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The first two years, during which he lived with his self-sacrificing sister at Racedown, in Dorset, were spent in half-hearted and very imperfectly successful experiments satires in imitation of Juvenal, the tragedy of "The Borderers," and a poem in the Spenserian stanza, the poem now entitled "Guilt and Sorrow."
The name of the valley seems to have deceived some old writers into thinking it a region of chills and agues and of cold sour soil. It has always been famous for its oaks, but perhaps it may claim a greater fame as a minor Wordsworth country, for on the north side of the vale is Racedown Farm, the home of the poet for about two years.
At Racedown Wordsworth finished Guilt and Sorrow, a poem gloomy in tone and written mainly in his period of depression and unrest, and wrote a tragedy called The Borderers, of which only a few lines show any promise of future excellence.
On the strength of it he settled first at Racedown in Dorset, and then at Alfoxden in Somerset, in the companionship of his sister Dorothy; and at the second of the two places in the neighbourhood of Coleridge.
In the autumn of 1795, Wordsworth, helped by the modest legacy of Raisley Calvert, was able to move with Dorothy to Racedown, and he immediately set to work on the Borderers, which I take to be the beginning of recovery. It was obviously written to exhibit the character of Oswald, the villain. He is one of a band of outlaws, and is jealous of the appointment of Marmaduke as chief.
Wordsworth and his sister were settled at Racedown, near Crewkerne, in Dorsetshire. In 1797 they moved to Alfoxden, in Somersetshire, their principal inducement to the change being Coleridge's society. The friendship bore fruit in the production of Lyrical Ballads in 1798, mainly the work of Wordsworth, but containing no less notable a contribution from Coleridge than the Ancient Mariner.
It was falsified in him by Racedown, by better health, by the society of his beloved sister, and finally by the friendship with Coleridge, although there was but little intimacy with him till the summer of 1797, and the Borderers was finished in 1796.
He settled with his sister at Racedown, Dorsetshire, and shortly afterwards removed to Alfoxden, in the Quantock Hills, to be near Coleridge, who was then living at Nether Stowey in the same neighbourhood. One result of the intimacy thus established was the planning of a joint work, Lyrical Ballads, to which Coleridge contributed The Ancient Mariner, and W., among other pieces, Tintern Abbey.
Trusting in this small capital, and with nothing to look to in the future except the uncertain prospect of the payment of Lord Lonsdale's debt to the family, Wordsworth settled with his sister at Racedown, near Crewkerne, in Dorsetshire, in the autumn of 1795, the choice of this locality being apparently determined by the offer of a cottage on easy terms.
Two years later we, find him at Racedown planning satires against the King, the Prince of Wales, and various public men, one of the couplets on the King and the Duke of Norfolk running: Heavens! who sees majesty in George's face? Or looks at Norfolk, and can dream of grace? But these lines, he declared, were given to him by Southey.