A poem by Dorothy Wordsworth for Thursday

Although poet and diarist Dorothy Wordsworth was not as well known as her brother William, she nonetheless had a serious lifetime practice, writing every day in her journals and composing a substantial body of her own poetry. 

When mentioned at all, she has often been treated as important mostly in her role as her brother’s assistant. But studies of her diaries suggest that William may actually have taken inspiration from his sister’s writings for some of his most famous poetic lines (for example, in his poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”). And of course, she wrote poems in her own right. For Thursday, please read one of those poems, Dorothy Wordsworth’s “Loving and Liking: Irregular Verses Addressed to a Child”

Painting by Margaret Gillies of old William
 and Dorothy Wordsworth

Felicity Kendal and Robin Bevan as young Dorothy and
William Wordsworth in the film Trailing Cloud of Glory