Bells for William Wordsworth by Dom Moraes is the oft-quoted poem we talk about and discuss it as the poem has been written in the memory of the great Nature poet as the title reflects and the tribute paid to him in person, but as a poem it does not surpass the biographical, tributary poems written by Arnold, Browning, Auden, Yeats and some others. The magic and music he has, failed to discern as it haunts him most. The spell can never be broken. Illusion can never be if the make-believe syndrome grips it the mind’s plane.

But what surprises us to note is the news of the death of Wordsworth. Who would break it?  He died long ago when Moraes was not born. We think nobody would have brought him the message. He had not been aware of it as a student generally lies in appreciating the poem rather than the poet and his biography. As a reader, even though told, he does not believe it. His mind does not take it for granted that Wordsworth is dead, a writer of lovely poems, as such The Daffodils, The Solitary Reaper, To the Skylark, Lost Love, Lines Written in Early Spring, A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal, Strange Fits of Passion and so on.

My God, how can he be dead, even though they bring the message to me? I can hardly believe it. This is the perception which holds him. There may be two reasons for it, the first is that the poet is not aware of his time span as one generally takes care of it not. The second is this that a mortal man can never such an immortal poem which has come from the creative pen.

They said it to him, you do not know, he is dead, but his poems are in college for readings and as long as colleges are, they will be read with profit and pleasure.

Even though it is true, and we take it for granted, he thinks of the poet being laid to rest. He would not be as he was, as his physical frame was. He would be one with soil, dust and clay. His bones and skeletons would have mingled with earth. Plants, fossils and trees would have overgrown over the portion and he a part of them.

Instead of being physically non-existent, his spirit is not dead. He is all around us with the hill, the dale, the valley, the river and the landscape. He is one with the rocks, stones and trees. His pedagogic notes still impart a moral lesson to us, still instill a feeling of hope in us. When the birds sing, flowers bloom in spring, the poet seems to be talking with the soul of Nature. When the moon shines over the orchard plot, he seems to be taking us along. Each approaching spring, we feel for his loss, we miss him most. When the rains mesmerize, wet the soil and seem to be adding to greenery and vegetation, tears seem to be drenching.

Today they brought me a message: Wordsworth was dead.
‘My God,’ I said. ‘My God. I can hardly believe it.’
‘Just as you like,’ they answered. “Take it or leave it,
He has sunk into April as into the depths of a lake,
Leaving his eyes ajar in the house of his head.’
‘Are you sure,’ I said, ‘that you haven’t made a mistake?’

‘Oh no,’ they said, ‘not a hope. We knew him too well,
A gloomy considering bloke with the nose of a preacher:
A poet in fact, with a charming affection for Nature:
Milkmaids (you know) and the shadows of clouds on the land.
His work is carefully studied in college still.
We shall not forget nor forgo it, while colleges stand.’

And I said, ‘I grant you that Wordsworth lies chilly in Grasmere
And his bones are absolved and dissolved in the tears of the rain.
I grant he is one with the plant and the fossil again,
His flesh has gone back into soil and his eyes into stones
And the roots and shoots of a new life push each year
Through the sad rotten fragments of his bones.

‘But although each Spring brings a newer death to the bones,
I have seen him risen again with the crocus in Spring.
I have turned my ear to the wind, I have heard him speaking.
I shrank from the bony sorrow in his face.
Yet still I hear those pedagogic tones
Droning away the snow, our old disgrace’