A formal relationship with the Wordsworth Trust takes hundreds of BYU students each

year into the heart of William Wordsworth’s Lake District.

These Steep Woods and

Lofty Cliffs
By Edward L. Carter
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And when the ground was white
The first that died was sister Jane;
In bed she moaning lay,
And I could run and slide,
Till God released her of her pain;
My brother John was forced to go,
And then she went away.
And he lies by her side.
I
n the parlor of an English cottage
on a rainy summer evening,
sisters Kristen E. (BS ’12) and
Rebecca A. Shuel (’15) stood in the
midst of 20 classmates from the BYU
London Study Abroad, their faces
illuminated by flickering candle-
light. On this 2012 visit to Dove
Cottage, the historic home of William
Wordsworth in the Lake District vil-
lage of Grasmere, the two recited the
poet’s “We Are Seven,” which depicts
a conversation between an 8-year-
old “cottage girl” and the narrator,
who, passing through town, inquires
about the size of the girl’s family. She
replies that there are seven children,
then explains their whereabouts.
So in the churchyard she was laid;
And, when the grass was dry,
Together round her
grave we played,
My brother John and I.
The poem was first published in
1798 as part of Wordsworth and Sam-
uel Taylor Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads,
for which the poets are credited with
helping initiate the Romantic period
of English literature. As a complement
to Coleridge’s poems on supernatu-
ral subjects, Wordsworth based his
poems in themes of nature and human
relationships, using the language of
common people.
with snow
To the narrator’s protestation that
“ye are only five,” the cottage girl
insists: “O master! we are seven.”
As the Shuel sisters recited the
lines, their voices filled with emotion
and they paused as they considered
the words. “I really felt a connection
with this young girl,” Rebecca says.
The Shuels’ own sister had passed
away at age 15 in 2007, and since that
time they had struggled to answer
the question of how many siblings
they have.
Listening to the Shuels that night
was Jeff Cowton, curator of the
Wordsworth Trust, which adminis-
ters not only Dove Cottage but also
the adjacent Wordsworth museum
and research center. As a trust staff
member for 30 years, he has helped
host hundreds of thousands of
visitors, but he says this BYU group’s
visit—with the emotional rendering
of “We Are Seven”—stands out.
“[Wordsworth] takes the condition
of the human heart and the human
experience, and he helps us to share
that with others,” Cowton says of
the poet’s influence on readers. “As
he said, the purpose of his poems are
to make us think, see, and feel.”
With their focus on nature,
spirituality, and human relation-
ships, Wordsworth’s works have
long resonated with Latter-day Saint
audiences, and poems like “Ode:
Intimations of Immortality” (“Trailing
clouds of glory do we come / From
God, who is our home: / Heaven lies
about us in our infancy!”) are often
quoted in general conference.
“Wordsworth thinks into the heart
as well as any poet,” says English
literature professor Paul A. Westover
(BA ’98, MA ’02). “He puts his finger
on the essentials of thought and
feeling in ways that make him a poet
to grow up with. He’s great when you
first meet him, but somehow he gets
better as you read him over time.”
William Wordsworth “Self Portrait”
To deepen student understand-
ing of Wordsworth, BYU faculty
have cultivated a relationship with
the Wordsworth Trust for some 40
years, beginning with the efforts
of now-retired English professor
Gordon K. Thomas (BA ’59), who
first took students to Grasmere in
the 1970s. In 2011 English faculty
Nicholas A. Mason (BA ’93, MA ’95)
and Westover brought three students
along on a research trip to the trust’s
archive, which Mason calls the most
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significant author-based archive in
the United Kingdom, housing 90
percent of Wordsworth’s original
manuscripts.
During that visit Westover and
Mason, who was scheduled to direct
two London Centre programs in
2012, discussed with Crowton and
trust director Michael McGregor
“Wordsworth thinks into the heart as well as any poet.”
ways to formalize the relation-
ship between BYU and the trust
and make it a standard part of the
London Centre experience. They
drew up a Lake District experience
that would allow the students to
explore the crags, fells, and lakes
that inspired Wordsworth; enjoy a
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19th-century dinner in Dove Cottage;
and have unparalleled access to the
archive’s rare books and manuscripts,
which include the well-known
journals of William Wordsworth’s
sister, Dorothy, who lived with
Wordsworth at Dove Cottage.
They also created an ongoing
paid internship for BYU students to
work at the trust for up to a semes-
ter at a time, bringing three English
majors and one student employee
from BYU’s library each year. BYU
students prepare for these internships
by spending time in the Harold B.
Lee Library’s L. Tom Perry Special
Collections, which has a robust
collection of Wordsworth materials.
At the trust they take on a wide
variety of responsibilities.
English major Shane R. Peterson’s
(’15) summer 2014 internship
included working with handwritten
Wordsworth letters, creating posters
for an exhibit, and helping host a
commemorative event. During her
internship in winter 2014, Madison
E. Mackey (BA ’14) came to know
the archive collection well enough
to guide a visiting PhD student who
was researching original manuscripts.
Cowton empowered intern Elise
M. Petersen (’15) to design displays
for the Wordsworth Museum and

develop and lead workshops for visit-
ing student groups.
“It was absolutely terrifying the
first time I had to do it,” Peters-
en says, “but after several groups,
I found that I really loved it.”
Inspired by that experience
and with the encouragement and
mentoring of Cowton and others,
Petersen is now directing her atten-
tion toward graduate studies with
the goal of becoming a professor
and researcher.
In addition to the interns,
more than 250 BYU students
have now benefitted from the uni-
versity’s unique relationship with
the Wordsworth Trust. English
professor Frank Q. Christianson (BA
’94, MA ’96), who was the Shuels’
professor on the 2012 trip to Gras-
mere, says the relationship “crystal-
izes the ideal of experiential learning
more than any other single thing we
do. It’s academic; it’s grounded in
the archive; it’s site-specific—you
can’t do it from Provo. Because
Wordsworth’s art in particular is so
connected to the landscape, it does
make a difference to actually be in
that place. The landscape is incredi-
ble. It’s inspiring and transforming.”
Elise Petersen says the
experience has influenced the
way she sees the world around
her. On a recent hike to Squaw
Peak above Provo’s Rock Canyon,
Petersen reached a serene mountain
meadow and recalled Wordsworth’s
call for natural simplicity in
“The World Is Too Much with Us”:
Annie Petersen 2017
The world is too much with us;
late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay
waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature
that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a
sordid boon!
And when she struggles to
describe the natural grandeur of
the Lake District and rural beauty
of Grasmere—its narrow, winding
main road, stone fences, abundant
greenery, and historic homes—she
remembers that the answer is simple.
All she has to do is invite her listener
to read Wordsworth.
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