Which foolish birds are caught with.
This face of rural beauty be a mask
For discontent, and poverty, and crime;

Can, I ask,

These spreading towns a cloak for lawless will?
Forbid it, Heaven!-and1 MERRY ENGLAND still
Shall be thy rightful name, in prose and rhyme !

2

IV

TO THE RIVER GRETA, NEAR KESWICK

GRETA, what fearful listening! when huge stones
Rumble along thy bed, block after block :
Or, whirling with reiterated shock,

Combat, while darkness aggravates the groans:
But if thou (like Cocytus from the moans *

ΤΟ

5

* Many years ago, when I was at Greta Bridge, in Yorkshire, the hostess of the inn, proud of her skill in etymology, said, that "the name of the river was taken from the bridge, the form of which, as every one must notice, exactly resembled a great A." Dr. Whitaker has derived it from the word of common occurrence in the North of England, "to greet;" signifying to lament aloud, mostly with weeping: a conjecture rendered more probable from the stony and rocky channel of both the Cumberland and Yorkshire rivers. The Cumberland Greta, though it does not, among the country people, take up that name till within three miles of its disappearance in the River Derwent, may be considered as having its source in the mountain cove of Wythburn, and flowing through Thirlmere, the beautiful features of which lake are known only to those who, travelling between Grasmere and Keswick, have quitted the main road in the vale of Wythburn, and, crossing over to the opposite side of the lake, have proceeded with it on the right hand.

The channel of the Greta, immediately above Keswick, has, for the purposes of building, been in a great measure cleared of the immense stones which, by their concussion in high floods, produced the loud and awful noises described in the sonnet.

"The scenery upon this river," says Mr. Southey in his Colloquies, "where it passes under the woody side of Latrigg, is of the finest and most rememberable kind :-

-'ambiguo lapsu refluitque fluitque, Occurrensque sibi venturas aspicit undas.'

W. W. 1835.

TO THE River derRWENT

Heard on his rueful margin *) thence wert named
The Mourner, thy true nature was defamed,

And the habitual murmur that atones

For thy worst rage, forgotten.

Oft as Spring

345

Decks, on thy sinuous banks, her thousand thrones, 10

Seats of glad instinct and love's carolling,
The concert, for the happy, then may vie
With liveliest peals of birth-day harmony:
To a grieved heart, the notes are benisons.

Compare The Prelude, book i. 1. 269 (vol. iii. p. 140):— "Was it for this

That one, the fairest of all rivers, loved

To blend his murmurs with my nurse's song,
And, from his alder shades and rocky falls,

And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice

That flowed along my dreams?

Make ceaseless music that composed my thoughts
To more than infant softness."

ED.

V

TO THE RIVER DERWENT †

AMONG the mountains were we nursed, loved Stream!
Thou near the eagle's nest ‡—within brief sail,

I, of his bold wing floating on the gale,
Where thy deep voice could lull me!

Faint the beam

* The Cocytus was a tributary of the Acheron, in Epirus, but was supposed to have some connection with the underworld, doubtless, as Wordsworth puts it,

from the moans

Heard on his rueful margin.

Compare Homer, Odyssey x. 513, and Virgil, Aenid vi. 295.-ED.

This sonnet has already appeared in several editions of the author's poems; but he is tempted to reprint it in this place, as a natural introduction to the two that follow it.-W. W. 1835.

It was first published in 1819.-ED.

The river Derwent rises in Langstrath valley, Borrowdale, in which is Eagle Crag, so named from its having been the haunt of a bird that is now extinct in Cumberland.-ED.

Of human life when first allowed to gleam
On mortal notice.-Glory of the vale,
Such thy meek outset, with a crown, though frail,
Kept in perpetual verdure by the steam

Of thy soft breath!-Less vivid wreath entwined
Nemæan victor's brow ;* less bright was worn,
Meed of some Roman chief—in triumph borne
With captives chained; and shedding from his car
The sunset splendours of a finished war
Upon the proud enslavers of mankind!

IO

5

VI

IN SIGHT OF THE TOWN OF

COCKERMOUTH

(Where the Author was born, and his Father's remains are laid.)

A POINT of life between my Parents' dust,
And yours, my buried Little-ones ! † am I ;
And to those graves looking habitually
In kindred quiet I repose my trust.

Death to the innocent is more than just,
And, to the sinner, mercifully bent;
So may I hope, if truly I repent

And meekly bear the ills which bear I must:
And You, my Offspring! that do still remain,
Yet may outstrip me in the appointed race,
If e'er, through fault of mine, in mutual pain
We breathed together for a moment's space,
The wrong, by love provoked, let love arraign,
And only love keep in your hearts a place.

*The Nemæan games were celebrated every third or fifth year at Nemæa in Argolis. The victor was crowned with a wreath of olive.-ED.

+ His children, Catherine and Thomas, who died in infancy at the Parsonage, Grasmere, and were buried in Grasmere Churchyard.--ED.

NUN'S WELL, BRIGHAM

347

VII

ADDRESS FROM THE SPIRIT OF COCKERMOUTH CASTLE

"THOU look'st upon me, and dost fondly think,
Poet! that, stricken as both are by years,
We, differing once so much, are now Compeers,
Prepared, when each has stood his time, to sink
Into the dust. Erewhile a sterner link
United us; when thou, in boyish play,
Entering my dungeon, didst become a prey
To soul-appalling darkness. Not a blink

Of light was there ;-and thus did I, thy Tutor,
Make thy young thoughts acquainted with the grave;
While thou wert chasing the wing'd butterfly

*

5

II

Through my green courts; or climbing, a bold suitor Up to the flowers whose golden progeny

Still round my shattered brow in beauty wave." †

VIII

NUN'S WELL, BRIGHAM

[So named from the religious House that stood close by. I have rather an odd anecdote to relate of the Nun's Well. One day the landlady of a public-house, a field's length from the well, on the road-side, said to me-"You have been to see the

* Compare To a Butterfly (1Ɛ02), vol. ii. p. 284-

Oh! pleasant, pleasant were the days,
The time, when, in our childish plays,
My sister Emmeline and I
Together chased the butterfly!

+ Compare The Prelude, book i. ll. 283-85

The shadow of those towers

That yet survive, a shattered monument

Of feudal sway.

Compare also the sonnet At Furness Abbey, written in 1844.-ED.

ED.

Nun's Well, Sir?" "The Nun's Well! what is that?" said the Postman, who in his royal livery stopt his mail-car at the door. The landlady and I explained to him what the name meant, and what sort of people the nuns were. A countryman who was standing by, rather tipsy, stammered out-"Aye, those nuns were good people; they are gone; but we shall soon have them back again. The Reform mania was just then at its height.-I. F.]

THE cattle crowding round this beverage clear

To slake their thirst, with reckless hoofs have trod
The encircling turf into a barren clod;
Through which the waters creep, then disappear,
Born to be lost in Derwent flowing near;

Yet, o'er the brink, and round the lime-stone cell
Of the pure spring (they call it the "Nun's Well,"
Name that first struck by chance my startled ear)
A tender Spirit broods—the pensive Shade
Of ritual honours to this Fountain paid

By hooded Votaresses 1 with saintly cheer; *
Albeit oft the Virgin-mother mild

Looked down with pity upon eyes beguiled
Into the shedding of "too soft a tear.” †

5

IO

IX

TO A FRIEND

⚫(ON THE BANKS OF THE DERWENT)

[My son John, who was then building a parsonage on his small living at Brigham.-I. F.]

1 1837.

Votaries

1835.

* Attached to the church of Brigham was formerly a chantry, which held a moiety of the manor; and in the decayed parsonage some vestiges of monastic architecture are still to be seen.-W. W. 1835.

† See Pope's Eloïsa to Abelard, 1. 224.--ED.

John Wordsworth, the poet's son, the subject of this sonnet, was incumbent of Moresby, near Whitehaven, before he went to Brigham. See the