To the Memory of Raisley Calvert
To the Memory of Raisley Calvert - meaning Summary
Gratitude for Poetic Freedom
Wordsworth directly thanks Raisley Calvert for financial support that gave him early freedom to pursue poetry. He links that patronage to his ability to seek truth and to produce work of moral and aesthetic value. Acknowledging Calvert’s premature death, Wordsworth imagines future, higher poems as a living memorial, so that Calvert’s praise will endure through the poet’s subsequent verse.
Read Complete AnalysesCALVERT! it must not be unheard by them Who may respect my name, that I to thee Owed many years of early liberty. This care was thine when sickness did condemn Thy youth to hopeless wasting, root and stem-- That I, if frugal and severe, might stray Where'er I liked; and finally array My temples with the Muse's diadem. Hence, if in freedom I have loved the truth; If there be aught of pure, or good, or great, In my past verse; or shall be, in the lays Of higher mood, which now I meditate;-- It gladdens me, O worthy, short-lived, Youth! To think how much of this will be thy praise.
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