18. Roslin (or Rosslyn) a village seven miles south of Edinburgh, famous for its castle and its beautiful fifteenth-century chapel.

21. the ring they ride: see note to No. 133, 1. 25.

31. Dryden's groves of oak: the estate of Dryden, near Rosslyn, contains a magnificent avenue, more than a mile in length.

32. Hawthornden, famous as the home of William Drummond (see note to No. 2), is about four miles east of Rosslyn. 1

38. sacristy: the room in a church where vestments and sacred vessels are kept.

altar's pale: the precincts of the altar.

39. every pillar foliage-bound: the carving on the pillars of Rosslyn Chapel is exceedingly beautiful.

41. pinnet: this word is found only in this passage with the sense 'pinnacle'; elsewhere it means a pennant. 51. rung and sung, as the past tense of 'ring' and 'sing,' are apparently as correct as 'rang' and 'sang,” though to-day they are less usual.

237

Sent to Hood on the death of his first child in May 1827, and printed by him in The Gem in 1829. It was reprinted in Lamb's Album Verses, 1830.

21. the Promethean fire: used here for the fire of life, as in Othello, v. ii. 12, I know not where is that Promethean heat That can thy light relume ’—a quotation which Lamb uses in his * Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading.' Prometheus in Greek mythology stole fire from heaven to give to mortals, who till then were ignorant of its use.

38. economy in its first and widest sense, 'management of a household.'

39.

clerks : scholars.'

6

41. ephemeral: living but for a day.'

238

Dated 1804, but probably, says Mr. Hutchinson in the Oxford Wordsworth, composed earlier, perhaps in 1801. It was printed in the Poems of 1807, where there are three slight variations from this text.

6

5. of the same: the same as an equivalent of ' it,' they or them,' is now generally confined to commercial and journalistic English. This is unhappily not the only instance of its use in modern poetry; it appears in one passage in Keats, where, as here, it is dragged in for the rime, another from Mrs. Browning given below, No. 310, l. 13, and another from Robert Browning, No. 348, 1. 88.

19. ensued: "followed.'

56. incommunicable : in an active sense, that cannot hold any communication with' those on earth. It is commoner in its passive sense, that cannot be communicated.'

60. Between in the 1807 edition Betwixt'; it is noteworthy that wherever the latter word occurs in the 1807 Poems Wordsworth changed it later to 'Between.' 74. me, and not my grief: as Margaret had apparently till now refrained from speaking of her son's absence, her neighbours could only pity her circumstances or her solitude, without knowing the ever-present anxiety of her mind.

239

Written in 1808, and first published in Queen-Hoo Hall, a romance left unfinished by its author, Joseph Strutt, and completed by Scott. The song was printed also in the Edinburgh Annual Register for the same year, which appeared in 1810.

6. knelling: this word is generally used with a mournful significance, which is entirely absent from the huntsman's horn, except perhaps to the deer. But cf. below, No. 273, 1. 203, * A clear brook with cheerful knell.'

29. balk: spelt by Scottbaulk,' which Palgrave has restored in the second edition; but N.E.D. prefers the spelling here given.

240

Written in 1825 and published in 1827 in the third collective edition of the Poems. It is headed To a

Skylark '-not'the' as Palgrave gives it.

7-12. The second stanza was removed by Words

6

worth in 1845 to another poem, 'A Morning Exercise,' published in 1832, beginning, Fancy, who leads the pastimes of the glad.' In its final form, therefore, this poem To a Skylark' consists of only twelve lines.

14. A privacy of glorious light: i.e. the lark, when soaring to its height, is as invisible as the nightingale on its tree.

16. more divine: i.e. than that of the earth-haunting nightingale.

241

Written at Leghorn in 1820 and published with Prometheus Unbound in the same year.

2. wert: the oldest form of the second person singular of was is' were,' wast being a fourteenth-century formation. From were was formed wert on the analogy of shalt, etc.; but wert is now obsolete or used wrongly as subjunctive.

21. the arrows: the rays from the star of heaven.' 36, 37. hidden In the light of thought: i.e. the man himself remains unknown, though his songs flash out over the world. Unfortunately the world too often insists on dragging the poet himself to light.

6

48. unbeholden: unseen; a unique use of the word; beholden,' the participle of 'behold,' usually means obliged.'

49. aerial hue: Shelley uses this phrase again in Prometheus, as the aerial hue Of fountain-gazing roses fills the water'; here the words appear to indicate a faint, coloured light.

53. deflower'd: robbed' sc. of its scent.

:

55. heavy-wingéd the winds move but slowly, as though their wings were laden.

66. Chorus hymeneal:

marriage song.'

68. all: sc. all of them; not to be taken with but' in the phrase 'all but ' (=almost).

80. knew: in strict grammar this should be 'knewest'; Shelley omits the final -st in other places, presumably on the ground of euphony. So Clough has When Thou ascended.'

242

Written in 1803 and published in the Poems of 1807, with different first and last stanzas. The former began, The May is come again.'

6

7. birds and flowers: Palgrave in both editions has 'flowers and birds.'

18. paramours: 'lovers,' as in No. 53, 1. 16, and No. 62, 1. 36.

34. A Brother: sc. in colour.

243

Written March 23-6, 1802; published in the Poems of 1807. As here printed it follows the later editions, which have several variations from the original version. 8. far off and near it is more than ordinarily difficult to locate the cuckoo by its cry; cf. 1. 19 below.

244

Written in 1819, and printed in the same year in the July number of Annals of the Fine Arts; it was reprinted with Lamia the following year.

2. hemlock : a poison which produces a numbing effect on one who drinks it. The Athenians administered it to those whom their laws had condemned to death ; it was by this that Socrates was executed. 3. to the drains: to the dregs.'

4. Lethe-wards: Lethe in Greek mythology was the river of Forgetfulness in the Underworld, of which spirits drank before their birth.

7. That i.e. in the thought that. Dryad: Woodnymph.'

13. Flora: the Roman goddess of flowers and spring. 14. Provençal song: Provençe was the home of the troubadours.

16. Hippocrene : (pronounced in Greek Hippocrene') the fount of the Muses on Mount Helicon in Boeotia, produced by a blow of Pegasus's hoof. 18. mouth the lip of the beaker.

32. Bacchus and his pards: Dionysus (called Bacchus by the Romans), the Greek god of wine, was often

133

Y a

represented as riding on a tiger or a lion. The panther, or leopard, was also sacred to him. Keats probably had in mind Titian's famous picture of Bacchus and Ariadne in the National Gallery, London.

33. viewless:

invisible.'

46. eglantine: 'sweet brier.'

51. Darkling: ' in the darkness'; originally an adverb, the word came later to be used as an adjective. for many a time: this sentence, to the end of 1. 54, is parenthetical, explaining why it seems rich to die' now. 53. muséd rhyme: long thought-on verse.'

60. requiem: properly a mass for the repose of the dead.

64. clown: 'rustic.'

66. the sad heart of Ruth: in the Biblical narrative there is neither nightingale nor tears; neither was Ruth I sick for home,' for she had chosen to make her home with her mother-in-law Naomi in Bethlehem.

6

70. forlorn: it is not easy to say what Keats intended this word to mean here; usually in a description of scenery it means deserted,' but that is evidently inappropriate here. The word is really the past participle of forlese (to lose), and Keats may be taking it literally, fairy lands' being now a lost region.

245

Written on the roof of a coach' as Wordsworth was on his way to France, and printed in the Poems of 1807, where, by an error corrected in later editions, it is said to have been composed September 3, 1803.

7. Open unto the fields: i.e. they were visible from the outskirts of the city in the yet unpolluted air of the early morning.

9. steep: bathe.'

246

Published by Leigh Hunt in The Examiner, January 1818, and reprinted the following year with Rosalind and Helen. The Of Egypt' in the title is an insertion of Palgrave's.

1. an antique land: a land famous in ancient history,' here Egypt.