The Naming of Places

History has dominated much recent discussion of literature, but geography also has its claims; we live and die as part of the body politic, but we also live and die in place. The poet is as much geographer as historian. In 1813 Wordsworth wrote two poems about the top of the mountain at the southwestern extremity of Cumberland. ‘View from the Top of Black Comb’ is one of his embarrassing effusions about the prospect that ‘British ground commands’ and the inheritance of ‘Britain’s calm felicity and power’. ¹ But the other poem, ‘Written with a Slate Pencil on a Stone, on the Side of the Mountain of Black Comb’, is trigonometrical rather than imperial. It concerns a ‘geographic Labourer’ who spends several weeks on the top of the mountain in the ‘studious work’ of map-making. There is a strong analogy between poet and geographer, poem and map; the poet writes his text on a stone on the side of the mountain, while the map-maker turns the mountain into a text. The poem ends with sudden darkness as the mist comes down; geographer and poet are reminded that nature cannot always be seen, controlled, and mapped – it must be respected. In sharp contrast to the crude mastery and patriotism of the ‘View’ poem, here insight comes with blindness (‘he sate alone, with unclosed eyes, / Upon the blinded mountain’s silent top’ ² ).