William Wordsworth’s Poem At Auction!

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oi-Staff

By Staff

Tuesday, May 12, 2009, 11:58

The poetic maestro still seems to be winning the hearts. Recently William Wordsworth's letter for a fellow poet has sold for 8,825 pounds at an auction. In the 1840 letter, Wordsworth gives advice to fellow poet Robert Southey.

Robert Southey was a Poet Laureate at that time. He had asked William Wordsworth to give an advice on one of his poems. William Wordsworth wrote the letter in response to a request by Southey.

In the letter Wordsworth made several suggestions for Southey's poem 'My Days Among the Dead Are Passed.' Wordsworth describes the poem as "so profoundly fine and so beautifully characteristic of its author, that I should like the words to be as perfect as care could make them." But he goes on to suggest several changes, such as replacing the word "converse" with "commune", because it is "a word sweeter in sound as well as in feeling."

Both William Wordsworth and Robert Southey lived in the Lake District and enjoyed a friendly rivalry. There was no way Robert Southey could have changed his poems to suit Wordsworth but perhaps this was just Wordsworth's way of keeping the channels of communication open. Wordsworth, who succeeded Southey as Poet Laureate in 1843, was "notoriously tactless when commenting on other poets' work, but didn't take criticism of his own very well."

The letter sold at George Kidner Auctioneers in Lymington, Hants, for more than double its estimate.