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Hours of perfect gladsomeness.1
-Pleased by any random toy;
By a kitten's busy joy,
Or an infant's laughing eye
Sharing in the ecstasy;
I would fare like that or this,

Find my wisdom in my bliss ;
Keep the sprightly soul awake,
And have faculties to take,

Even from things 2 by sorrow wrought,
Matter for a jocund thought,

Spite of care, and spite of grief,

To gambol with Life's falling Leaf.

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THE SMALL CELANDINE *

Composed 1804.-Published 1807

[Grasmere, Town-end.

It is remarkable that this flower coming out so early in the spring as it does, and so bright and beautiful, and in such profusion, should not have been noticed earlier in English verse. What adds much to the interest that attends it, is its habit of shutting itself up and opening out according to the degree of light and temperature of the air. -I. F. In pencil on opposite page "Has not Chaucer noticed it?"—W. W.

This was classed by Wordsworth among his "Poems referring to the Period of Old Age.”—ED.

THERE is a Flower, the lesser Celandine,

That shrinks, like many more, from cold and rain ;

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And, the first moment that the sun may shine,
Bright as the sun himself, 'tis out again!

When hailstones have been falling, swarm on swarm,

Oft have I seen it muffled up from harm,

Or blasts the green field and the trees distrest,

In close self-shelter, like a Thing at rest.

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But lately, one rough day, this Flower I passed
And recognised it, though an altered form,
Now standing forth an offering to the blast,
And buffeted at will by rain and storm.

I stopped, and said with inly-muttered voice,
"It doth not love the shower, nor seek the cold:
This neither is its courage nor its choice,
But its necessity in being old.

"The sunshine may not cheer 2 it, nor the dew;
It cannot help itself in its decay;

Stiff in its members, withered, changed of hue."
And, in my spleen, I smiled that it was grey.

To be a Prodigal's Favourite-then, worse truth,
A Miser's Pensioner-behold our lot!

O Man, that from thy fair and shining youth
Age might but take the things Youth needed not!

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With the last stanza compare one from The Fountain, vol. ii. p. 93

Thus fares it still in our decay :

And yet the wiser mind

Mourns less for what age takes away

Than what it leaves behind.

Compare also the other two poems on the Celandine, vol. ii. pp. 300, 303, written in a previous year.-ED.

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AT APPLETHWAITE, NEAR KESWICK

1804

Composed 1804.-Published 1842

[This was presented to me by Sir George Beaumont, with a view to the erection of a house upon it, for the sake of being near to Coleridge, then living, and likely to remain, at Greta Hall, near Keswick. The severe necessities that prevented this arose from his domestic situation. This little property, with a considerable addition that still leaves it very small, lies beautifully upon the banks of a rill that gurgles down the side of Skiddaw; and the orchard and other parts of the grounds command a magnificent prospect of Derwent Water, the mountains of Borrowdale and Newlands. Not many years ago I gave the place to my daughter.-I. F.]

In pencil on the opposite page in Dora Wordsworth's (Mrs. Quillinan's) handwriting-"Many years ago, Sir; for it was given when she was a frail feeble monthling."

One of the "Miscellaneous Sonnets."-ED.

BEAUMONT! it was thy wish that I should rear

A seemly Cottage in this sunny Dell,

On favoured ground, thy gift, where I might dwell
In neighbourhood with One to me most dear,
That undivided we from year to year

Might work in our high Calling—a bright hope
To which our fancies, mingling, gave free scope
Till checked by some necessities severe.

And should these slacken, honoured BEAUMONT ! still
Even then we may perhaps in vain implore

Leave of our fate thy wishes 1 to fulfil.
Whether this boon be granted us or not,

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Old Skiddaw will look down upon the Spot
With pride, the Muses love it evermore.1 *

This little property at Applethwaite now belongs to Mr. Gordon Wordsworth, the grandson of the poet. It is a 66 sunny dell" only in its upper reaches, above the spot where the cottage -which still bears Wordsworth's name-is built. This sonnet, and Sir George Beaumont's wish that Wordsworth and Coleridge should live so near each other, as to be able to carry on joint literary labour, recall the somewhat similar wish and proposal on the part of W. Calvert, unfolded in a letter from Coleridge to Sir Humphry Davy.-ED.

VAUDRACOUR AND JULIA

Composed 1804.-Published 1820

The following Tale was written as an Episode, in a work from which its length may perhaps exclude it. The facts are true; no invention as to these has been exercised, as none was needed.-W. W. 1820.

[Written at Town-end, Grasmere. Faithfully narrated, though with the omission of many pathetic circumstances, from the mouth of a French lady, who had been an eye-and-ear witness of all that was done and said. Many long years after, I was told that Dupligne was then a monk in the Convent of La Trappe.-I. F.]

This was included among the "Poems founded on the Affections."-ED.

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O HAPPY time of youthful lovers (thus
My story may begin) O balmy time,
In which a love-knot on a lady's brow
Is fairer than the fairest star in heaven!

will be proud, and that same spot

Be dear unto the Muses evermore.

MS.

*In the edition of 1842 the following footnote is given by Wordsworth, "This biographical Sonnet, if so it may be called, together with the Epistle that follows, have been long suppressed from feelings of personal delicacy." The "Epistle" was that addressed to Sir George Beaumont in 1811.-ED.

The work was The Prelude. See book ix., p. 310 of this volume.--ED. Compare The Prelude, book ix. l. 548, p. 310, where Wordsworth says it was told him "by my Patriot friend."-ED.

To such inheritance of blessed fancy

(Fancy that sports more desperately with minds
Than ever fortune hath been known to do)

The high-born Vaudracour was brought, by years
Whose progress had a little overstepped

His stripling prime. A town of small repute,
Among the vine-clad mountains of Auvergne,
Was the Youth's birth-place. There he wooed a Maid
Who heard the heart-felt music of his suit

With answering vows. Plebeian was the stock,
Plebeian, though ingenuous, the stock,
From which her graces and her honours sprung:
And hence the father of the enamoured Youth,
With haughty indignation, spurned the thought
Of such alliance. From their cradles up,
With but a step between their several homes,
Twins had they been in pleasure; after strife
And petty quarrels, had grown fond again;
Each other's advocate, each other's stay;
And, in their happiest moments, not content,
If more divided than a sportive pair 1

Of sea-fowl, conscious both that they are hovering
Within the eddy of a common blast,
Or hidden only by the concave depth
Of neighbouring billows from each other's sight.

Thus, not without concurrence of an age
Unknown to memory, was an earnest given
By ready nature for a life of love,
For endless constancy, and placid truth;
But whatsoe'er of such rare treasure lay
Reserved, had fate permitted, for support
Of their maturer years, his present mind
Was under fascination ;--he beheld
A vision, and adored the thing he saw.

1 1836.

And strangers to content if long apart,
Or more divided

1820.

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