FAREWELL LINES. With patience merit the reward of peace, Such calm employments, such entire content. Drying their feathers in the sun, at ease; 151 And so, when night with grateful gloom had fallen, Each with the other, on the dewy ground, And send a thankful spirit back to you, With hope that we, dear Friends! shall meet again. ... eternity. . . . I wandered about, thinking I was happy, but feeling I was not. But that tumultuousness is passing off, and I begin to understand the nature of the gift. Holidays, even the annual month, were always uneasy joys their conscious fugitiveness; the craving after making the most of them. Now, when all is holiday, there is no holiday. I can sit at home, in rain or shine, without a restless impulse for walkings. I am daily steadying, and shall soon find it as natural to me to be my own master, as it has been irksome to have had a master. Mary wakes every morning with an obscure feeling that some good has happened to us."-ED. 152 ON SEEING A NEEDLECASE IN THE FORM OF A HARP. 1827. The poems composed in 1827 were for the most part sonnets. But several of the sonnets first published in 1827 evidently belong to an earlier year, the date of which it is impossible to discover. ON SEEING A NEEDLECASE IN THE FORM OF A HARP. THE WORK OF E. M. S.* Comp. 1827. Pub. 1827. FROWNS are on every Muse's face, Reproaches from their lips are sent, A very Harp in all but size! Needles for strings in apt gradation ! The unclassic profanation. Even her own needle that subdued Arachne's rival spirit, † Though wrought in Vulcan's happiest mood, 1 1845. Like station * Edith May Southey.-ED. 1827. + Arachne, daughter of a dyer of Colophon, skilful with her needle, challenged Minerva to a trial of skill. Minerva defeated her, and committing suicide, she was changed by the goddess into a spider.-ED. ON SEEING A NEEDLECASE IN THE FORM OF A HARP. 153 * And this, too, from the Laureate's Child, A living lord of melody! How will her Sire be reconciled To the refined indignity? I spake, when whispered a low voice, "Bard! moderate your ire; Spirits of all degrees rejoice The Minstrels of Pygmean bands, * Some, still more delicate of ear, Gay Sylphs † this miniature will court, Whence strains to love-sick maiden dear, Pygmæi, the nation of Lilliputian dwarfs, fabled to dwell in India, or Ethiopia. (See Ovid, Meta., vi. 90; Aristotle De Anima, viii. 12.)—Ed. + According to mediæval belief, the Sylphs were elemental spirits of the air; the Gnomes the elemental spirits of the earth. "The gnomes, or demons of the earth, delight in mischief; but the sylphs, whose habitation is in the air, are the best conditioned creatures imaginable.”—(Pope, Rape of the Lock, Preface.)--ED. 154 HAPPY THE FEELING FROM THE BOSOM THROWN. Trust, angry Bard! a knowing Sprite, Nor think the Harp her lot deplores; Love stoops as fondly as he soars. " 2 1 MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS. DEDICATION. Comp. 1827. Pub. 1827. [In the cottage, Town-end, Grasmere, one afternoon in 1801, my sister read to me the Sonnets of Milton. I had long been well acquainted with them, but I was particularly struck on that occasion by the dignified simplicity and majestic harmony that runs through most of them,-in character so totally different from the Italian, and still more so from Shakespeare's fine Sonnets. I took fire, if I may be allowed to say so, and produced three Sonnets the same afternoon, the first I ever wrote except an irregular one at school. Of these three, the only one I distinctly remember is "I grieved for Buonapartè.” One was never written down: the third, which was, I believe, preserved, I cannot particularise.] ΤΟ HAPPY the feeling from the bosom thrown In perfect shape (whose beauty Time shall spare For summer pastime into wanton air; Of the sea-beach, when, polished with nice care, Which for the loss of that moist gleam atone * He probably refers to his sister, whose reading of Milton's sonnets in 1801 first led him (as the Fenwick note tells us) to write Sonnets.-ED. HER ONLY PILOT THE SOFT BREEZE. To thy regard, with thoughts so fortunate, 155 more than mild content!* HER only pilot the soft breeze, the boat Lingers, but Fancy is well satisfied; With keen-eyed Hope, with Memory, at her side, If the heavens smile, and leave us free to glide, "WHY, Minstrel, these untuneful murmurings— 1 1837. gather it. O chief Of friends! such feelings if I here present, Such thoughts, with others mixed less fortunate; That thou 2 1837. Receiv'st the gift for 1827. 1827. * "Something less than joy, but more than dull content." -COUNTESS OF WINCHILSEA.-W.W., 1827. + A reminiscence of a day on Grasmere Lake with Mrs Wordsworth.-ED. |