The reason firm, the temperate will, Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill; And yet a Spirit still, and bright With something of angelic light.1 The "four lines composed as a part of the verses on the Highland Girl" were doubtless the first four lines of the first stanza. The two poems should be read consecutively, and compared. A writer in the Daily News-understood to be Miss Harriet Martineau-wrote thus on the occasion of Mrs Wordsworth's death (January 1859):-"In the Memoirs, by the nephew of the poet, it is said that these verses refer to Mrs Wordsworth; but for half of Wordsworth's life it was always understood that they referred to some other phantom which 'gleamed upon his sight' before Mary Hutchinson." This is much more than improbable. It is, I think, disproved by the Fenwick note. They cannot refer to the "Lucy" of the Goslar poems; and Wordsworth indicates, as plainly as he chose, to whom they actually do refer. Besides, compare the Hon. Justice Coleridge's account of a conversation with Wordsworth (Memoirs, Vol. II., p. 306), in which the poet expressly said that the lines were written on his wife. The use of the word "machine" in the third stanza has been much criticised. For a similar use of the term see the sequel to The Waggoner (p. 107) :— Forgive me, then; for I had been On friendly terms with this Machine. The progress of mechanical industry in Britain since the beginning of the present century has given a more limited, and purely technical, meaning to the word, than it bore when Wordsworth used it in these two instances. The poem was classed amongst those of "The Imagination."-ED. THE DAFFODILS; OR, I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD. Comp. 1804. Pub. 1807. [Town-end, 1804. The two best lines in it are by Mary. 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.] 1 1845. With something of an angel light. 1807. 1836. I WANDERED lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, .1 A host, of golden daffodils ;1 Beside the lake, beneath the trees,2 Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.3 Continuous as the stars that shine Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.1 The waves beside them danced; but they A poet could not but be gay,5 In such a jocund company : 6 I gazed and gazed-but little thought For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils. 4 This stanza was added in the edition of 1815. The following is from Miss Wordsworth's Journal, under date, Thursday, April 15, 1802. It is a specimen of the general character of that Journal. "It was a threatening misty morning, but mild. We set off after dinner from Eusmere. Mr Clarkson went a short way with us, but turned back. The wind was furious, and we thought we must have returned. We first rested in the large Boat House, then under a furze bush opposite Mr Clarkson's. Saw the plough going in the field. The wind seized our breath. The lake was rough. There was a boat by itself, floating in the middle of the bay below Water Millock. We rested again in the Water Millock Lane. The hawthorns black and green; the birches here and there greenish, but there is yet more of purple to be seen on the twigs. . . . A few primroses by the roadside-wood sorrel flower, the anemone, scentless violets, strawberries, and that starry yellow flower which Mrs C. calls pilewort. When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow Park, we saw a few daffodils close to the water side. We fancied that the sea had floated the seeds ashore, and that the little colony had so sprung up. But as we went along there were more, and yet more; and, at last, under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike road. I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grew among the mossy stones, about and above them; some rested their heads upon 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. This wind blew directly over the lake to them. There was here and there a little knot, and a few stragglers higher up; but they were so few as not to disturb the simplicity, unity, and life of that one busy highway. We rested again and again. The bays were stormy, and we heard the waves at different distances, and in the middle of the water, like the sea. In the edition of 1815 there is a footnote to the lines They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude to the following effect :-"The subject of these stanzas is rather an elementary feeling and simple impression (approaching to the nature of an ocular spectrum) upon the imaginative faculty, than an exertion of it. The one which follows is strictly a Reverie; and neither that, nor the next after it in succession, 'The Power of Music,' would have been placed here, but for the reason given in the foregoing note." The being "placed here" refers to its being included amongst the "Poems of the Imagination;" and the "foregoing note" is the note appended to The Horn of Egremont Castle; and the "reason given" in it is "to avoid a multiplication of the classes" into which Wordsworth divided his poems. This note of 1815 is reprinted, mainly to shew the difficulties to which Wordsworth was reduced, by the artificial method of arrangement referred to. The following letter to Mr Wrangham is a more appropriate illustration of the poem of The Daffodils. It was written, the Bishop of Lincoln tells us, "sometime afterwards." (See Memoirs, Vol. I., p. 183-4.) "GRASMERE, Nov. 4. "MY DEAR WRANGHAM,-I am indeed much pleased that Mrs Wrangham and yourself have been gratified by these breathings of simple nature. You mention Butler, Montagu's friend; not Tom Butler, but the conveyancer: when I was in town in spring, he happened to see the volumes lying on Montagu's mantelpiece, and to glance his eye upon the very poem of 'The Daffodils.' 'Aye,' says he, 'a fine morsel this for the Reviewers.' When this was told me (for I was not present) I observed that there were two lines in that little poem which, if thoroughly felt, would annihilate nine-tenths of the reviews of the kingdom, as they would find no readers. The lines I alluded to were these "They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude.'" These two lines were composed by Mrs Wordsworth. In 1877 the Daffodils were still growing in abundance on the shore of Ullswater, below Gowbarrow Park. Classed by Wordsworth amongst the "Poems of the Imagination."-ED. THE AFFLICTION OF MARGARET Comp. 1804. Pub. 1807. [Written at Town-end, Grasmere. This was taken from the case of a poor widow who lived in the town of Penrith. Her sorrow was well known to Mrs Wordsworth, to my sister, and, I believe, to the whole town. She kept a shop, and when she saw a stranger passing by, she was in the habit of going out into the street to enquire of him after her son.] I. WHERE art thou, my beloved Son, Where art thou, worse to me than dead? Oh find me, prosperous or undone ! Or, if the grave be now thy bed, Why am I ignorant of the same II. Seven years, alas! to have received To have despaired, have hoped, believed,1 III. He was among the prime in worth, Well born, well bred; I sent him forth If things ensued that wanted grace, IV. Ah! little doth the young-one dream, |