This week’s choice was inspired by our trip to the Lake District last week. It is “Composed By The Side Of Grasmere Lake 1806” by William Wordsworth.
Great Pan himself low-whispering through the reeds,
William Wordsworth (1770—1850)
“Be thankful, thou; for, if unholy deeds
Ravage the world, tranquillity is here!”
Poem 434. Composed By The Side Of Grasmere Lake 1806
CLOUDS, lingering yet, extend in solid bars
Through the grey west; and lo! these waters, steeled
By breezeless air to smoothest polish, yield
A vivid repetition of the stars;
Jove, Venus, and the ruddy crest of Mars
Amid his fellows beauteously revealed
At happy distance from earth’s groaning field,
Where ruthless mortals wage incessant wars.
Is it a mirror? — or the nether Sphere
Opening to view the abyss in which she feeds
Her own calm fires? — But list! a voice is near;
Great Pan himself low-whispering through the reeds,
“Be thankful, thou; for, if unholy deeds
Ravage the world, tranquillity is here!”
This lovely poem evokes the beautiful landscape of the heart of the Lake District and the hills and the lake at Grasmere, where Wordsworth lived with his sister Dorothy for a dozen years or so.
Wordsworth begins the poem by describing the scene: dusk, with grey clouds low in the sky and the glass-like surface of the lake reflecting the stars and the planets. He contrasts the silent, distant and peaceful heavens with the chaos and “incessant wars” of Earth and asks himself if the serene vista might be only an opening to the hellish world of fire below the surface. He answers his question by invoking the Greek god Pan who whispers that even if the world is beset by “unholy deeds”, peace can be found where he is.
I like the poem because it reminds us that the beauty of the natural world and the pastoral views that Wordsworth enjoyed and which we can still enjoy today are an antidote to “earth’s groaning field/Where ruthless mortals wage incessant wars”. The madness and turmoil of the present which we are reminded of all too often by the sensation-hungry media can be muffled and attenuated by the splendour of our natural environment: the mellow colours of its lowlands, the stark beauty of its mountains, and the changing colours dappling the landscape as the sun rises and sets, masked or veiled by clouds bring a sense of harmony that offsets the chaos.
We can see in our mind’s eye the clouds clustered on the horizon like bars of grey metal, the three planets Jupiter (Jove), Venus and Mars, reflected with the starry background in the perfectly still water. Wordsworth’s description of the state of the world in 1806 (the height of the Napoleonic Wars) is very similar to today’s gallery of ruthless individuals waging similarly incessant wars and teetering on the edge of Hell but Pan’s reminder also is true: “tranquillity is here”. There aren’t many performances of this poem on YouTube but Aimee Reads Poetry does a rather nice version.