Of Silver-how, and Grasmere's peaceful lake, watch 96 100 Art pacing thoughtfully the vessel's deck 1800-1802. 110 NOTE. This wish was not granted; the lamented Person not long after perished by shipwreck, in discharge of his duty as Commander of the Honourable East India Company's Vessel, the Earl of Abergavenny. VII. FORTH from a jutting ridge, around whose base Winds our deep Vale, two heath-clad Rocks ascend In fellowship, the loftiest of the pair mead, 5 Unfolding prospects fair as human eyes gazed, IO The blooming heath their couch, gazed, side by side, In speechless admiration. I, a witness love 15 20 As they did love. Ye kindred Pinnacles- 25 NOTES. "If thou indeed derive thy light" (Inscription following title-page). The date at which these lines were written is uncertain; Wordsworth himself tells us that they "were written some time after we became residents at Rydal Mount" (1813). They were first printed in 1827. In 1845 Wordsworth decided to place this piece before the Poems: "I mean it to serve as a sort of Preface." (Knight's " Life of Wordsworth," iii. 414). This may be viewed as a companion poem to "It is no Spirit who from heaven hath flown." ED. Extract (page 1). Written at Hawkshead. The beautiful image with which this poem concludes, suggested itself to me while I was resting in a boat along with my companions under the shade of a magnificent row of sycamores, which then extended their branches from the shore of the promontory upon which stands the ancient, and at that time the more picturesque, Hall of Coniston, the seat of the Le Flemings from very early times. The poem of which it was the conclusion was of many hundred lines, and contained thoughts and images most of which have been dispersed through my other writings.-I. F. Dated by Wordsworth 1786; first published in 1815, with the title "Extract from the conclusion of a Poem, composed upon leaving school." In the "Autobiographical Memoranda," dictated Nov. 1847, Wordsworth describes this schoolboy composition as " a long poem running upon my own adventures, and the scenery of the country in which I was brought up." In "The Prelude" B. viii., Wordsworth tells of the occasion when this fragment was composed, and turns it into blank-verse: "A grove there is whose boughs Stretch from the western marge of Thurston-mere," &c. ("Thurston-mere," an old name for Coniston.) Ll. 9-12 in 1815 stood as follows: "Thus, when the sun, prepared for rest, After attempted improvements in 1820, 1832, and 1836, the present text was given in 1845. In Knight's "Wordsworth," vi. 365, a MS. version is given from a notebook containing "Laodamia" and other poems of about the same date. - ED. Written in very early youth (page 4). Dated conjecturally 1786; first published 1807. L. 4 (1827); previously : "Is up, and cropping yet his later meal." "Cropping audibly" may be a reminiscence from the "Nocturnal Reverie" of the Countess of Winchilsea, whose poems Wordsworth knew and admired: "Whose [the horse's] stealing pace and lengthened shade we fear, Till torn-up forage in his teeth we hear."-ED. An Evening Walk (page 4). The young Lady to whom this was addressed was my Sister. It was composed at school, and during my two first College vacations. There is not an image in it which I have not observed; and now, in my seventy-third year, I recollect the time and place where most of them were noticed. I will confine myself to one instance : "Waving his hat, the shepherd, from the vale, I was an eye-witness of this for the first time while crossing the Pass of Dunmail Raise. Upon second thought, I will mention another image: "And, fronting the bright west, yon oak entwines Its darkening boughs and leaves, in stronger lines." This is feebly and imperfectly expressed, but I recollect distinctly the very spot where this first struck me. It was in the way between Hawkshead and Ambleside, and gave me extreme pleasure. The moment was important in my poetical history; for I date from it my consciousness of the infinite variety of natural appearances which had been unnoticed by the poets of any age or country, so far as I was acquainted with them; and I made a resolution to supply, in some degree, the deficiency. I could not have been at that time above fourteen years of age. The description of the swans, that follows, was taken from the daily opportunities I had of observing their habits, not as confined to the gentleman's park, but in a state of nature. There were two pairs of them that divided the lake of Esthwaite and its in-and-out-flowing streams between them, never trespassing a single yard upon each other's separate domain. They were of the old magnificent species, bearing in beauty and majesty about the same relation to the Thames swan which that does to the goose. It was from the remembrance of those noble creatures I took, thirty years after, the picture of the swan which I have discarded from the poem of Dion. While I was a schoolboy, the late Mr. Curwen introduced a little fleet of those birds, but of the inferior species, to the lake of Windermere. Their principal home was about his own island; but they sailed about into remote parts of the lake, and, either from real or imagined injury done to the adjoining fields, they were got rid of at the request of the farmers and proprietors, but to the great regret of all who had become attached to them, from noticing their beauty and quiet habits. I will conclude my notice of this poem by observing that the plan of it has not been confined to a particular walk or an individual place, -a proof (of which I was unconscious at the time) of my unwillingness to submit the poetic spirit to the chains of fact and real circumstance. The country is idealised rather than described in any one of its local aspects.-I. F. Dated by Wordsworth 1787-89; first published in 1793. |