William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 - 23 April 1850) was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English Literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads (1798). His notable works are Lyrical Ballads, Poems In Two Volumes (1807), The Excursion (1814), The Prelude (1850), I Wandered Lonely As A cloud (1802). His poem “HART-LEAP WELL” (1800), is told in the form of a ballad. Merriam-Webster defines ballads as “a kind of a poem or song that tells a story”, the first part of the poem is of a knight named Sir Walter and his hunt for a hart (deer). The second part of the poem is told by a shepherd who conveys a different perspective of the hunt. A shepherd’s job, defined by Merriam-Webster, is “to guide someone or something”, in this case they guide the reader through the story. They are similar to minstrels, who also guide their audiences through their stories but are known for being more entertaining in their story telling.
Hart-Leap Well is a small spring of watery about five miles from Richmond in Yorkshire, and near the side of the road which leads from Richmond to Askrigg. Its name is derived from a remarkable chase, the memory of which is preserved by the monuments spoken of in the second part of the following poem, which monuments do now exist as he has described.
In the beginning of the poem the knight rides down from the Wensley moor, and as soon as he reaches the vassel’s door, he cries aloud for another horse, and he gets another horse. Sir Walter who himself is the knight sits on the horse and goes away. He rides the horse as fast as how a Falcon bird flies. Suddenly, he finds that it is a herd of deer, among them he chooses one and follows it, for which he calls out for three dogs who are Blanch, Swift, and Music along with them he chases that one deer whom he focused on. It was not an Earthly chase. All others who went with Walter disappear because of tiredness. Sir Walter and the hart alone remain.
Now the knight explains his successful victory on how he chased the deer and killed it. The deer was running in the mountain but he could not guess how far it went. At last the hart dies but Sir Walter refuses to say how it died. There was no one with him, no follower, no dog, no man, nor a boy, so he himself dismounted from the horse and found that hart as his “dump partner” it could not speak or listen because of its pain even foam started to pouring out from its mouth, and it died.
The hart was lying stretched with its nostril touching a spring which was beneath a hill. His deep groaning made the water in the spring to tremble. Now he is in ecstasy for the repose on seeing all four sides of his surrounding and gazes upon that Darling Spot and decides to build a house in the place where the hoof-marks of the deer was left, and then he cries aloud that the human beings will know about his victory over killing this deer. He decides to build a pleasure house which is surrounded by trees and he builds it in such a way that it will be useful for the people who come there. He thinks that this place must have an identity so that it will be spoken by the people who come there, so he names that place as “HART-LEAP WELL”. To make the place even more greater he builds three pillars which is made of rough-hewn stone. During summer he would come with his paramour to enjoy the holidays with the dancers and minstrel’s song.
In the following lines he mentions some strong belief which was derived from the Holy Bible, that the house which is built on a hill can never be destroyed until the hill is destroyed.
Till the foundations of the mountains fail
My mansion with its arbour shall endure;--
The joy of them who till the fields of swale,
And them who dwell among the woods of Ure! (73-76)
So then he keeps a stone as an identity mark and then he goes home. And soon he fulfils all his ideas which he had explained in the former stanzas. His house is compared to the sylvan land, where the trees fully cover the whole house without even leaving sun light and moon light to pass through. So whenever summer comes he goes there and enjoys with his paramour. On one day he dies there and his dead body is buried there. And now the poet speaks about another tale which gives the picturesque view of the calamity of the fertile land.
From the second part of this poem, Wordsworth himself tells his experience. When he walks through that way he happens to see the three aspens at the three corners of a square and one among them is very near to the well. He wishes to look into the area deeply, so that he makes stop his horse. He sees three pillars standing in a line where they are fully covered by darkness and the trees become grey in colour which symbolises it is emotionless.
In the following lines, the poet expresses the thought of nature which is about to decay the place. Because, Nature itself is willing to destroy that place because one of its members has been tortured and buried there.
I looked upon the hill both far and near,
More doleful place did never eye survey;
It seemed as if the spring-time came not here,
And Nature here were willing to decay. (123-126)
He looks upon the hill from both far and near but he finds the dullness only in that particular area where the spring season has never visited.
And then, the poet meets a shepherd and asks him about that place. The Shepherd says that it was a jolly place once, but now it is turned to be a cursed place, and it is suffering, and lifeless stumps of aspen wood, an old mansion, and only dust and waste remained there. The spring water was never been tasted by neither a dog nor a heifer a horse nor a sheep, because it is fully filled with the groaning voice of the hart still. Shepherd said that some people believe that some murder would have place taken there. All these climate changes are occurred only because of the soul of that unhappy hart. He said, no one could describe that thirteen hours race between the knight and the hart but one can feel for the reason why the hart ran and died in that particular place. The hart might have been born, and brought up with all the members of its family, it might have loved that place very much, may be because of this reason it hold its life in its hand till it reaches there. He said that during April all birds come to this place, but after this not even a single bird visited that particular area with their morning carol song and even the sun and the moon never visited that place, because that place is been cursed to the extreme. All the beauty of that land such as trees, stones, and fountain left that place.
According to the reader’s point of view, that place is cursed not only by death and burial of the hart, the knight is considered as the main cause to that calamity. The sun, the moon, the spring season, and the birds have a good conscience to mourn for its part and at the same time they take revenge by not visiting that place “Hart-Leap Well”. That is not a cursed place by nature, but the knight himself made the place to be cursed.
Now the poet replies to the shepherd that the hart is not only observed by the nature alone, but it has also gained the sympathy from the divine. Its death is regarded as the great mourning to all. He said that there is reason for nature to leave that place because it symbolically gives a precaution that it would decay the entire place if injustice that happened to the hart is repeated any other parts of nature.
Thus, he concludes by giving the message in the following lines :
One lesson, shepherd, Let us two divide,
Taught both by what she shows, and what conceals;
Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels (187-190)
By explaining to the shepherd the poet indirectly passes the message to the human beings that everything which is given by nature or hidden by nature, will never give loss to any of our pleasure or pride. Because of their own pleasure and pride human beings take the lives of other living things. Whenever humans take the life of the meanest thing, if the try to feel the pain of it they could never ever take its life
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