I was always pleased with the motto placed under the figure
of the rosemary in old herbals:
'Sus, apage!
of the rosemary in old herbals:
'Sus, apage!
William Wordsworth
p.
58 (ed.
1818), Coleridge writes:
"Men laugh at the falsehoods imposed on them during their childhood,
because they are not good and wise enough to contemplate the past in
the present, and so to produce that continuity in their
self-consciousness, which Nature has made the law of their animal
life. Men are ungrateful to others, only when they have ceased to look
back on their former selves with joy and tenderness. They exist in
fragments. "
He then quotes the above poem, and adds:
"I am informed that these lines have been cited as a specimen of
despicable puerility. So much the worse for the citer; not willingly
in _his_ presence would I behold the sun setting behind our
mountains. . . . But let the dead bury their dead! The poet sang for the
living. . . .
I was always pleased with the motto placed under the figure
of the rosemary in old herbals:
'Sus, apage! Haud tibi spiro. '"
Compare the passage in 'The Excursion' (book ix. l. 36) beginning:
'. . . Ah! why in age
Do we revert so fondly, etc. '
also that in 'The Prelude' (book v. l. 507) beginning:
'Our childhood sits. '
* * * * *
WRITTEN IN MARCH, WHILE RESTING ON THE BRIDGE AT THE FOOT OF BROTHERS
WATER
Composed April 16, 1802. --Published 1807
[Extempore. This little poem was a favourite with Joanna Baillie. --I.
"Men laugh at the falsehoods imposed on them during their childhood,
because they are not good and wise enough to contemplate the past in
the present, and so to produce that continuity in their
self-consciousness, which Nature has made the law of their animal
life. Men are ungrateful to others, only when they have ceased to look
back on their former selves with joy and tenderness. They exist in
fragments. "
He then quotes the above poem, and adds:
"I am informed that these lines have been cited as a specimen of
despicable puerility. So much the worse for the citer; not willingly
in _his_ presence would I behold the sun setting behind our
mountains. . . . But let the dead bury their dead! The poet sang for the
living. . . .
I was always pleased with the motto placed under the figure
of the rosemary in old herbals:
'Sus, apage! Haud tibi spiro. '"
Compare the passage in 'The Excursion' (book ix. l. 36) beginning:
'. . . Ah! why in age
Do we revert so fondly, etc. '
also that in 'The Prelude' (book v. l. 507) beginning:
'Our childhood sits. '
* * * * *
WRITTEN IN MARCH, WHILE RESTING ON THE BRIDGE AT THE FOOT OF BROTHERS
WATER
Composed April 16, 1802. --Published 1807
[Extempore. This little poem was a favourite with Joanna Baillie. --I.
