiac Stanzas," written in 1807. He really did not write

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more than one or two great and those are short poems after this, although he did work on, "The Prelude," for the rest of his life. This a bitter realization, that nature was not the nourisher, he never got over.

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ELEGIAC STANZAS SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE OF PEELE CASTLE, and he's looking at this picture of Peele Castle and talks to it. Peel Castle it is. I was thy neighbor once, thou rugged pile. Four summer weeks I

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dwelt in sight of thee: I saw thee every day and all the while thy form was sleeping on a glassy sea. So pure the sky, so quiet was the air! So like, so very like, was day to day! Whene'er I looked, thy image still was there. It trembled,

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but it never passed away. How perfect was the calm, it seems no sleep, no mood, which season takes away, or brings. I could have fancied that the mighty deep was even the gentlest of all gentle things.

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Ah, then, if mine had been the Painter's hand, to express what then I saw, and add the gleam, the light that never was, on sea or land, the consecration and the Poet's dream. I would have planted thee, thou hoary pile amid a world how different from

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this! Beside a sea that could not cease to smile on tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss. Thou shouldst have seemed a treasure-house divine of peaceful years, a chronicle of heaven. Of all the sunbeams that did ever shine, the very

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sweetest had to thee been given. A picture had it been of lasting ease, Elysian quiet, without toil or strife, no motion but the moving tide, a breeze, or merely silent Nature's breathing life. Such, in the fond illusion

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of my heart, such picture would I at that time have made and seen the soul of truth in every part, a steadfast piece that might not be betrayed. So once it would have been, 'tis so no more. I have submitted to a new control, a power is gone, which

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nothing can restore. A deep distress hath humanized my soul. Not for a moment could I now behold a smiling sea, and be what I have been: the feeling of my loss will ne'er be old. This, which I know, I speak with mind serene. Then, Beaumont, Friend!

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who would have been the Friend, if he had lived, of Him whom I deplore, this work of thine I blame not, but commend. This sea in anger and that dismal shore. O 'tis a passionate work! Yet wise and well, well chosen is the spirit that is here. That

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Hulk which labors in the deadly swell, this rueful sky, this pageantry of fear! And this huge castle standing here sublime, I love to see the look with which it braves, cased in the unfeeling armor of old

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time, the lightning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves. Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone, housed in a dream, at distance from a kind! Such happiness, wherever it be known, is to be pitied, for 'tis surely blind. But welcome

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fortitude, and patient cheer, and frequent sights of what is to be borne. Such sights, or worse, as are before me here, not without hope we suffer and we mourn. And on that rather unhappy note, we leave Mr. Wordsworth. He is

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219 years old today. His birthday is not today but in three days' time, his birthday is April 7th, 1770. He died in 1850, and he was the poet laureate of England at the time that he died. Unfortunately, he had not written a poem at the

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time of his death, really a great poem, in more than 35 to 40 years. Plaza Books has provided a grant that helped make the last half hour of programming possible. Plaza Books is located on the Pacific Garden Mall in Santa Cruz, we

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appreciate their support. We thank you very much. I hope you enjoyed the show and Wordsworth taking us back to one of the really great poets of the English language. And I hope maybe some of my interpretations made you look at him anew. Next

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week, Joe will be back. We will be within the next several weeks presenting our first Poetry Show on Australian poetry, contemporary Australian poetry. Until then, next time, which will be two weeks from now, this is Mort Marcus saying thank you

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for listening in and do stay tuned for Things Ain't What They Used To Be, with Tim Folger.