As of July 2022, an ingot (block of steel, gold, or silver, etc.). of Cornish tin was salvaged from the shipwreck Wordsworth’s brother John died in, causing Wordsworth to write 3 of his most famous elegies: “To the Daisy,” “I only look’d for pain and grief,” and “Distressful gift! this Book receives.” This ingot was put up for auction. Here is the link: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/william-wordsworth-dorset-portland-china-east-india-company-b1011922.html
This is interesting to me because some of the poems Wordsworth wrote before his brother’s death deal with death in a very different way than the 3 elegies he wrote after his brother’s death in 1805. For example, in “We Are Seven,” the narrator does not view death in the same way as the child he stumbles upon. The child believes that even though two of her siblings have died, they are still with her because she loves them. The narrator does not understand this because he sees two graves and understands this as death being final. In “The Thorn,” Martha Ray visits her baby’s resting place beneath a thorn even though people speculate she killed her baby; the narrator tells this tale as if it is a sort of gossip that has been passed around by the townspeople. The woman seems to be an outcast that nobody ever interacts with to find out the truth; in this way, death is a complex issue that the narrator does not deal with, but just assumes certain claims of.
In Wordsworth’s elegies dealing with John Wordsworth’s death, he lets out his grief more literally by referencing the sinking ship and using a daisy and a book to frame his emotions around. In these poems, the reader can tell that Wordsworth has felt an immeasurable loss, while the poems that deal with death before 1805 are more profound and feel inexperienced with the idea of loss.
This is a perceptive post, Zoe. In “Elegiac Stanzas” (also about the death of his brother), Wordsworth makes this change in perspective about the nature of loss/death more explicit.
This is really interesting — I’d love to examine some more (non-elegiac) poetry post-sinking; I wonder if there’s a marked difference in general tone. You also got me reading a lot about this shipwreck, though admittedly, that’s not difficult!
This post is really interesting, especially the bit about the shipwreck . It is interesting to see the shift in Wordsworth’s writing and the way that he conveys profound profound grief, dissimilarly from his earlier poems. His other poems regarding death, such as “We Are Seven,” have conflicting perspectives on the nature of death. Also, i will now be doing research as to what exactly an Ingot is, as I’ve never heard of one before.