"IT IS NOT TO BE THOUGHT OF," etc.

Written in 1802 or 1803; first published in The Morning Post in 1803; first included in Wordsworth's poems 1807.

5, 6. meaning:

Date from 1827, when they replaced lines entirely different in

Road by which all might come and go that would,

And bear out freights of worth to foreign lands.

The opposition between "British freedom" and what he deemed its "salutary bonds" would naturally occur to Wordsworth in days not long before Catholic Emancipation and the Reform Bill.

The words quoted, l. 4, are from Daniel, " Civil War," Bk. ii, stanza 7.

"WHEN I HAVE BORNE IN MEMORY," etc.

This sonnet was probably written in 1802 or 1803; it was first published in The Morning Post, Sept. 17, 1803, and first included among Wordsworth's poems in 1807.

The alterations of text were few and slight; the only one that need be noted illustrates Wordsworth's vigilant superintendence of detail: in 1. 6" Now" replaced in 1845 the earlier "But "; in l. 9" But" also stood until 1845 (except in the Sonnet volume of 1838 where "Most " is found). It might seem that the logic here is injured by the idea of "unfilial fears" (1.8); for the last line of the sonnet - designed to express the same mood and moment - justifies such fears on the ground that they are filial, those which an anxious child might feel for a mother. Wordsworth doubtless means that the fears, filial as offspring of love, are unfilial as lacking faith.

OCTOBER, 1803 ("These times strike monied worldlings," etc.).

First published in 1807. The only change of text is the substitution in l. I of the word strike" in 1837 for the earlier "touch." There were expectations of an invasion of England by the French in 1803; see the sonnets In the Pass of Killikranky" and "To the Men of Kent." 10, II. In a sonnet of 1811 (that beginning "Here pause") Wordsworth speaks of hope as "the paramount duty that Heaven lays

ee

For its own honour on man's suffering heart."

And in the pamphlet on the Convention of Cintra he writes: "But, from the moment of the rising of the people of the Pyrenean peninsula,

there was a mighty change; we were instantaneously animated; and, from that moment the contest assumed the dignity, which it is not in the power of anything but hope to bestow."

This sonnet applies to the individual man the doctrine which Wordsworth so often urges with respect to national life, - that the source of strength is from within, a moral power, not an accumulation of external

resources.

IN THE PASS OF KILLIKRANKY.

First published 1807. The text was never altered. Dorothy Wordsworth writes in her Journal, Sept. 8, 1803: "When we were travelling in Scotland an invasion was hourly looked for, and one could not but think with some regret of the times when from the now depopulated Highlands forty or fifty thousand men might have been poured down for the defence of the country, under such leaders as the Marquis of Montrose or the brave man who had so distinguished himself upon the ground where we were standing. I will transcribe a sonnet suggested to William by this place, and written in October, 1803."

Killiekrankie is " a beautiful wooded pass in Perthshire, on the Garry River, 15 miles N.N.W. of Dunkeld." Here in 1689 John Graham, Viscount Dundee (" Bonnie Dundee," " Bloody Claverhouse "), met the government forces under General Mackay: "Two minutes decided the contest; before the wild rush of the clansmen the redcoats wavered, broke, and ran like sheep"; but Dundee fell mortally wounded.

8-10. Compare the following from Wordsworth's pamphlet on the Convention of Cintra: "The discipline of the army was well known; and as a machine, or a vital organized body, the Nation was assured that it could not but be formidable; but thus to the standing excellence of mechanic or organic power seemed to be superadded, at this time and for this service, the force of inspiration: could anything therefore be looked for but a glorious result?"

TO THE MEN OF KENT, OCTOBER, 1803.

First published 1807. The personification in ll. 2, 3 was incomplete until 1827, when " Her was substituted for the earlier "Its."

2. Advance is here probably used in the sense lift up, as in Shakespeare's "Tempest," I, ii, 408: "The fringed curtains of thine eyes advance," and in Wordsworth's "White Doe of Rylstone," III, 158:

At need he stood, advancing high

The glittering, floating Pageantry.

men and the men of Kent.

F. W. Robertson writes in a lecture on Wordsworth ("Lectures and Addresses,” 1861, p. 255): “There is a difference between the Kentish The Kentish men are simply the inhabitants of the County of Kent. The Men of Kent' is a technical expression applied to the inhabitants of that part of Kent who were never subdued in the Norman invasion, and who obtained glorious terms for themselves, on capitulation, receiving the confirmation of their own charters. It was to the Men of Kent,' the inhabitants of that part of the county nearest to the neighbouring land of France, that Wordsworth addressed this sonnet."

...

NOVEMBER, 1806 ("Another year!" etc.).

First published 1807. Suggested by the events of October and November, 1806, the battle of Jena, October 14, battle of Auerstadt, flight of King Frederich William of Prussia, and the occupation of Berlin by the French, October 25, and perhaps the decree of Napoleon at Berlin, November 20, declaring Great Britain in a state of blockade. 12. The word "servile" in this line replaced in 1820 the earlier " venal."

TO THOMAS CLARKSON.

First published 1807.

5. The words "that enterprise" in 1837 replaced the earlier "this pilgrimage." The earlier reading connects itself with 1. 1," an obstinate hill to climb."

9. Duty's intrepid liegeman in 1837 replaced the earlier "With unabating effort." In the same year blood-stained" (1. 11) was substituted for "bloody," and "wilt" for "shalt" in l. 12.

Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846) was of Wordsworth's college, St. John's, Cambridge, but by some years his predecessor. "The subject for the Latin essay of 1785 was the question Anne liceat invitos in servitutem dare?' and the contest for this prize determined the whole course of Clarkson's life. The bill for the abolition of the slave trade was introduced by Lord Grenville in the House of Lords on 2 Jan., 1807, and received the royal assent on 25 March. Wordsworth was personally acquainted with Clarkson. In an unpublished letter of

Hartley Coleridge's of the year 1836 he speaks of Clarkson's special labour as that of collecting evidence by toil, by patience, at the sacrifice of health, at the frequent risk of life.' Wilberforce, he says, ' undertook the easier task of bringing the evidence into the court, corroborating it by his acuteness and illuminating it by his eloquence.””

COMPOSED BY THE SIDE OF GRASMERE LAKE, 1807.

In August, 1807, Wordsworth returned to Grasmere from Coleorton. The sonnet was not published until 1819.

1. Until 1827 the opening line was "Eve's lingering Clouds extend in solid bars."

9-11. In 1827 the present text appears except that the personification was not completed; "it" and "Its" stood for "she" and " Her" until 1837. Before 1827 an inferior reading stood here:

There is a self-consciousness implied in the return of the poet on his own state of mind ("While fancy feeds on the rich show!") which Wordsworth doubtless felt to be out of place.

COMPOSED WHILE THE AUTHOR, etc.

Written in November or December, 1808; first published 1815. Wordsworth fears that in society our view of public affairs may be obscured by transitory objects, by self-interest or the interest of a party, and finds that the soul best communes with itself and with truth in solitude or among the permanent, passionate, and free presence of

nature.

"ALAS! WHAT BOOTS THE LONG LABORIOUS QUEST.”

This sonnet was first published in The Friend, Nov. 16, 1809, the year of composition. The text is unchanged. The title in The Friend is " Sonnet suggested by the Efforts of the Tyrolese, contrasted with the Present State of Germany."

1

1811 ("The Power of Armies," etc.).

First published in 1815. In 1811 the French were much harassed by the Spanish guerillas. In the tract on the Convention of Cintra Wordsworth had written: "It was never dreamt by any thinking man that the Spaniards were to succeed by their army; if by their army be meant anything but the people. The whole people is their army, and their true army is the people, and nothing else. . . . A military spirit should be there, and a military action, not confined like an ordinary river in one channel, but spreading like the Nile over the whole face of the land. . . . In the moral virtues and qualities of passion which belong to a people must the ultimate salvation of a people be sought for. They must now be taught that their strength chiefly lies in moral qualities, more silent in their operation, more permanent in their nature; in the virtues of perseverance, constancy, fortitude, and watchfulness, in a long memory and a quick feeling, to rise upon a favourable summons, a texture of life which, though cut through (as hath been feigned of the bodies of the Angels) unites again—these are the virtues and qualities on which the Spanish People must be taught mainly to depend."

2. Space in 1827 was substituted for the earlier "place."

1811("Here pause," etc.).

First published in 1815. Text unchanged.

7-9. Compare S. T. Coleridge in his Sixth Letter to the editor of the Courier, 1809 ("Essays on his own Times," p. 645, ed. 1850): " The error, which of all others most besets the public mind, and which yet of all others is the most degrading in its nature, the most tremendous in its consequences, is an inward prostration of the soul before enormous PoWER, and a readiness to palliate and forget all iniquities to which prosperity has wedded itself; as if man were only a puppet without reason and free will, and without the conscience which is the offspring of their union, a puppet played off by some unknown power! as if success were the broad seal of the divine approbation, and tyranny itself the Almighty's inauguration of a Tyrant! . . . The main strength of Bonaparte, Sir, is in the imaginations of men, which are dazzled and blinded by the splendid robes and gaudy trappings which have been purchased by guilt for its own disguise."