Nuns Fret Not At Their Convent'S Narrow Room

Composed 1806.--Published 1807

[In the cottage, Town-end, Grasmere, one afternoon in 1801, my sister read to me the sonnets of Milton. I had long been well acquainted with them, but I was particularly struck on that occasion with the dignified simplicity and majestic harmony that runs through most of them,--in character so totally different from the Italian, and still more so from Shakspeare's fine sonnets. I took fire, if I may be allowed to say so, and produced three sonnets the same afternoon, the first I ever wrote, except an irregular one at school. Of these three, the only one I distinctly remember is--"I grieved for Buonaparté." One was never written down; the third, which was, I believe, preserved, I cannot particularise.--I. F.]

From 1807 to 1820 this was named Prefatory Sonnet, as introducing the series of "Miscellaneous Sonnets" in these editions. In 1827 it took its place as the first in that series, following the Dedication To ----.--ED.

Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room; And hermits are contented with their cells; And students with their pensive citadels; Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom, Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom, High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells, Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells: In truth the prison, unto which we doom Ourselves, no prison is:[A] and hence for me, In sundry moods,'twas pastime to be bound Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground; Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be) Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,[B] Should find brief solace there, as I have found.

In Wordsworth's time "Furness-fells" was a generic phrase for all the hills east of the Duddon, south of the Brathay, and west of Windermere; including the Coniston group, Wetherlam, with the Yewdale and Tilberthwaite fells. The district of Furness, like that of Craven in Yorkshire, being originally ecclesiastical, had a wide area, of which the abbey of Furness was the centre.

In the Fenwick note prefixed to this sonnet, Wordsworth refers to his earliest attempt at sonnet writing. He says he wrote an irregular one at school, and the next were three sonnets written one afternoon in Dove Cottage in the year 1801, after his sister had read the sonnets of Milton. This note is not, however, to be trusted. It was not in 1801, but on the 21st of May 1802, that his sister read to him these sonnets of Milton; and he afterwards wrote not one but two sonnets on Buonaparte. What the irregular sonnet written at school was it is impossible to say, unless he refers to the one entitled, in 1807 and subsequent editions, Written in Very Early Youth; and beginning--

Calm is all nature as a resting wheel.

But on a copy of An Evening Walk (1793 edition) Wordsworth wrote:--"This is the first of my published poems, with the exception of a sonnet, written when I was a schoolboy, and published in the European Magazine in June or July 1786, and signed Axiologus." Even as to this date his memory was at fault. It was published in 1787, when he was seventeen years of age. Its full title may be given; although, for reasons already stated, it would be unjustifiable to republish the sonnet, except in an appendix to the poems, and mainly for its biographical interest. It was entitled, Sonnet, on seeing Miss Maria Williams weep at a Tale of Distress. But, fully ten years before the date mentioned by Dorothy Wordsworth in her Grasmere Journal--as the day on which she read Milton's sonnets to her brother, and on which he wrote the two on Buonaparte--he had written others, the existence of which he had evidently forgotten. On the 6th of May 1792, his sister wrote thus from Forncett Rectory in Norfolk to her friend, Miss Jane Pollard:--"I promised to transcribe some of William's compositions. As I made the promise, I will give you a little sonnet.... I take the first that offers. It is very valuable to me, because the cause which gave birth to it was the favourite evening walk of William and me.... I have not chosen this sonnet from any particular beauty it has. It was the first I laid my hands upon." From the clause I have italicised, it would almost seem that other sonnets belong to that period, viz. before 1793, when An Evening Walk appeared. She would hardly have spoken of it as she did, if this was the only sonnet her brother had then written. Though very inferior to his later work, this sonnet may be preserved as a specimen of Wordsworth's earlier manner, before he had broken away, by the force of his own imagination, from the trammels of the conventional style, which he inherited. It is printed in the Appendix to volume viii.

It will be seen that Wordsworth's memory cannot be always relied upon, in reference to dates, and similar details, in the Fenwick memoranda.--ED.

VARIANTS:

1849.

... to me, 1807.

1827.

... short ... 1807.