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The Childless Father
‘Up, Timothy, up with your staff and away!
Not a soul in the village this morning will stay;
The hare has just started from Hamilton’s grounds,
And Skiddaw is glad with the cry of the hounds.’
–Of coats and of jackets grey, scarlet, and green,
On the slopes of the pastures all colours were seen;
With their comely blue aprons, and caps white as snow,
The girls on the hills made a holiday show.
Fresh sprigs of green box-wood, not six months before,
Filled the funeral basin at Timothy’s door;
A coffin through Timothy’s threshold had past;
One Child did it bear, and that Child was his last.
Now fast up the dell came the noise and the fray,
The horse and the horn, and the hark! hark away!
Old Timothy took up his staff, and he shut
With a leisurely motion the door of his hut.
Perhaps to himself at that moment he said;
‘The key I must take, for my Ellen is dead.’
But of this in my ears not a word did he speak;
And he went to the chase with a tear on his cheek.
—William Wordsworth
Enjoy Artistic Representations of “The Childless Father” by William Wordsworth
Léopoldine, fille du peintre mort à 3 jours by Adolphe Tassin, 1889.
A Child of the Honigh Family on its Deathbed by unknown painter, between 1675 and 1700.
Listen to these Readings of “The Childless Father”
Listen to these Musical Interpretations of “The Childless Father” by William Wordsworth
About William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth, an English poet born in 1770, is credited with having a strong impact on the poetry of his time. He worked with Samuel Taylor Coleridge to publish a collection, Lyrical Ballads, which includes poems believed to be among the most influential in Western literature. With this publication, the two helped initiate English literature’s Romantic Age.
Jerwood Centre at the Wordsworth Trust in Grasmere
Wordsworth also worked to increase the accessibility of poetry, encouraging the use of more common language, and promoting the virtues of lyric poetry.
While in college, Wordsworth went on a walking tour of England and lived for a time in France, where he was greatly impacted by the French Revolution. His earliest work was published in 1793.
His most famous work, The Prelude, was published by his widow in 1850. He worked on the semi-autobiographical poem throughout much of his life, never quite satisfied to publish it.
Wordsworth served as England’s Poet Laureate from 1843 until he died in 1850.
That’s it for The Childless Father!