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'Here might I pause, and bend in reverence
To Nature, and the power of human minds;
To men, as they are men within themselves.
How oft high service is performed within,
When all the external man is rude in show;
Not like a temple rich with pomp and gold,
But a mere mountain chapel that protects
Its simple worshippers from sun and shower!
Of these, said I, shall be my song; of these,
If future years mature me for the task,
Will I record the praises, making verse
Deal boldly with substantial things-in truth
And sanctity of passion, speak of these,
That justice may be done, obeisance paid
Where it is due. Thus haply shall I teach,

Inspire, through unadulterated ears

Pour rapture, tenderness, and hope; my theme
No other than the very heart of man,

As found among the best of those who live,

Not unexalted by religious faith,

Nor uninformed by books, good books, though few,

In Nature's presence: thence may I select
Sorrow that is not sorrow, but delight,

And miserable love that is not pain

To hear of, for the glory that redounds

Therefrom to human kind, and what we are.

Be mine to follow with no timid step

Where knowledge leads me; it shall be my pride
That I have dared to tread this holy ground,
Speaking no dream, but things oracular,
Matter not lightly to be heard by those
Who to the letter of the outward promise
Do read the invisible soul; by men adroit
In speech, and for communion with the world
Accomplished, minds whose faculties are then
Most active when they are most eloquent,
And elevated most when most admired.
Men may be found of other mould than these;
Who are their own upholders, to themselves
Encouragement and energy, and will;
Expressing liveliest thoughts in lively words
As native passion dictates. Others, too,
There are, among the walks of homely life,
Still higher, men for contemplation framed;
Shy, and unpractised in the strife of phrase;
Meek men, whose very souls perhaps would sink
Beneath them, summoned to such intercourse.
Theirs is the language of the heavens, the power,
The thought, the image, and the silent joy:
Words are but under-agents in their souls;

When they are grasping with their greatest strength
They do not breathe among them; this I speak

In gratitude to God, who feeds our hearts

For his own service, knoweth, loveth us,
When we are unregarded by the world."

NOTES

EPITAPHS AND ELEGIAC PIECES

P. 1. EPITAPHS. Translated from Chiabrera :-Wordsworth gives some account of Chiabrera (of Savona, b. 1552, d. 1637) in his Essay on Epitaphs, contributed to Coleridge's periodical, The Friend. With regard to the persons commemorated in the epitaphs, I must, with one exception (see No. IX.), echo Prof. Knight's 'I have been unable to obtain any definite information.'

P.1. I. Non spargete sospir, diletti amici. No. 1. of the Epitaphs: on Signor Francesco Cini (Ceni). Reference is made to the Rime di Gabriello Chiabrera, 3 vols. Milan, 1807. Vol. 1. pp. 207 foll.

P. 1. II. Forse ragion di buon governo trasse.

Signor Roberto Titi.

P. 2. 1809-Published in The Friend, 1810.

P. 2. III. O tu, che muovi alla tua strada intento. on Monsignor Giuseppe Ferreri, Arcivescovo di Urbino. 1809-Published in The Friend, 1810.

Epitaph XIV. on

Epitaph VIII.

P. 2. IV. Uomo non è, che pervenuto a morte. Epitaph XXV. on Signor Giambattista Feo.

P. 3, 1. 13. Auster and Boötes:-The south and the north winds, Boötes being strictly the constellation of that name.

L. 15. Pelorus:-A promontory on the north-east coast of Sicily (Capo di Faro).

1809-Published in The Friend, 1809.

P. 3. V. Fu ver che Ambrosio Salinero a torto. Epitaph VII.

L. 22. Permessus :-A river of Boeotia rising in Mount Helicon, and, like the better-known Hippocrene and Mount Parnassus, named allegorically for poetry.

P. 4. VI. Ancora entro i confin di fanciullezza. Signor Roberto Dati.

1809-Published in The Friend, 1809.

Epitaph XIX. on

P. 4. VII. O Lelio, o fior gentil di gentilezza. Epitaph XXIV. on Signor Lelio Pavese.

L. 4. Aglaia:-The bright one,' one of the Graces.

L. 10. Sebeto:-A river running into the Bay of Naples through the east side of the town. Prof. Knight's note on Sebeto should be transferred to Pelorus: cp. No. IV. of these Epitaphs.

P. 4. VIII. Non senza gran cordoglio il Zio ripose. Epitaph IX. on Monsignor Abbate Francesco Pozzobonello.

P. 5. 1809:-Published in The Friend, 1810.

P. 5. IX. Alma cortese, che quinci oltre passi. Epitaph XXVII. on Signor Bernardino Baldi. In the first line of this translation the name is printed Balbi, whether by a mistake of Wordsworth or his printer or his copy of Chiabrera, I do not know. The mistake has unfortunately hitherto concealed the identity of this, the only well-known person celebrated in these epitaphs. Bernardino Baldi of Urbino (1553-1617) was a distinguished man, mathematician, philosopher, linguist, historian, and poet.

1809-Published in The Friend, 1810.

P. 6. I. 1. 2. Vernon her new name:-This lady was named Carleton; she, along with a sister, was brought up in the neighbourhood of Ambleside. The epitaph, a part of it at least, is in the church at Bromsgrove, where she resided after her marriage.-I. F.

P. 6. II. Published 1837 :--These verses were inscribed upon the tombstone of Wordsworth's son, Thomas, who died December 1, 1812, and was buried in Grasmere churchyard. The date of their composition is not known.

P. 7. IV. 1. 5. EPITAPH in the Chapel-yard of Langdale, Westmoreland. Rev. Owen Lloyd (1803-1841) was a friend of Hartley Coleridge and of Faber, and 'would have been greatly distinguished as a scholar but for inherited infirmities of bodily constitution, which, from early childhood, affected his mind.'-(I. F.) He held the small cure of Langdale for nearly twelve years.

P. 7. V. ADDRESS to the Scholars of the Village School of [Hawkshead].

P. 9. VI. ELEGIAC STANZAS suggested by a picture of Peele Castle, in e storm, painted by Sir George Beaumont :-More correctly Piel Castle, near Barrow-in-Furness.

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P. 10, 11. 14-16:-In edition 1820, after what then I saw,' cameand add a gleam

Of lustre, known to neither sea nor land,

But borrowed from the youthful Poet's dream.

Writing to Barron Field on October 24, 1828, Wordsworth says: "The light that never was, on sea or land" shall be restored. I need

not trouble you with the reasons that put me upon the alteration.' One of the reasons was probably that which renders it advisable to notice the alteration, viz. the frequent misunderstanding of the stanza by readers who are naturally haunted by its strange poetic power, but forget the context. The alteration is in fact a rather prosaic explanation of lines, which by their very beauty had been given a wider and more mystical meaning than was originally intended.

Ll. 21, 22. In edition 1807 a treasure-house, a mine of peaceful years.' The stanza was omitted in editions 1820-1843, probably because Wordsworth felt that the accumulation of metaphors, and especially the metaphor of the mine, were inappropriate to a painted picture. In edition 1845 the stanza was replaced, as in the text.

L. 42. Him whom I deplore':-The poet's brother John. Cp. the next two poems, and Introd., p. xliv.

P. 15. VIII. ELEGIAC VERSES, in memory of my brother, John Wordsworth, 11. 61-64. These verses, with the first four lines of stanza iii., were inscribed on a rock near Grisedale Tarn in 1882, by the direction of the Wordsworth Society, on the motion of the Rev. H. D. (since Canon) Rawnsley.

P. 15. IX. SONNET, 1. 1. Angelic boy:-Wordsworth's grandchild, youngest son of John Wordsworth by his first wife, who was obliged by ill-health to live in Italy, where she did not long survive this child of five years old.

P. 16. XI. INVOCATION TO THE EARTH. February, 1816:-Composed immediately after the Thanksgiving Ode, to which it may be considered as a second part.-I. F. Cp. vol. 11. p. 77.

P. 17. XII. LINES written on a blank leaf in a copy of the Author's poem 'The Excursion,' upon hearing of the death of the late Vicar of Kendal, 1. 5-The Rev. Matthew Murfitt, Vicar of Kendal 1806-1814, formerly Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.

P. 18. XIII. ELEGIAC STANZAS addressed to Sir G. H. B. upon the Death of his Sister-in-Law:-Frances Fermor, widow of Henry Fermor of Fritwell, Oxfordshire. This lady had been a widow long before I knew her. Her husband was of the family of the lady celebrated in the Rape of the Lock, and was, I believe, a Roman Catholic. The sorrow which his death caused her was fearful in its character, as described in this poem, but was subdued in course of time by the strength of her religious faith. I have been for many weeks at a time an inmate with her at Coleorton Hall, as were also Mrs. Wordsworth and my sister. . . .'(I. F.)

P. 20. XIV. ELEGIAC MUSINGS in the grounds of Coleorton Hall, the seat of the late Sir G. H. Beaumont, Bart. Ll. 34-39 were added in ed. 1837.

L. 47. Within itself its sweetness close':-Cp. Fairfax's translation of Tasso's Godfrey of Bullogne; or, the Recovery of Jerusalem, bk. 11. stanza xviii. :

The rose within herself her sweetness closed.-Prof. Knight.

P. 21. XV. WRITTEN AFTER THE DEATH OF CHARLES LAMB, 1. 23 The most gentle creature nursed in fields:-This way of indicating the name of my lamented friend has been found fault with; perhaps rightly so; but I may say in justification of the double sense of the word, that similar allusions are not uncommon in epitaphs. One of the best in our language in verse I ever read was upon a person who bore the name of Palmer; and the course of the thought throughout turned upon the Life of the Departed, considered as a pilgrimage. Nor can I think that the objection in the present case will have much force with any one who remembers Charles Lamb's beautiful sonnet addressed to his own name, and ending:

No deed of mine shall shame thee, gentle name !—W.

P. 24. XVI. EXTEMPORE EFFUSION UPON THE DEATH OF JAMES HOGG, 11. 9, 10-Scott died Sept. 21, 1832, and was buried in Dryburgh Abbey; Hogg died Nov. 21, 1835; Coleridge, July 25, 1834; Lamb, Dec. 27, 1834; Crabbe, Feb. 3, 1832; Mrs. Hemans, May 16, 1835.

P. 25. XVII. INSCRIPTION for a Monument in Crosthwaite Church, in the Vale of Keswick, 11. 3, 4:-Southey died March 21, 1843.

HOOD.

ODE

INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDThis 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

me.

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 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

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