The Poem of Peter Bell, as the Prologue will show, was composed under a belief that the Imagination not only does not require for its exercise the intervention of supernatural agency, but that, though such agency be excluded, the faculty may be called forth as imperiously and for kindred results of pleasure, by incidents, within the compass of poetic probability, in the humblest departments of daily life. Since that Prologue was written, you have exhibited most splendid effects of judicious daring, in the opposite and usual course. Let this acknowledgment make my peace with the lovers of the supernatural; and I am persuaded it will be admitted, that to you, as a Master in that province of the art, the following Tale, whether from contrast or congruity, is not an unappropriate offering. Accept it, then, as a public testimony of affectionate admiration from one with whose name yours has been often coupled (to use your own words) for evil and for good; and believe me to be, with earnest wishes that life and health may be granted you to complete the many important works in which you are engaged, and with high respect, Most faithfully yours.
By : William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850)
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In a tone of straight-faced humour the prologue tells of the poet's travels over the face of the earth and through the heavens in a boat of the imagination, which urges him to choose some exotic or otherworldly theme. The poet rejects the suggestion, and opts for the more homely subject of Peter Bell. The poem proper begins with a description of him as a hard-hearted sinner, impervious to the softening influence of nature, who makes his living as an itinerant hawker (or potter, in Wordsworth's northern expression) of earthenware. One night, while walking through Swaledale by night, he loses his way. He comes across an ass standing untended, gazing into the river Swale, and he tries to ride away on it, but the ass does not respond to his furious beating of it. Peter sees the face of a corpse in the river, and faints from shock. On recovering consciousness he drags the dead man, once the owner of the ass, onto dry land. The ass now consents to start for home, taking Peter with him. A loud cry is heard in the distance, which, though Peter does not know it, comes from the dead man's young son, who is searching for his father. Unnerved by this, and by the sight of the bloody wounds he has inflicted on the ass, Peter begins to feel unaccustomed pangs of conscience. His mind turns to his many past sins, and as he passes an outdoor Methodist meeting his heart responds to the preacher's calls for repentance. The ass reaches the home of the dead man, whose wife is waiting for him. She learns that she is a widow, and her children orphans.
And now is Peter taught to feel
That man's heart is a holy thing;
And Nature, through a world of death,
Breathes into him a second breath,
More searching than the breath of spring.
The poem closes with Peter downcast by his experiences, but eventually emerging as a better man.
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