lonesome

I was amused to find that Wordsworth’s described the moor in Resolution and Independence as both “lonesome” and “lonely.” He uses these similar descriptions in private thought in the concluding line of the poem, and in conversation with the old man he encounters. It struck me as odd because from Wordsworth's poems, the English countryside-world he inhabits seems to be amply peopled. When someone is lonely, it is usually due to the absence of other human beings that provide for company. However, from The Thorn, to The Ruined Cottage, the act of coming across someone walking about the moor is repeated. Far from lonely, the moor seems to be quite a popular spot!

Lonely is a particularly peculiar way in which to describe the moor given the additional knowledge that in reality Wordsworth was not alone on that day's walk, but in fact with his sister Dorothy when he encountered this man whom he recounts in the poem.

My guess would be that “lonely” and “lonesome” refer not to a dearth of people, but to a state of mind connected with the sublime, which is hinted at in this poem: “To me that morning did it happen so, And fears and fancies thick upon me came, Dim sadness, and blind thoughts I knew not nor could name.” (Lines 26-28) Wordsworth, though not lonely people-wise, may have felt lonely in his thoughts which isolated him as uniquely aware of his own smallness in relation to the powerful natural world.