William Wordsworth – The Prelude

Everyone knows the 1805 version of The Prelude is better than the 1850 version — Wordsworth could have saved himself a lot of trouble if he’d left it alone. Reading through my parallel text edition, my eyes strayed over to the right-hand page from time to time, but usually not for long — the older Wordsworth seemed to have an uncanny gift for blunting the edge of his youthful inspiration.

But in Book III, ‘Residence at Cambridge’, I stumbled across an unexpected gem in the description of St John’s College. Here’s the 1805 version:

And from my bedroom, I in moonlight nights
Could see, right opposite, a few yards off,
The antechapel, where the statue stood
Of Newton with his prism and silent face.

The 1850 version has a couple of extra lines:

And from my bedroom, I in moonlight nights
Could see, right opposite, a few yards off,
The antechapel, where the statue stood
Of Newton with his prism and silent face,
The marble index of a mind for ever
Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.

Not only is that an improvement, those are two of the best lines in Wordsworth. I started to wonder if I was reading the wrong version. But I haven’t found any other revisions in the 1850 version that are remotely as good as this.

Have you?