every object in Nature as pervaded by the Spirit of God. The Prelude, Book II, 396-409.

108. Wordsworth noted the resemblance of this line to Young's Night-Thoughts, in which it is said that Our senses, as our reason, are divine,'' And half-create the wondrous world they see.'

110. In nature as revealed and interpreted by the

senses.

114-122. Dorothy Wordsworth was a little younger than her brother, and even in her childhood was a refining influence in his life. See what he writes of her in The Sparrow's Nest, p. 527. From childhood they were separated until they were both over twenty, when Dorothy became, not only her brother's constant companion and helper, but a hallowing influence in the crisis of his life.

128. inform, mold, inspire.

152. Of past existence, of my own past life. Cf. 119-123.

STRANGE FITS OF PASSION

This and the four following poems belong to what is known as the Lucy' group of lyrics, written in Germany in 1799. Nothing is known of the English maiden so beautifully and devoutly enshrined; she may have existed only in the poet's imagination. 520. 2. Dove, a river in the English Midlands. 6. diurnal course, daily revolution.

MICHAEL

This poem was written in Oct.-Dec., 1800, largely at the sheep-fold in Green-head Ghyll, round which the subject is centered. Wordsworth said to Mr. Justice Coleridge that there was some foundation in fact, however slight, for every poem he had ever written of a narrative kind. Michael was founded on the son of an old couple having become dissolute, and run away from his parents; and on an old shepherd having been seven years in building up a sheep-fold in a solitary valley.' He wrote on another occasion: In the two poems, The Brothers and Michael, I have attempted to draw a picture of the domestic affections, as I know they exist amongst a class of men who are now almost confined to the north of England. They are small independent proprietors of land, here called statesmen,' men of respectable education, who daily labor on their own little properties. The domestic affections will always be strong amongst men who live in a country not crowded with population, if these

men

are placed above poverty. But if they are proprietors of small estates which have descended to them from their ancestors, the power which these affections acquire amongst such men is inconceivable by those who have only had an opportunity of ob serving hired laborers, farmers, and the manufacturing poor.

Their little tract of land serves as a kind of permanent rallying point for their domestic feelings, as a tablet on which they are written, which makes them objects of memory in a thousand instances, when they would otherwise be forgotten. It is a fountain fitted to the nature of social man, from which supplies of affection, as pure as his heart was intended for, are daily drawn. This class of men is rapidly disappearing.'

MY HEART LEAPS UP WHEN I BEHOLD Wordsworth adopted the last three lines of this little poem (written in 1802) as the motto of the great Ode on Immortality, which was begun about a year later. Piety is used in its original sense of ' reverence, affection.' The meaning is that the man should cherish the love of Nature he feels as a child, so that it may be a continuous inspiration, running through all his life. The sense in which the child is father of the man' is explained more fully in the Ode. (See p. 535.)

THE SPARROW'S NEST

Written at Grasmere in 1801. The nest was in the hedge of the garden at Cockermouth in which William and Dorothy Wordsworth played as children. In the poem as originally composed, 1. 9 read: My sister Dorothy and I.' As to Dorothy Wordsworth see note on Tintern Abbey, 114-122, above.

RESOLUTION AND INDEPENDENCE

Written at Grasmere, 1802. This old man I met a few hundred yards from my cottage; and the account of him is taken from his own mouth. I was in the state of feeling described in the begin. ning of the poem, while crossing over Barton fell from Mr. Clarkson's, at the foot of Ullswater, towards Askham. The image of the hare I then observed on the ridge of the fell.' (Wordsworth's note.)

528. 12. plashy, marshy, swampy, boggy. 43. Chatterton. See pp. 377 and 390. 45. Him. Burns. See p. 490.

TO A YOUNG LADY

Written 1802. The poem refers either to Dorothy Wordsworth or to Mary Hutchinson probably to the former.

530. 17. a Lapland night. In the far north at a certain season of the year the sun does not sink below the horizon. The winter nights are often calm and still.

THE SOLITARY REAPER

Suggested to Wordsworth by the following sentence in the MS. of his friend Wilkinson's Tours to the British Mountains: Passed a female who was reaping along; she sang in Erse, as she bended over her sickle; the sweetest human voice I ever heard; her strains were tenderly melancholy, and felt delicious long after they were heard no more.'

YARROW UNVISITED

'At Clovenford, being so near to the Yarrow, we could not but think of the possibility of going thither, but came to the conclusion of reserving the pleasure for some future time, in consequence of which, after our return, William wrote the poem which I shall here transcribe.'- From Dorothy Wordsworth's Recollections of a Tour made in Scotland, 1803.

When Scott sent The Lay of the Last Minstrel to Wordsworth, the latter returned a copy of these verses by way of acknowledgment. Scott in reply

said: 'I by no means admit your apology, however ingeniously and artfully stated, for not visiting the bonny holms of Yarrow, and certainly will not rest until I have prevailed upon you to compare the ideal with the real stream. I like your swan upon St. Mary's Lake. How came you to know that it is actually frequented by that superb bird?'

"

Wordsworth subsequently complained that Scott in one of his novels mis-quoted lines 43-44 of this 'swans' instead of 'swan.' He poem, printing added Never could I have written "swans in the plural. The scene, when I saw it with its still and dim lake, under the dusky hills, was one of utter loneliness: there was one swan, and one only, stemming the water, and the pathetic loneliness of the region gave importance to the one companion of that swan, its own white image in the water. It was for that reason that I recorded the Swan and its Shadow. Had there been many swans and many shadows, they would have implied nothing as regards the character of that place: and I should have said nothing about them.'

530. 6. Marrow, companion. Dorothy Wordsworth. 20. lintwhites, linnets, small singing birds.

33. holms, flat and low-lying pieces of ground by a river, surrounded or submerged in time of flood. 531. 37. Strath, valley.

SHE WAS A PHANTOM OF DELIGHT The subject of this poem, written in 1804, is Mary Hutchinson, whom Wordsworth had married two years before.

22. machine. This word has been objected to as unpoetical. But cf. Hamlet II, ii, 124: ' whilst this machine is to him?'

I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD Wordsworth says: The daffodils grew and still grow on the margin of Ullswater, and probably may be seen to this day as beautiful in the month of March, nodding their golden heads beside the dancing and foaming waves.'

Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal has the following entry under April 15, 1802: When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow Park we saw a few daffodils close to the water-side. As we went along there were more, and yet more; and, at last, under the boughs of the trees, we saw there was a long belt of them along the shore.

never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grew among the mossy stones, about and above them; some rested their heads on these stones as on a pillow for weariness; and the rest tossed, and reeled, and danced, and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake. They looked so gay, ever glancing, ever changing.'

21-2. These lines, said by Wordsworth to be the best in the poem, were contributed by his wife. For the thought of this stanza cf. Tintern Abbey, lines 23-36.

TO A SKY-LARK

Cf. Shelley's poem with the same title (p. 627) and Meredith's The Lark Ascending (p. 960).

ELEGIAC STANZAS

There are two Peele Castles, one in the Isle of Man, the other on the coast of Lancashire. The latter is the one referred to in the poem, Wordsworth being known to have spent a four-weeks' vacation in its neighborhood.

ODE ON IMMORTALITY

Of this poem the very highest opinions have been expressed by competent judges. Principal Shairp says it marks the highest limit which the tide of poetic inspiration has reached in England .. since the days of Milton.' It is, therefore, worthy of the most careful study. The best help to understanding it is given in Wordsworth's own note:'This was composed during my residence at Townend, Grasmere. Two years at least passed between the writing of the four first stanzas and the remain ing 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 struc ture 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?

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.

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 reve lation, there is nothing there to contradict it, and

the fall of man presents an analogy in its favour. 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 view of childish reminiscences of a previous existence was, however, probably not sug gested by Plato, but by the seventeenth century poet Vaughan, in Childhood and The Retreat. See p. 185.

534. 4. Cf. lines 4-5 of the Sonnet Composed upon Westminster Bridge (p. 538), and Elegiac Stanzas 14-16 (p. 532).

13. bare, of clouds.

535. 21. tabor, a small drum.

22. a thought of grief, the thought expressed in the last two lines of the preceding stanza.

26. wrong, offend by lack of sympathy.

28. the fields of sleep, from the dark beyond the dawn,' or possibly from the sleeping [i.e., quiet] fields.'

40. coronal, garland.

56-7. Cf. lines 4-5 and note above.

72. Nature's Priest, the Minister and Interpreter of the Divinity.

85-9. Probably suggested by the sight of Hartley Coleridge, to whom Wordsworth addressed a poem To H. C., Six Years Old, beginning: 'O thou! whose fancies from afar are brought.'

102-7. Referring to Shakspere's well-known lines in As You Like It, II, vii, 139-166, All the world's a stage,' etc.

536 112. the eternal deep, the deep mysteries of eternity.

126 earthly freight, burden of earthly cares.' (Webb.)

132. fugitive, evanescent, quickly disappearing. 141-5. Professor Bonamy Price, walking one day with Wordsworth by the side of Rydal Water, asked him the meaning of these lines: The venerable old man raised his aged form erect; he was walking in the middle, and passed across me to a fivebarred gate in the wall which bounded the road on the side of the lake. He clenched the top bar firmly with his right hand, pushed strongly against it, and then uttered these ever-memorable words, "There was a time in my life when I had to push against something that resisted, to be sure that there was anything outside of me. I was sure of my own mind; everything else fell away and vanished into thought." Thought he was sure of; matter for him, at the moment, was an unreality.'

181. primal sympathy, the child's intuitive sympathy with Nature.

183-4. Cf. Tintern Abbey, lines 92-5 (p. 518).

185. through, beyond.

189. yet, still, even now.

196-9. The sunset has no longer a celestial light, the glory and the freshness of a dream,' but sug gests serious reflections to the Man who has pondered on the issues of Life and Death. The poet's final thought is that acquaintance with the world, while robbing Nature of its first glory, increases its significance by awakening sympathy with the joys and sorrows of humanity. Professor Dowden has well observed that the last two lines of the Ode are ' 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.'

NUNS FRET NOT 537. 3. pensive citadels, refuges in which they can think, secure from interruption.

6. Furness-fells, the hills of the district of Furness, in or near which Wordsworth spent the greater part of his life.

8-9. Cf. Lovelace, To Althea from Prison, p. 182.

PERSONAL TALK, III

13. Desdemona in Othello.

14. See Spenser Faery Queen, 11. 27 ff. (p. 110). COMPOSED UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE Wordsworth appears to have been mistaken as to the date he assigned to this sonnet, which was written when he left London for Dover on his way to Calais early in the morning of July 30th, 1802. The following is the entry in his sister's diary under that date: Left London between five and six o'clock of the morning outside the Dover coach. A beautiful morning. The city, St. Paul's, with the river a multitude of little boats, made a beautiful sight as we crossed Westminster Bridge; the houses not overhung by their clouds of smoke, and were spread out endlessly; yet the sun shone so brightly, with such a pure light, that there was something like the purity of one of Nature's own grand spectacles.'

IT IS A BEAUTEOUS EVENING 538. 9. Dear Child! Dorothy Wordsworth. 12. Abraham's bosom. In the presence of God. See Luke xvi, 22.

ON THE EXTINCTION OF THE VENETIAN REPUBLIC

1-2. At the beginning of the thirteenth century the Venetians, with the help of France, captured Con stantinople, and added to their dominions a large part of the Eastern Empire. They protected Western Europe from the incursions of the Turks for centuries.

4. Venice was founded in the fifth century in the marshes of the Adriatic by inhabitants of the mainland who fled before the conquering Huns under Attila.

7-8. The Venetians having protected Pope Alexander III against the German Emperor, whom they defeated in a sea fight in 1177, the Pope gave the Doge a ring and bade him wed with it the Adriatic that posterity might know that the sea was subject

46. gagging bills. The bills introduced into Parliament to restrict public meetings and the freedom of the pros.

b. 1. melioration, improvement.

21. a dear friend. Thomas Poole.

29. first revolutionary war, against the French revolutionists.

44. Stowcy. In Somersetshire.

46. morning paper. The Post.

548. a. 25. a poet. Wordsworth came to Stowey in July, 1797.

53. Quidnunc, an idle gossip, continually asking 'what now?'

55. Dogberry, the pompous, ignorant constable of Much Ado about Nothing.

57. pour surveillance of, to exercise supervision

over.

b. Spy Nozy, the great Jewish philosopher Spinoza (1632-1677), in whose teaching Wordsworth and Coleridge were greatly interested.

26. a remarkable feature, a red nose. 552. a. 3. Anacreon, Greek lyric poet of the sixth century B. C.

b. 34. Bishop Taylor. See p. 221.

35. Burnet (1635-1715), a distinguished philos. opher and divine. His Sacred Theory of the Earth is a fanciful and ingenious speculation. 553. a. 47. Sir John Davies (1570-1626).

THE ANCIENT MARINER

The circumstances under which this poem was written and published have been already related (see p. 503). Some further particulars of the sugges tions made by Wordsworth may here be given, from his own account:

'In the autumn of 1797 Mr. Coleridge, my sister and myself started from Alfoxden pretty late in the afternoon with a view to visit Linton and the Valley of Stones near to it; and as our united funds were very small, we agreed to defray the expense of the tour by writing a poem, to be sent to the New Monthly Magazine. Accordingly we set off and proceeded along the Quantock Hills towards Watchet; and in the course of this walk was planned the poem of the " Ancient Mariner," founded on a dream, as Mr. Coleridge said, of his friend Mr. Cruikshank. Much the greatest part of the story was Mr. Coleridge's invention, but certain parts I suggested.

'For example, some crime was to be committed which should bring upon the Old Navigator, as Coleridge afterwards delighted to call him, the spectral persecution, as a consequence of that crime, and his own wanderings. I had been reading in Shelvocke's Voyages a day or two before that, while doubling Cape Horn, they frequently saw albatrosses in that latitude, the largest sort of sea-fowl, some extending their wings twelve or thirteen feet. "Suppose," said I, " you represent him as having killed one of these birds on entering the South Sea, and that the tutelary spirits of these regions take upon them to avenge the crime." The incident was thought fit for the purpose, and adopted accordingly. I also suggested the navigation of the ship by the dead men, but do not recollect that I had anything more to do with the scheme of the poem. The gloss with which

Coleridge seems later to have had doubts whether Wordsworth's suggestion of moral responsibility was consistent with the imaginative character of the poem as a whole. He is reported as saying in his Table Talk on May 31, 1830: - Mrs. Barbauld once told me that she admired The Ancient Mariner very much, but that there were two faults in it, it was improbable, and had no moral. As for the probability, I owned that that might admit some question; but as to the want of a moral, I told her that in my own judgment the poem had too much; and that the only. or chief fault, if I might say so, was the obtrusion of the moral sentiment so openly on the reader as a principle or cause of action in a work of pure imagination. It ought to have had no more moral than the Arabian Nights' tale of the merchant's sitting down to eat dates by the side of a well and throwing the shells aside, and lo! a genie starts up and says he must kill the aforesaid merchant because one of the date shells had, it seems, put out the eye of the genie's son.'

A marginal gloss was added by Coleridge in the edition of 1817, together with a Latin motto from Burnet, of which the following is a translation:

I readily believe that there are more invisible beings in the universe than visible. But who shall explain to us the nature, the rank and kinship, the distinguishing marks and graces of each? What do they do? Where do they dwell? The human mind has circled round this knowledge, but never attained to it. Yet there is profit, I do not doubt, in sometimes contemplating in the mind, as in a picture, the image of a greater and better world: lest the intellect, habituated to the petty details of daily life, should be contracted within too narrow limits and settle down wholly on trifles. But, meanwhile, a watchful eye must be kept on truth, and proportion observed, that we may distinguish the certain from the uncertain, day from night.'

It has been thought that Coleridge took some hints from the Strange and Dangerous Voyage of Captain Thomas James (London, 1633), and from an earlier story of Saint Paulinus, but his borrowings from these sources were certainly slight. The invention of the subject, as well as its imaginative treatment, is substantially his own.

553. 11. loon, an idle, stupid, worthless fellow.

12. eftsoons, forthwith, immediately. These obsolete words are used to recall the style of the old ballads, which Coleridge was trying to revive, and to suggest that the time of the story was somewhat remote. What other words in Part I produce the same impression?

Notice what a vivid picture of the Mariner is brought before the mind by the mention of successive details of his personal appearance.