A home that by such miracle of sound Must be revealed:-she heard it now, or felt

The deep, deep joy of a confiding thought; And there, a saintly Anchoress, she dwelt Till she exchanged for heaven that happy ground. 1835.

IV

In the month of January, when Dora and I were walking from Town-end, Grasmere, across the vale, snow being on the ground, she espied, in the thick though leafless hedge, a bird's nest half filled with snow. Out of this comfortless appearance arose this Sonnet, which was, in fact, written without the least reference to any individual object, but merely to prove to myself that I could, if I thought fit, write in a strain that Poets have been fond of. On the 14th of February in the same year, my daughter, in a sportive mood, sent it as a Valentine, under a fictitious name, to her cousin C. W.

WHY art thou silent! Is thy love a plant Of such weak fibre that the treacherous air Of absence withers what was once so fair? Is there no debt to pay, no boon to grant ? Yet have my thoughts for thee been vigilant

Bound to thy service with unceasing care, The mind's least generous wish a mendicant For nought but what thy happiness could spare.

Speak-though this soft warm heart, once free to hold

A thousand tender pleasures, thine and mine,

Be left more desolate, more dreary cold Than a forsaken bird's-nest filled with snow 'Mid its own bush of leafless eglantineSpeak, that my torturing doubts their end may know !

V

1835.

Suggested on the road between Preston and Lancaster where it first gives a view of the Lake country, and composed on the same day, on the roof of the coach.

FOUR fiery steeds impatient of the rein Whirled us o'er sunless ground beneath a sky

As void of sunshine, when, from that wide

plain,

Clear tops of far-off mountains we descry, Like a Sierra of cerulean Spain,

All light and lustre. Did no heart reply? Yes, there was One;-for One, asunder fly The thousand links of that ethereal chain; And green vales open out, with grove and field,

And the fair front of many a happy Home; Such tempting spots as into vision come While Soldiers, weary of the arms they wield And sick at heart of strifeful Christendom, Gaze on the moon by parting clouds revealed. 1835.

ΤΟ

VI

The fate of this poor Dove, as described, was told to me at Brinsop Court, by the young lady to whom I have given the name of Lesbia. "Miss not the occasion: by the forelock take That subtile Power, the never-halting Time, Lest a mere moment's putting-off should make Mischance almost as heavy as a crime." "WAIT, prithee, wait!" this answer Lesbia threw

Forth to her Dove, and took no further heed; Her eye was busy, while her fingers flew Across the harp, with soul-engrossing speed; But from that bondage when her thoughts were freed

She rose, and toward the close-shut casement drew,

Whence the poor unregarded Favourite,

true

To old affections, had been heard to plead With flapping wing for entrance. What a

shriek !

Forced from that voice so lately tuned to a strain

Of harmony!-a shriek of terror, pain, And self-reproach! for, from aloft, a Kite Pounced, and the Dove, which from its

ruthless beak

She could not rescue, perished in her sight! 1835.

VII

SAID Secrecy to Cowardice and Fraud, Falsehood and Treachery, in close council

met,

Deep under ground, in Pluto's cabinet,

MEMORIALS OF A TOUR IN

ITALY

1837

During my whole life I had felt a strong desire to visit Rome and the other celebrated cities and regions of Italy, but did not think myself justified in incurring the necessary expense till I received from Mr. Moxon, the publisher of a large edition of my poems, a sum sufficient to enable me to gratify my wish without encroaching upon what I considered due to my family. My excellent friend H. C. Robinson readily consented to accompany me, and in March 1837, we set off from London, to which we returned in August, earlier than my companion wished or I should myself have desired had I been, like him, a bachelor. These Memorials of that tour touch upon but a very few of the places and objects that interested me, and, in what they do advert to, are for the most part much slighter than I could wish. More

seen

them of the South of France, nor of the Roman

of the Pont de Degard, which, together with its situation, impressed me full as much as any remains of Roman architecture to be found in Italy. Then there was Vaucluse, with its Fountain, its Petrarch, its rocks of all seasons, its small plots of lawn in their first vernal freshness, and the blossoms of the peach and other trees embellishing the scene on every side. The beauty of the stream also called forcibly for the expression of sympathy from one who from his childhood had studied the brooks and torrents of his native mountains. Between two and three hours did I run about climbing the steep and rugged crags from whose base the water of Vaucluse breaks forth. "Has Laura's Lover," often said I to myself, "ever sat down upon this stone? or has his foot ever pressed that turf?" Some, especially of the female sex, would have felt sure of it: my answer was (impute it to my years), "I fear not." Is it not in fact obvious that many of his love verses must have flowed I do not say from a wish to display his own talent, but from a habit of exercising his intellect in that way rather than from an impulse of his heart? It is otherwise with his Lyrical poems, and particularly with the one upon the degradation of his country: there he pours out his reproaches, lamentations, and aspirations like an ardent and sincere patriot. But enough it is time to turn to my own effu. sions, such as they are.

ΤΟ

HENRY CRABB ROBINSON

COMPANION! by whose buoyant Spirit cheered,
In whose experience trusting, day by day
Treasures I gained with zeal that neither feared
The toils nor felt the crosses of the way,
These records take, and happy should I be
Were but the Gift a meet Return to thee
For kindnesses that never ceased to flow,
And prompt self-sacrifice to which I owe
Far more than any heart but mine can know.
W. WORDSWORTH.

RYDAL MOUNT, Feb. 14th, 1842.

The Tour of which the following Poems are very inadequate remembrances was shortened by report, too well founded, of the prevalence of Cholera at Naples. To make some amends for what was reluctantly left unseen in the South of Italy, we visited the Tuscan Sanctuaries among the Apennines, and the principal Italian Lakes among the Alps. Neither of those lakes, nor of Venice, is there any notice in these Poems, chiefly because I have touched upon them elsewhere. See, in particular, "Descriptive Sketches," "Memorials of a Tour on the Continent in 1820," and a Sonnet upon the extinction of the Venetian Republic.

I

MUSINGS NEAR AQUAPENDENTE

APRIL 1837

"Not the less

Had his sunk eye kindled at those dear words
That spake of bards and minstrels."

His, Sir Walter Scott's eye, did in fact kindle at them, for the lines, "Places forsaken now," and the two that follow were adopted from a poem of mine which nearly forty years ago was in part read to him, and he never forgot them.

"Old Helvellyn's brow, Where once together, in his day of strength, We stood rejoicing."

Sir Humphrey Davy was with us at the time. We had ascended from Paterdale, and I could not but admire the vigour with which Scott scrambled along that horn of the mountain called "Striding Edge." Our progress was necessarily slow, and was beguiled by Scott's telling many stories and amusing anecdotes, as was his custom. Sir H. Davy would have probably been better pleased if other topics had occasionally been interspersed, and some discussion entered upon : at all events he did not remain with us long at

"A few short steps (painful they were)." This, though introduced here, I did not know till it was told me at Rome by Miss Mackenzie of Seaforth, a lady whose friendly attentions during my residence at Rome I have gratefully acknowledged, with expressions of sincere regret that she is no more. Miss M. told me that she accompanied Sir Walter to the Janicular Mount, and, after showing him the grave of Tasso in the church upon the top, and a mural monument there erected to his memory, they left the church and stood together on the brow of the hill overlooking the city of Rome: his daughter Anne was with them, and she, naturally desirous, for the sake of Miss Mackenzie especially, to have some expression of pleasure from her father, half reproached him for showing nothing of that kind either by his looks or voice: "How can I," replied he, "having only one leg to stand upon, and that in extreme pain!" so that the prophecy was more than fulfilled.

"Over waves rough and deep."

We took boat near the lighthouse at the point of the right horn of the bay which makes a sort of natural port for Genoa; but the wind was high, and the waves long and rough, so that I did not feel quite recompensed by the view of the city, splendid as it was, for the danger apparently incurred. The boatman (I had only one) encouraged me, saying we were quite safe, but I was not a little glad when we gained the shore, though Shelley and Byron-one of them at least, who seemed to have courted agitation from any quarter -would have probably rejoiced in such a situation: more than once I believe were they both in extreme danger even on the Lake of Geneva. Every man however has his fears of some kind or other; and no doubt they had theirs of all men whom I have ever known, Coleridge had the most of passive courage in bodily peril, but no one was so easily cowed when moral firmness was required in miscellaneous conversation or in the daily intercourse of social life.

"How lovely robed in forenoon light and shade, Each ministering to each, didst thou appear, Savona."

There is not a single bay along this beautiful coast that might not raise in a traveller a wish to take up his abode there, each as it succeeds seems more inviting than the other; but the desolated convent on the cliff in the bay of Savona struck my fancy most; and had I, for the sake of my own health or that of a dear friend, or any other cause, been desirous of a residence abroad, I should have let my thoughts loose upon a scheme of turning some part of this building into a habitation provided as far as might be with English comforts. There is close by it a row or avenue, I forget which, of tall cypresses. I could not forbear saying to myself-"What a sweet family walk, or one for lonely musings, would be found under the shade !" but there, probably, the trees remained little noticed and seldom enjoyed.

"This flowering broom's dear neighbourhood." The broom is a great ornament through the months of March and April to the vales and hills of the Apennines, in the wild parts of which it blows in the utmost profusion, and of course successively at different elevations as the season advances. It surpasses ours in beauty and fragrance, but, speaking from my own limited observation only, I cannot affirm the same of several of their wild spring flowers, the primroses in particular, which I saw not unfrequently but thinly scattered and languishing compared to ours.

The note at the close of this poem, upon the Oxford movement, was intrusted to my friend Mr. Frederick Faber. I told him what I wished to be said, and begged that, as he was intimately acquainted with several of the Leaders of it, he would express my thought in the way least likely to be taken amiss by them. Much of the work they are undertaking was grievously wanted, and God grant their endeavours may continue to prosper as they have done.

YE Apennines! with all your fertile vales Deeply embosomed, and your winding

Yon snow-white torrent - fall, plumb down it drops

Yet ever hangs or seems to hang in air, Lulling the leisure of that high perched town,

AQUAPENDENTE, in her lofty site

Its neighbour and its namesake-town, and flood

Forth flashing out of its own gloomy chasm Bright sunbeams-the fresh verdure of this

lawn

Strewn with grey rocks, and on the horizon's verge,

O'er intervenient waste, through glimmering haze,

Unquestionably kenned, that cone-shaped hill

With fractured summit, no indifferent sight To travellers, from such comforts as are thine,

Bleak Radicofani! escaped with joy-
These are before me; and the varied scene
May well suffice, till noon-tide's sultry
heat

Relax, to fix and satisfy the mind
Passive yet pleased. What! with this
Broom in flower

Close at my side! She bids me fly to greet
Her sisters, soon like her to be attired
With golden blossoms opening at the feet
Of my own Fairfield.
The glad greeting

given,

Given with a voice and by a look returned Of old companionship, Time counts not

minutes

Ere, from accustomed paths, familiar fields, The local Genius hurries me aloft, Transported over that cloud-wooing hill, Seat Sandal, a fond suitor of the clouds, With dream-like smoothness, to Helvellyn's

top,

There to alight upon crisp moss and range, Obtaining ampler boon, at every step, Of visual sovereignty-hills multitudinous, (Not Apennine can boast of fairer) hills Pride of two nations, wood and lake and plains,

And prospect right below of deep coves shaped

By skeleton arms, that, from the mountain's trunk

Extended, clasp the winds, with mutual

moan

Struggling for liberty, while undismayed

The shepherd struggles with them. Onward thence

And downward by the skirt of Greenside fell,

And by Glenridding-screes, and low Glencoign,

Places forsaken now, though loving still The muses, as they loved them in the days Of the old minstrels and the border bards. But here am I fast bound; and let it pass, The simple rapture;-who that travels far To feed his mind with watchful eyes could share

Or wish to share it ?-One there surely was, 'The Wizard of the North," with anxious hope

Brought to this genial climate, when disease Preyed upon body and mind-yet not the less

Had his sunk eye kindled at those dear words

That spake of bards and minstrels; and his spirit

Had flown with mine to old Helvellyn's brow,

Where once together, in his day of strength, We stood rejoicing, as if earth were free From sorrow, like the sky above our heads. Years followed years, and when, upon the eve

Of his last going from Tweed-side, thought turned,

Or by another's sympathy was led,

To this bright land, Hope was for him no friend,

Knowledge no help; Imagination shaped No promise. Still, in more than ear-deep

And more than all, that Eminence which showed

Her splendours, seen, not felt, the while he stood

A few short steps (painful they were) apart From Tasso's Convent-haven, and retired grave.

Peace to their Spirits! why should Poesy Yield to the lure of vain regret, and hover In gloom on wings with confidence outspread

To move in sunshine?-Utter thanks, my Soul !

Tempered with awe, and sweetened by compassion

For them who in the shades of sorrow dwell,

That I-so near the term to human life Appointed by man's common heritage, Frail as the frailest, one withal (if that Deserve a thought) but little known to fame

Am free to rove where Nature's loveliest looks,

Art's noblest relics, history's rich bequests,
Failed to reanimate and but feebly cheered
The whole world's Darling-free to rove at
will

O'er high and low, and if requiring rest,
Rest from enjoyment only.

Thanks poured forth For what thus far hath blessed my wanderings, thanks Fervent but humble as the lips can breathe Where gladness seems a duty let me

guard

Those seeds of expectation which the fruit Already gathered in this favoured Land Enfolds within its core. The faith be

mine,

That He who guides and governs all,

approves

When gratitude, though disciplined to look Beyond these transient spheres, doth wear

a crown

Of earthly hope put on with trembling hand;

Nor is least pleased, we trust, when golden beams,

Reflected through the mists of age, from hours

Of innocent delight, remote or recent, Shoot but a little way-'tis all they canInto the doubtful future. Who would keep