'
"The 'Four Yew Trees,' and the mysterious company which you have
assembled there, 'Death the Skeleton and Time the Shadow.
"The 'Four Yew Trees,' and the mysterious company which you have
assembled there, 'Death the Skeleton and Time the Shadow.
William Wordsworth
259.
) With
the first part of the poem Wordsworth's 'Sonnet composed at----Castle'
during the Scotch Tour of 1803 may be compared (p. 410). For a critical
estimate of the poem see 'Modern Painters', part III. sec. II, chap. iv.
Ruskin alludes to "the real and high action of the imagination in
Wordsworth's 'Yew-trees' (perhaps the most vigorous and solemn bit of
forest landscape ever painted). It is too long to quote, but the reader
should refer to it: let him note especially, if painter, that pure touch
of colour, 'by sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged. '" See also
Coleridge's criticism in 'Biographia Literaria', vol. ii. p. 177,
edition 1847, and his daughter Sara's comment on her father's note.
There can be little doubt that, as Professor Dowden has suggested, the
lines 23 to 28 were suggested to Wordsworth by Virgil's lines in the
Sixth Book of the 'AEneid', 273-284--
'Vestibulum ante ipsum primisque in faucibus Orci
Luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae;
Pallentesque habitant Morbi, tristisque Senectus,
Et Metus, et malesuada Fames, ac turpis Egestas,
Terribiles visu formae, Letumque, Labosque;
Tum consanguineus Leti Sopor, et mala mentis
Gaudia, mortiferumque adverso in limine Bellum,
Ferreique Eumenidum thalami, et Discordia demens,
Vipereum crinem vittis innexa cruentis.
In medio ramos annosaque bracchia pandit
Ulmus opaca, ingens, quam sedem Somnia volgo
Vana tenere ferunt, foliisque sub omnibus haerent.
'
"The 'Four Yew Trees,' and the mysterious company which you have
assembled there, 'Death the Skeleton and Time the Shadow. ' It is a
sight not for every youthful poet to dream of; it is one of the last
results he must have gone thinking for years for. "
(Charles Lamb to Wordsworth, 1815. )
In Crabb Robinson's 'Diary', a reference to the Yew-trees of Lorton and
Borrowdale will be found under date Sept. 16 and 20, 1816.
"The pride of Lorton Vale" is now a ruin, and has lost all its ancient
majesty: but, until the close of 1883, the "fraternal four" of
Borrowdale were still to be seen "in grand assemblage. " Every one who
has felt the power of Wordsworth's poetry,--and especially those who
had visited the Seathwaite valley, and read the 'Yew-Trees' under the
shade of that once "solemn and capacious grove" before 1884,--must
have felt as if they had lost a personal friend, when they heard that
the "grove" was gone. The great gale of December 11, 1883, smote it
fiercely, uprooting one of the trees, and blowing the others to
ribbands. The following is Mr. Rawnsley's account of the disaster:
'Last week the gale that ravaged England did the Lake country much
harm. We could spare many of the larch plantations, and could hear
(with a sigh) of the fall of the giant Scotch firs opposite the
little Scafell Inn at Rosthwaite, and that Watendlath had lost its
pines; but who could spare those ancient Yews, the great
". . . fraternal Four of Borrowdale,
Joined in one solemn and capacious grove;
Huge trunks! and each particular trunk a growth
Of intertwisted fibres serpentine
Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved. "
'For beneath their pillared shade since Wordsworth wrote his poem,
that Yew-tree grove has suggested to many a wanderer up Borrowdale,
and visitant to the Natural Temple,
"an ideal grove in which the ghostly masters of mankind meet, and
sleep, and offer worship to the Destiny that abides above them,
while the mountain flood, as if from another world, makes music to
which they dimly listen.
the first part of the poem Wordsworth's 'Sonnet composed at----Castle'
during the Scotch Tour of 1803 may be compared (p. 410). For a critical
estimate of the poem see 'Modern Painters', part III. sec. II, chap. iv.
Ruskin alludes to "the real and high action of the imagination in
Wordsworth's 'Yew-trees' (perhaps the most vigorous and solemn bit of
forest landscape ever painted). It is too long to quote, but the reader
should refer to it: let him note especially, if painter, that pure touch
of colour, 'by sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged. '" See also
Coleridge's criticism in 'Biographia Literaria', vol. ii. p. 177,
edition 1847, and his daughter Sara's comment on her father's note.
There can be little doubt that, as Professor Dowden has suggested, the
lines 23 to 28 were suggested to Wordsworth by Virgil's lines in the
Sixth Book of the 'AEneid', 273-284--
'Vestibulum ante ipsum primisque in faucibus Orci
Luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae;
Pallentesque habitant Morbi, tristisque Senectus,
Et Metus, et malesuada Fames, ac turpis Egestas,
Terribiles visu formae, Letumque, Labosque;
Tum consanguineus Leti Sopor, et mala mentis
Gaudia, mortiferumque adverso in limine Bellum,
Ferreique Eumenidum thalami, et Discordia demens,
Vipereum crinem vittis innexa cruentis.
In medio ramos annosaque bracchia pandit
Ulmus opaca, ingens, quam sedem Somnia volgo
Vana tenere ferunt, foliisque sub omnibus haerent.
'
"The 'Four Yew Trees,' and the mysterious company which you have
assembled there, 'Death the Skeleton and Time the Shadow. ' It is a
sight not for every youthful poet to dream of; it is one of the last
results he must have gone thinking for years for. "
(Charles Lamb to Wordsworth, 1815. )
In Crabb Robinson's 'Diary', a reference to the Yew-trees of Lorton and
Borrowdale will be found under date Sept. 16 and 20, 1816.
"The pride of Lorton Vale" is now a ruin, and has lost all its ancient
majesty: but, until the close of 1883, the "fraternal four" of
Borrowdale were still to be seen "in grand assemblage. " Every one who
has felt the power of Wordsworth's poetry,--and especially those who
had visited the Seathwaite valley, and read the 'Yew-Trees' under the
shade of that once "solemn and capacious grove" before 1884,--must
have felt as if they had lost a personal friend, when they heard that
the "grove" was gone. The great gale of December 11, 1883, smote it
fiercely, uprooting one of the trees, and blowing the others to
ribbands. The following is Mr. Rawnsley's account of the disaster:
'Last week the gale that ravaged England did the Lake country much
harm. We could spare many of the larch plantations, and could hear
(with a sigh) of the fall of the giant Scotch firs opposite the
little Scafell Inn at Rosthwaite, and that Watendlath had lost its
pines; but who could spare those ancient Yews, the great
". . . fraternal Four of Borrowdale,
Joined in one solemn and capacious grove;
Huge trunks! and each particular trunk a growth
Of intertwisted fibres serpentine
Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved. "
'For beneath their pillared shade since Wordsworth wrote his poem,
that Yew-tree grove has suggested to many a wanderer up Borrowdale,
and visitant to the Natural Temple,
"an ideal grove in which the ghostly masters of mankind meet, and
sleep, and offer worship to the Destiny that abides above them,
while the mountain flood, as if from another world, makes music to
which they dimly listen.
