Dorothy Wordsworth

Dorothy Wordsworth is William Wordsworth's sister. She did not consider herself a writer. She wrote for family and friends and did not wish for her works to be published. I really appreciated her writings and I feel that her humbleness about her talent is one of the things that made her writing really shine. I think people write the best things when they think no one will read them.

My favorite writing of hers in the book was "Thoughts on My Sick-bed". "And has the remnant of my life been pilfered of this sunny spring?" (p. 293). Dorothy had become stricken with many debilitating illnesses and she compares this condition to being robbed of something beautiful such as a sunny spring. In many parts of the poem she refers to her condition. "Ah say not so--the hidden life couchant with this feeble frame hath been enriched by kindred gifts, that undesired, unsought-for, came." Although she is very ill she still has a part of her that feels lively but it is masked by her fragile frame. When someone is sick loved ones often bring gifts and food by. They also come and sit with the loved one to spend some time with them. She was grateful for these kindred gifts although she did not ask for them. "With joyful heart in youthful days when fresh each season in its Round...the earliest Celandine glittering upon the mossy ground........primrose on a lamp on its fortress rock, the silent butterfly spreading its wings". She thinks back to when she was young and healthy and starts to appreciate things in nature that surrounded her. She appreciates fresh grown fruits, flowers, moss, grass, and other living things such as a butterfly. She can picture the butterfly, silent but beautiful, spreading its wings. "The violet betrayed by its noiseless breath, the daffodil dancing in the breeze." She goes in depth in the poem speaking of the flowers that many of us love. In fact, violets are one of my favorites. "Our cottage-hearth no longer our home, companions of nature were we, the stirring, the still, the loquacious, the mute--to all we gave our sympathy." She feels the pain and sympathy of those who have had illnesses similar to hers. One things this poem did remind me of is a nature trail. "When spring-time in rock, field, or bower was but a fountain of earthly hope." She mentions many things that allow you to envision these things as if your on a hike. "When loving friends an offering brought, the first flowers of the year, culled from the precincts of our home, from nooks to memory dear." Her friends bring flowers to her otherwise gloomy room in which lay on her sick bed. The flowers along with their faces bring her comfort as well as memory as some of the same ones she saw when she was healthy and walking the trail herself. She is thankful to have friends that show their love during this time when she needs them most. "With some sad thoughts the work was done, unprompted and unbidden, but joy it brought to my hidden life, to consciousness no longer hidden." She is a little sad that her work and days of being healthy and free to go and come as she please had ended, especially in this manner. However, she still has a joy within when she thinks of all the things in her life that have made it special and that have made her happy. "No need of motion, or of strength, Or even the breathing air:--I thought of Nature's loveliest scenes; and with Memory I was there". I really liked the way she ended the poem with these lines. It is important for us to find something that truly comforts us in moments of sorrow. I admire Dorothy for her ability to use nature as her saving grace and as a means for her to be comforted through her pain. She still valued the precious things in life and did not seem bitter about her condition.