The Poem
[Written at Town-end, Grasmere. The germ of this poem was four lines composed as a part of the verses on the Highland Girl. Though beginning in this way, it was written from my heart, as is sufficiently obvious.—I. F.]
One of the "Poems of the Imagination."—Ed.
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Nàng là bóng ảo thỏa lòng,
Khi vừa chợp hiện trước dòng mắt tôi;
Một miền ảo ảnh tuyệt vời,
Sinh ra để điểm một thời phút giây;
Mắt như sao buổi hoàng phai;
Tóc huyền cũng tựa chiều phai bóng mềm;
Nhưng muôn phần khác dịu êm,
Đượm từ tháng Năm với bình minh tươi;
Dáng hài uyển chuyển, nụ cười,
Dạo quanh, quyến rũ, ngậm ngùi bước chân.
Nhìn gần tôi thấy rõ hơn,
Hồn thiêng mà cũng hồng trần nên thơ!
Gót hài việc nước nhẹ bơ,
Dáng đi thanh bạch nét mơ thiếu từ;
Khuôn dung hội tụ ngàn như,
Ngọt ngào tích cũ, nhủ từ ước mơ;
Một sinh linh chẳng hững hờ,
Đủ cho nhân thế mỗi giờ thiết tha;
Muộn phiền thoáng chốc trôi qua,
Mưu sinh mộc mạc, chan hòa yêu thương,
Tụ và tan, lệ, nụ hường.
Và nay tôi ngắm tỏ tường,
Trái tim nhịp đập đời thường máy quay;
Hồn thơ hít thở đong đầy,
Lữ hành giữa chốn đọa đày tử sinh;
Lập trường vững chãi đinh ninh,
Ý chí điềm đạm, nghĩa tình bền gan;
Nữ nhi trọn vẹn, vẹn toàn,
Dắt dìu, an ủi, vuông tròn uy nghi;
Mà hồn thơ vẫn diệu kỳ,
Ánh thiêng tỏa rạng quang vi thiên thần.
Note
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Variant 1:
1807
From May-time's brightest, liveliest dawn;
1836
The text of 1840 returns to that of 1807.
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Variant 2:
1832
... betwixt ...
1807
return
Variant 3:
1815
A perfect Woman; ...
1807
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Variant 4:
1845
... of an angel light.
1807
... angel-light.
1836
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Footnote A: Compare two references to Mary Wordsworth in The Prelude:
'Another maid there was, who also shed
A gladness o'er that season, then to me,
By her exulting outside look of youth
And placid under-countenance, first endeared;'
(Book vi, l. 224).
'She came, no more a phantom to adorn
A moment, but an inmate of the heart,
And yet a spirit, there for me enshrined
To penetrate the lofty and the low;'
(Book xiv, l. 268).—Ed.
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Footnote B: The poet expressly told me that these verses were on his wife.—H. C. R.
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Note: It is not easy to say what were the "four lines composed as a part of the verses on the Highland Girl" which the Fenwick note tells us was "the germ of this poem." They may be lines now incorporated in those To a Highland Girl, vol. ii. p. 389, or they may be lines in the present poem, which Wordsworth wrote at first for the Highland Girl, but afterwards transferred to this one. They may have been the first four lines of the later poem. The two should be read consecutively, and compared.
After Wordsworth's death, a writer in the Daily News, January 1859—then understood to be Miss Harriet Martineau —wrote thus:
"In the Memoirs, by the nephew of the poet, it is said that these verses refer to Mrs. Wordsworth; but for half of Wordsworth's life it was always understood that they referred to some other phantom which 'gleamed upon his sight' before Mary Hutchinson."
This statement is much more than improbable; it is, I think, disproved by the Fenwick note. They cannot refer to the "Lucy" of the Goslar poems; and Wordsworth indicates, as plainly as he chose, to whom they actually do refer. Compare the Hon. Justice Coleridge's account of a conversation with Wordsworth (Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 306), in which the poet expressly said that the lines were written on his wife. The question was, however, set at rest in a conversation of Wordsworth with Henry Crabb Robinson, who wrote in his Diary on
"May 12 (1842).—Wordsworth said that the poems 'Our walk was far among the ancient trees' [vol. ii. p. 167], then 'She was a Phantom of delight,'B and finally the two sonnets To a Painter, should be read in succession as exhibiting the different phases of his affection to his wife."
(Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson, vol. iii. p. 197.)
The use of the word "machine," in the third stanza of the poem, has been much criticised, but for a similar use of the term, see the sequel to The Waggoner (p. 107):
'Forgive me, then; for I had been
On friendly terms with this Machine.'
See also Hamlet (act II. scene ii. l. 124):
'Thine evermore, most dear lady, whilst this machine is to him.'
The progress of mechanical industry in Britain since the beginning of the present century has given a more limited, and purely technical, meaning to the word, than it bore when Wordsworth used it in these two instances.—Ed.
Contents 1804
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