296.

297.

298.

21-22. These two lines were written by Wordsworth's wife.

THE AFFLICTION OF MARGARET "Written at Town-end, Grasmere. This was taken from the case of a poor widow who Her sorrow was lived in the town of Penrith. well known to Mrs. Wordsworth, to my sister, She kept and, I believe, to the whole town. a shop, and when she saw a stranger passing by, she was in the habit of going out into the street to enquire of him after her son."Wordsworth's note.

See Coleridge's comment on this poem, p. 393a, 2 ff.

TO A SKYLARK

Cf. this poem with Wordsworth's To a Skylark (p. 312), with Shelley's To a Skylark (p. 704), and with Hogg's The Skylark (p. 479).

ELEGIAC STANZAS

Sir George Beaumont painted two pictures of this subject, one of which he gave to Mrs. Wordsworth, saying she ought to have it; but Lady Beaumont interfered, and after Sir George's death she gave it to Sir Uvedale Price, in whose house at Foxley I have seen it."-Wordsworth's note.

The Peele Castle here described is in LanWordsworth visited his cashire, England. cousin in the vicinity of Peele Castle during This poem one of his summer vacations. should be read in connection with Character of the Happy Warrior (p. 298), and Elegiac Verses in Memory of My Brother.

CHARACTER OF THE HAPPY WARRIOR "The course of the great war with the French naturally fixed one's attention upon the military character, and, to the honor of our country, there were many illustrious instances of the qualities that constitute its highest excellence. Lord Nelson carried most of the virtues that the trials he was exposed to in his department of the service necessarily call forth and sustain, if they do not produce But his public life was the contrary vices.

stained with one great crime, so that, though many passages of these lines were suggested by what was generally known as excellent in his conduct, I have not been able to connect his name with the poem as I could wish, or even to think of him with satisfaction in reference to the idea of what a warrior ought to be. For the sake of such of my friends as may happen to read this note I will add, that many elements of the character here portrayed were found in my brother John, who as mentioned elseperished by shipwreck where. His messmates used to call him the Philosopher, from which it must be inferred that the qualities and dispositions I allude to He often exhad not escaped their notice. pressed his regret, after the war had continued some time, that he had not chosen the naval, instead of the East India Company's service, to which his family connection had led him. He greatly valued moral and religious instruction for youth, as tending to make good sailThe best, he used to say, came from Scotland; the next to them, from the North of England, especially from Westmoreland and Cumberland, where, thanks to the piety and local attachments of our ancestors, endowed, or, as they are commonly called, free, schools abound."-Wordsworth's note.

ors.

The "crime" of Nelson was his relations to See Lady Hamilton, a noted adventuress. Southey's The Life of Nelson (p. 416a, 10 ff.).

POWER OF MUSIC

Wordsworth spent two months in London in the spring of 1806. The poem, he says, was "taken from life."

YES, IT WAS THE MOUNTAIN ECHO "Written at Town-end, Grasmere. The echo came from Nab-scar, when I was walking on the opposite side of Rydal Mere. I will here mention, for my dear sister's sake, that, while she was sitting alone one day high up on this part of Loughrigg Fell, she was so affected by the voice of the cuckoo heard from the crags at some distance that she could not suppress a wish to have a stone inscribed with her name among the rocks from which the sound proceeded. On my return from my walk I recited these verses to Mrs. Wordsworth."-Wordsworth's note.

PERSONAL TALK

"Written at Town-end, Grasmere. The last line but two stood, at first, better and more characteristically, thus:

"By my half-kitchen and half-parlor fire.' My sister and I were in the habit of having the tea-kettle in our little sitting-room; and we toasted the bread ourselves, which reminds me of a little circumstance not unworthy of being set down among these minutiæ. Happening both of us to be engaged a few minutes one morning when we had a young prig of a

Scotch lawyer to breakfast with us, my dear sister, with her usual simplicity, put the toasting-fork with a slice of bread into the hands of this Edinburgh genius. Our little book-case stood on one side of the fire. To prevent loss of time, he took down a book, and fell to reading, to the neglect of the toast, which was burnt to a cinder. Many a time have we laughed at this circumstance, and other cottage simplicities of that day. By the bye, I have a spite at one of this series of sonnets (I will leave the reader to discover which) as having been the means of nearly putting off forever our acquaintance with dear Miss Fenwick, who has always stigmatized one line of it as vulgar, and worthy only of having been composed by a country squire."-Wordsworth's note.

301. 25-26. Cf. these lines with Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn, 11-12 (p. 827).

51-54. These lines are carved upon the pedestal of Wordsworth's statue in Westminster Abbey.

51-56. Cf. with Wordsworth's The Prelude, 6, 52-65 (p. 249).

ADMONITION

"Intended more particularly for the perusal of those who may have happened to be enamored of some beautiful place of retreat, in the country of the Lakes."- -Wordsworth's note.

302. COMPOSED BY THE SIDE OF GRASMERE LAKE Grasmere Lake is in the county of Westmoreland, England.

303.

ODE: INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY "This was composed during my residence at Town-end, Grasmere. Two years at least passed between the writing of the four first stanzas and the remaining part. To the attentive and competent reader the whole sufficiently explains itself; but there may be no harm in adverting here to particular feelings or experiences of my own mind on which the structure of the poem partly rests. Nothing was more difficult for me in childhood than to admit the notion of death as a state applicable to my own being. I have said elsewhere:

'A simple child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?'

[We Are Seven, 1-4 (p. 225)].

But it was not so much from feelings of animal vivacity that my difficulty came as from a sense of the indomitableness of the spirit within me. I used to brood over the stories of Enoch and Elijah, and almost to persuade myself that, whatever might become of others, I should be translated, in something of the same way, to heaven. With a feeling congenial to this, I was often unable to think

of external things as having external existence, and I communed with all that I saw as something not apart from, but inherent in, my own immaterial nature. Many times while going to school have I grasped at a wall or tree to recall myself from this abyss of idealism to the reality. At that time I was afraid of such processes. In later periods of life I have deplored, as we have all reason to do, a subjugation of an opposite character, and have rejoiced over the remembrances, as is expressed in the lines

'Obstinate questionings

Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings; etc.
[II. 141-43.]

To that dream-like vividness and splendor which invest objects of sight in childhood, every one, I believe, if he would look back, could bear testimony, and I need not dwell upon it here: but having in the poem regarded it as presumptive evidence of a prior state of existence, I think it right to protest against a conclusion, which has given pain to some good and pious persons, that I meant to inculcate such a belief. It is far too shadowy a notion to be recommended to faith, as more than an element in our instincts of immortality. But let us bear in mind that, though the idea is not advanced in revelation, there is nothing there to contradict it, and the fall of man presents an analogy in its favor. Accordingly, a pre-existent state has entered into the popular creeds of many nations; and, among all persons acquainted with classic literature, is known as an ingredient in Platonic philosophy. Archimedes said that he could move the world if he had a point whereon to rest his machine. Who has not felt the same aspirations as regards the world of his own mind? Having to wield some of its elements when I was impelled to write this poem on the Immortality of the Soul, I took hold of the notion of pre-existence as having sufficient foundation in humanity for authorizing me to make for my purpose the best use of it I could as a poet."-Wordsworth's note.

Cf. with Wordsworth's idea the following extract from Plato's Phado, 72-76 (Jowett's trans.): "Your favorite doctrine, Socrates, that knowledge is simply recollection, if true, also necessarily implies a previous time in which we learned that which we now recollect. But this would be impossible unless our soul was in some place before existing in the human form; here then is another argument of the soul's immortality. . . And if we acquired this knowledge before we were born and were born having it, then we also knew before we were born and at the instant of birth not only the equal or the greater or the less, but all other ideas; for we are not speaking only of equality absolute, but of beauty, good, justice, holiness, and all which we stamp with the name of essence in the

an

Speaking of Wordsworth and this ode in "Let English Traits, ch. 17, Emerson says: us say of him that, alone in his time, he treated the human mind well, and with an absolute trust. His adherence to his poetic The Ode creed rested on real inspirations. on Immortality is the high water mark which New the intellect has reached in this age. means were employed, and new realms added to the empire of the muse, by his courage."

See Coleridge's comment on the poem, p. 388a, 35ff., and 391b, 44ff.

303. 66-76. Ruskin cites these lines (Modern Painters, Part III, sec. 1, ch. 5) as revealing the words of "one whose authority is almost without appeal in all questions relating to the influence of external things upon the pure human soul."

304. 143. Fallings from us, vanishings.—“There was a time in my life when I had to push against something that resisted, to be sure I was that there was anything outside of me. sure of my own mind; everything else fell away, and vanished into thought."-Wordsworth, quoted by Knight in his edition of Wordsworth's Poems.

305. 202-03. "These lines have been often quoted as an illustration of Wordsworth's sensibility to external nature; in reality, they testify to his enriching the sentiment of nature with feeling derived from the heart of man and. from the experience of human life."-Dowden, in his edition of Wordsworth's Poems (Athenæum Press ed., 1897).

ject into my thoughts, and I wrote with the hope of giving it a loftier tone than, so far as I know, has been given to it by any of the It cost me ancients who have treated of it. more trouble than almost anything of equal length I have ever written."-Wordsworth's note.

See Landor's comment on this poem in his Imaginary Conversations, "Southey and Por son," I.

Laodamia was the wife of Protesilaus, the first Greek killed at the siege of Troy. After his death she implored the gods to allow her to talk with him, and Mercury (Hermes) led him from the lower world. After the interview Protesilaus departed, and Laodamia died with grief. According to another tradition, she voluntarily accompanied him to the lower world.

YARROW VISITED

We

"As mentioned in my verses on the death of the Ettrick Shepherd [see p. 315], my first visit to Yarrow was in his company. had lodged the night before at Traquhair, where Hogg had joined us and also Dr. Anderson, the editor of the British Poets, who was on a visit at the Manse. Dr. A. walked with us till we came in view of the Vale of Yarrow, and, being advanced in life, he then turned back. The old man was passionately fond of poetry, though with not much of a discriminating judgment, as the volumes he edited sufficiently show. But I was much pleased to meet with him, and to acknowledge my obligation to his collection, which had been my brother John's companion in more than one voyage to India, and which he gave me before his departure from Grasmere, never to return. Through these volumes I became first familiar with Chaucer, and so little money had I then to spare for books, that, in all probability, but for this same work, I should have known little of Drayton, Daniel, and other distinguished poets of the Elizabethan age, and their immediate successors, till a much later period of my life. I am glad to record this, not from any importance of its own, but as a tribute of gratitude to this simple-hearted old man, whom I never again had the pleasure of meeting. I seldom read or think of this poem without regretting that my dear sister was not of the party, as she would have had so much delight in recalling the time when, travelling together in Scotland, we declined going in search of this will celebrated not altogether, I stream, frankly confess, for the reason assigned in the poem on the occasion."-Wordsworth's note.

"We have there the true Yarrow, the truest Yarrow that ever was pictured; real yet not literal-Yarrow as it is for the spiritual sense made keen, quick, sensitive, and deep through the brooding over the stories of the years and living communion with the heart of things."

309.

J. Veitch, in The History and Poetry of the Scottish Border (1878).

This poem should be read in connection with Wordsworth's Yarrow Unvisited (p. 293) and Yarrow Revisited (p. 312). See notes pp. 1368a and 1373a.

HAST THOU SEEN, WITH FLASH INCESSANT This the third of a group of poems entitled Inscriptions Supposed to be Found in and near a Hermit's Cell.

"Where the second quarry now is, as you pass from Rydal to Grasmere, there was formerly a length of smooth rock that sloped towards the road, on the right hand. I used to call it Tadpole Slope, from having frequently observed there the water-bubbles gliding under the ice, exactly in the shape of that creature."-Wordsworth's note.

COMPOSED UPON AN EVENING OF EXTRAORDINARY
SPLENDOR AND BEAUTY

"Felt and in a great measure composed upon the little mount in front of our abode at Rydal. In concluding my notices of this class of poems it may be as well to observe that among the Miscellaneous Sonnets are a few alluding to morning impressions which might be read with mutual benefit in connection with these Evening Voluntaries. See, for example, that one on Westminster Bridge P. 285], that composed on a May morning, the one on the song of the thrush [p. 316], and that beginning-While beams of orient light shoot wide and high.'”—Wordsworth's note. 310. 41 ff.

"The multiplication of mountainridges, described at the commencement of the third stanza of this ode, as a kind of Jacob's Ladder, leading to Heaven, is produced either by watery vapors, or sunny haze;-in the present instance by the latter cause. sions to the ode, entitled Intimations of Immortality, pervade the last stanza."-Wordsworth's note.

Allu

THERE IS A LITTLE UNPRETENDING RILL "This rill trickles down the hill-side into Windermere, near Lowwood. My sister and I, on our first visit together to this part of the country, walked from Kendal, and we rested to refresh ourselves by the side of the lake where the streamlet falls into it. This sonnet was written some years after in recollection of that happy ramble, that most happy day and hour."Wordsworth's note.

BETWEEN NAMUR AND LIEGE

This and the following poem are from a group of 37 poems entitled Memorials of a Tour on the Continent, 1820. Wordsworth's wife and sister Dorothy and other friends accompanied him on this tour. Namur and Liege are cities in Belgium.

Of the scenery described in this sonnet, Wordsworth says in a note: "The scenery on the Meuse pleases me more, upon the whole,

The two following sonnets are the fifth and the last of a series of sonnets on the River Duddon. The following quotation is from Wordsworth's prefatory note on the series:

"It is with the little River Duddon as it is with most other rivers, Ganges and Nile not excepted, many springs might claim the honor of being its head. In my own fancy I have fixed its rise near the noted Shire-stones placed at the meeting-point of the counties, Westmoreland, Cumberland, and Lancashire. They stand by the wayside on the top of the Wrynose Pass, and it used to be reckoned a proud thing to say that, by touching them at the same time with feet and hands, one had been in the three counties at once. At what point of its course the stream takes the name of Duddon I do not know. I first became acquainted with the Duddon, as I have good reason to remember, in early boyhood. Upon the banks of the Derwent I had learnt to be very fond of angling. Fish abound in that large river; not so in the small streams in the neighborhood of Hawkshead; and I fell into the common delusion that the farther from home the better sport would be had. Accordingly, one day I attached myself to a person living in the neightborhood of Hawkshead, who was going to try his fortune as an angler near the source of the Duddon. We fished a great part of the day with very sorry success, the rain pouring torrents, and long before we got home I was worn out with fatigue; and, if the good man had not carried me on his back, I must have lain down under the best shelter I could find. Little did I think then it would be my lot to celebrate, in a strain of love and admiration, the stream which for many years I never thought of without recollections of disappointment and distress.

"During my college vacation, and two or three years afterwards, before taking my Bachelor's degree, I was several times resldent in the house of a near relative who lived in the small town of Broughton. I passed many delightful hours upon the banks of this river, which becomes an estuary about a mile from that place."

312.

ECCLESIASTICAL SONNETS "During the month of December, 1820, I much-beloved and honored accompanied a friend in a walk through different parts of his estate, with a view to fix upon the site of a new church which he intended to erect. It was one of the most beautiful mornings of a mild season,-our feelings were in harmony with the cherishing influences of the scene; and such being our purpose, we were naturally led to look back upon past events with wonder and gratitude, and on the future with hope. Not long afterwards, some of the sonnets which will be found towards the close of this series were produced as a private memorial of that morning's occupation.

"The Catholic question, which was agitated in Parliament about that time, kept my thoughts in the same course; and it struck me that certain points in the ecclesiastical history of our country might advantageously Accordingly, be presented to view in verse.

I took up the subject, and what I now offer to the reader was the result."-Wordsworth's note.

TO A SKYLARK

Cf. this poem with Wordsworth's earlier poem on the same subject (p. 297), with Shelley's poem (p. 704) and Hogg's (p. 477).

SCORN NOT THE SONNET

YARROW REVISITED

This and the two following poems are the 1st, 2nd, and 6th of a number of poems written as the result of a tour in Scotland in 1831, and published under the title Yarrow RevisIn the Preface to ited and Other Poems. "In the these poems, Wordsworth says: autumn of 1831, my daughter and I set off from Rydal to visit Sir Walter Scott before How sadly his departure for Italy. . .

changed did I find him from the man I had seen so healthy, gay, and hopeful, a few years before, when he said at the inn at Paterdale, in my presence: 'I mean to live till I am eighty, and shall write as long as I live.' On Tuesday morning Sir Walter Scott accompanied us and most of the party to the Yarrow. When we Newark Castle on alighted from the carriages he walked pretty stoutly, and had great pleasure in revisiting Of that excursion those his favorite haunts. the verses Yarrow Revisited are a memorial. Notwithstanding the romance that pervades Sir Walter's works and attaches to many of his habits, there is too much pressure of fact for these verses to harmonize as much as I On our return could wish with other poems.

in the afternoon we had to cross the Tweed The wheels of directly opposite Abbotsford.

our carriage grated upon the pebbles in the bed of the stream, that there flows somewhat rapidly; a rich but sad light of rather a purple than a golden hue was spread over the Eildon hills at that moment; and, thinking it probable that it might be the last time Sir Walter would cross the stream, I was not a little moved, and expressed some of my feelings in the sonnet beginning-'A trouble, not of clouds, or weeping rain.' At noon on Thursday we left Abbotsford, and in the morning of that day Sir Walter and I had a serious conversation tête-à-tête, when he spoke with gratitude of the happy life which upon the whole he had led. He had written in my daughter's Album, before he came into the breakfast-room that morning, a few stanzas addressed to her, and, while putting the book into her hand, in his own study, standing by his desk, he said to her in my presence-'I should not have done anything of this kind but for your father's sake: they are probably the last verses I shall ever write.' They show how much his mind was impaired, not by the strain of thought but by the execution, some of the lines being imperfect, and one stanza one letter, wanting corresponding rhymes: the initial S, had been omitted in the spelling of his own name."

Cf. this poem with Wordsworth's Yarrow Unvisited (p. 293) and Yarrow Visited (p. 308). See notes pp. 1368a and 1371b.

ON THE DEPARTURE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT See note on preceding poem.

THE TROSACHS

The Trosachs is the name given to a romantic valley in the Highlands of western Perthshire, Scotland.

"As recorded in my sister's Journal, I had first seen the Trosachs in her aud Coleridge's The sentiment that runs through company. this sonnet was natural to the season in which I again saw this beautiful spot; but this and some other sonnets that follow were colored by the remembrance of my recent visit to Sir Walter Scott, and the melancholy errand on which he was going."-Wordsworth's note. See note on Yarrow Revisited, above.

Cf. this poem with Stepping Westward (p. 292), composed in the same region, 27 years earlier.

IF THOU INDEED DERIVE THY LIGHT FROM
HEAVEN

"These verses were written some time after we had become residents at Rydal Mount, and I will take occasion from them to observe upon the beauty of that situation, as being backed and flanked by lofty fells, which bring the heavenly bodies to touch, as it were, the earth upon the mountain-tops, while the prospect in front lies open to a length of level valley, the extended lake, and a terminating