Into the history of
the variant I have not looked. It is enough that all the
suddenness, all the clash and recoil of these impassioned lines are
lost by that "wished" in the place of "turned." The loss would be
the less tolerable in as much as perhaps only here and in that
heart-moving poem, 'Tis said that some have died for love, is
Wordsworth to be confessed as an impassioned poet.
STEPPING WESTWARD
This and the preceding two exquisite poems of sympathy are far more
justified, more recollected and sincere than is that more
monumental composition, the famous poem of sympathy, Hartleap Well.
The most beautiful stanzas of this poem last-named are so rebuked
by the truths of nature that they must ever stand as obstacles to
the straightforward view of sensitive eyes upon the natural world.
Wordsworth shows us the ruins of an aspen-wood, a blighted hollow,
a dreary place forlorn because an innocent creature, hunted, had
there broken its heart in a leap from the rocks above; grass would
not grow, nor shade linger there -
"This beast not unobserved by Nature fell,
His death was mourned by sympathy divine."
And the signs of that sympathy are cruelly asserted to be these
arid woodland ruins--cruelly, because the common sight of the day
blossoming over the agonies of animals and birds is made less
tolerable by such fictions.
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